Concealed Opposition to NATO Attack

AIM Zagreb, 4 April, 1999

Official Croatia is still following NATO military operation in Yugoslavia with mixed feelings. The official stand presented with evident hesitation and delay is still support of air intervention of the western alliance. Such disposition is even more stressed after the American promise that the procedure for Croatia's joining Partnership for Peace would be accelerated. In the end of last week at the session of the Defence and National Security Council chaired by Franjo Tudjman, it was said that "the world needs Croatia at this moment and that this should be used in the best possible way". In the current situation, therefore, Croatia recognises a rare opportunity, which is even more attractive because it is quite unexpected, to improve its morose relations with the western countries, primarily with the United States. Judging by the urgently scheduled meeting of foreign minister Mate Granic with the ever strict Madeleine Albright, it is for the time being quite successful in this effort.

Granic returned from Washington beaming with joy because of, as he put it, most fruitful and most pleasant talks with American state secretary ever since signing of the Washington Agreement, which took place five years ago. The Americans thanked Croatia for its support to NATO intervention and expressed approval of Croatia's stands on a number of issues, from Prevlaka, B&H, election law which is just in preparation in Zagreb, all the way to the manner in which the the trial of Dinko Sakic, commander of the Jasenovac camp, was proceeding. But, regardless of how beaming with pleasure Granic may be, a certain concealed note of suspicion has remained concerning Croatian views of the intervention which certainly is not insignificant. Like on the occasion of the first public statement on the intervention, at the mentioned session of the Defence Council fear was expressed that it would inflict serious damage to Croatian economy, primarily to transportation and tourism. This can be a sign of restrained discontent because of the NATO operation, and maybe even fear that something unpleasant and even dangerous for Croatia is rolling behind it.

It is possible to speculate about two reasons for it. Primarily, the NATO intervention took place without a decision of United Nations Security Council, so that it irresistably reminds of a police search without a search-warrant. And all countries with problematic democracy which are under pretext of protection of national sovereignty feverishly struggling against international community's arbitration have every reason to shrink from and even openly dread it. Croatia perfectly fits into this description. The other reason for secret opposition to the NATO operation lies in disbelief that it can succeed, more precisely in discrete foreboding that it could experience a fiasco.

Officially this is not mentioned, but Croatian regime press writes quite openly and strangely with quite valid arguments about such a possibility. The editor-in-chief of Vjesnik published a commentary claiming that the agreement from Rambouillet was dead and suggested that Milosevic's rejection of the agreement was not to blame as much as NATO's hasty and rash action. He claims in the article that this action has just accelerated ethnic cleansing of Kosovo and created confusion in the set political objectives, so that contrary to all previous stands the USA have started advocating secession of Kosovo.

But, the peace agreement is not the only thing that could fall apart under heavy NATO missiles. Vjesnik forecasts, agreeing with Kissinger, that NATO will now either have to intervene with ground troops or fall apart itself, not so much because of disagreement among member countries which is growing, as because of unbearable pictures of the catastrophe of Kosovo Albanian refugees which is increasingly linked to NATO bombing as much as to Serb persecution. In the end Vjesnik writes about great naivete of expectations that air-strikes would force Milosevic to accept pax americana, and the same conclusion is drawn by Vecernji list, the pro-regime newspaper with the largest circulation.

This daily claims that the attack on Yugoslavia motivated by removal of Milosevic could have been ordered only by someone who is not acquainted with Serbian circumstances, and even less with the "Serbian political being". Vecernji list also believes that the catastrophe of Albanian refugees from Kosovo cannot be separated from NATO bombardments, and even concludes that in fact it was a good thing that the international community did not intervene militarily in Croatia at the time of shelling of Vukovar because nowadays it has become clear that such assistance should be feared. We have somehow "escaped with our life", it is sarcastically concluded.

Although it is not explicitly said so in these two articles, they obviously convey fear that the Americans, should they fail with the intervention, will simply pick up their war toys and leave and the region would be left on its own, with increased instability, and what is most important with the terrifying awareness that the USA may raid like this any other country in the region. There is something in this situation, after all, that might be convenient for official Zagreb. War is an ambience in which the Croat Democratic Community (HDZ) feels and shifts around best, because in such conditions the radical frame of mind of the public increases and should elections be scheduled now Tudjman's party would probably profit from it.

But, all things considered, there will be no elections before the end of the year, and by then a solution will have to be found for Kosovo and Serbia. This means that the juices which feed the radical portion of the public will dry up by then, so HDZ cannot expect a major benefit from it. Moreover, military intervention deprived Tudjman's party of a significant propagandist argument which has retained certain penetrating power regardless of the fact that it has become quite trite.

It is their well-liked allegation that Milosevic has always been and remained the favourite of western countries, especially of France and England, and that creators of the Versailles agreement still dream of creating some form of Yugoslavia around Serbia. In the utter lack of ideas Tudjman's promotion has backslided into since 1995, this is the main propagandist slogan he at least once or twice a month annoys the public with. Such an allegation has lost its meaning now, just as there is no sense in making the sharp distinction between the aggressor and victims in 1991-99 war.

Moreover, this distinction will become almost absurd if Serbia suffers serious war devastation because the phrase "Serb aggressor" in official Croatia's terminology just partly referred to the events in the past and was in fact greatly turned towards the present and the future referring to the aggressor which is still threatening! Only equipped like this, this propagandist tomahawk becomes a deadly weapon in the hands of HDZ, very convenient for fighting the opposition just before the parliamentary elections. Tudjman is now deprived of that weapon, and this is probably the greatest loss NATO intervention has brought him.

MARINKO CULIC