Nachricht Nummer : 608
Übertragungszeit : 6 min 19 sec
Nachricht von    : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.ztn.apc.org (Wam)
Antworten an     : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.ztn.apc.org (Wam)
Betrifft         : Zagreb Diary 1 July 1995
Weiterleitung von: WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.ztn.apc.org (Wam)
Orig.Empfänger   : /»UNVERSANDT
Erstellungsdatum : 02.07.1995 12:25:00 S+2

Zagreb Diary 1 July, 1995

Dobar Dan,

But what now......?

Not often, but something you get this really great articles or books about
the "crisis in former Yugoslavia". Most of the books and media reports I
have read so far are picking up one point of the story, but never really
seems to be able to grap it all. One concentrate itself on the history and
the ethnical gabs, the other on the relation between religion and ethnical
tendencies. Some dig into the falling economics in the former Socialist
Yugoslav federal republic. But it takes some time to find articles which
mix it all together, put some of the dynamics of war and it's habits that
history are easy is an easy propaganda source ("We are a country with a
flexible history and an unknown future" was said to me.")

Today however I had the possibility to read a nice article written by a
Danish female social scientist, which I more or less started to admire for
her complete overview. But my enthusiasm was painfully killed when I came
to the conclusion she draw from all she had wrote before. The result
conclusion was more or less "That all this drama's on the Balkans could
happen since Western Europe couldn't recognize in time the special Balkan
dynamics during the breaking up of Yugoslavia". One of the most brilliant
conclusion I have heard so far. I wonder if anybody would have gaps the
complete dynamics, even in the countries were it happened, the war itself
created new dynamics, which could be analysed now, but I doubt if anybody
could predict them.

Explaining what has happened and why may be hard, but how to come out of
this situation may be even harder, if not impossible as it may now seems.
What will happen and when will it happen, how will the reactions be. That
is what is in the air now. Is NATO going to react, will the UNPROFOR stay,
how strong is the Croatia and BiHarmija really, how will Serbia react if
Tudjman keeps his word in September, will it be Sector North or South
next, how strong is the Bosnian Serbian Army really in the Brcko valley.
And so on and so on. The theories are mixed with biased hopes. The end of
most stories, a kind of combination in which we will end up in the winter
this year with a situation in which Central and North Bosnia is under
control of BiHarmija and HVO, with a Serbian enclave around Banja Luka and
Fights in the East and South parts of the country. Most of Croatia under
control of Zagreb with heavy fights in East Slavonia. Serbia either boycott
free or heavily involved in it, this of course the most tricky thing.

Fine in half a year we know the answer. Is my predictions right or wrong.
But it don't answer the more important question for the hour, what will
happen afterwards. Whatever military solution will be found, if UNPROFOR
or NATO will be involved. Who know's and we all want to know, what is NATO
up to, what are those French Green Helmets doing in Bosnia.

When Clinton says on the 50th anniversary that the UN don't work and that
it should be reformed, everybody is agree with it, but how long will it
take and what will happen in the main time. When the Green Nato Helmets
are appearing on the battle field what would that have for an effect on
the Russian part of the former superpower USSR. Maybe they have their
hands full with their own "peace keeping" operations all around the
federal Russian republic. The former "Red Army" in the role as the JNA
played in than still Yugoslavia, but with a little bit more fire power.

I think that I have lost all interest in trying to figure out what will
happen next, but more in the question how to solve the situation after the
next "surprise". Mato Simic of the Croatian Organisation for Displaced
People, the organisation which organized last years summer more or less
the blockades of the UN checkpoints in all sectors, seems to have changed
a lot since that moment. Together with the AntiWar campaign ARK they signed
a statement in which it is more or less clearly is stated that they are
disagree with a political solution in which Refugees from the West
Slavonia (in 91 or 95) will be re-settled in houses of Displaced people
from f.e. Baranja, which are now living in temporary housing in Osijek.
Roughly Serbs from West Slavonia are resettled in houses of Croats who
left or were push to leave from East Slavonia.

A young Serbian man stated it very open and honest a few days ago when I
visit him with a high level delegation of HCA (Helsinki Citizen Assembly).
Look I have nothing to do with either Serbia or the West Serbian Republic,
neither do I give a damned if Knin is yes or no under control from Serbs
or under Zagreb, I am from here, my family lives here for 16 generations.
So if I go I go to the North, not to Knin, Bosnia or Sector East and
surely not to Serbia. And look at me I am 36 years old, healthy and live
from Humanitarian Aid. I just like to earn my bread, you know. Nothing
special, but there are no jobs in this area. And in such a situation it is
especially hard to get a job as a member of a new minority in this area as
we Serbs are now, before 1991 however we, Serbs, even had some times an
absolute majority in some of the little place around here. Maybe I don't
want to be Serbian, but just a citizen of Slavonia.

A strange thing to realize is also a kind of all over feeling among a lot
of people in the center of Pakrac, which some times literately say that they
wish that their "Serbs" would return. A strange feeling is that the
disappearing of the cease fire also took part of the heart of what was
stable in the last 3 years in Pakrac. The stability is totally gone now,
or you can stay re-established. But Pakrac is never going to be the town
as it was in f.e. '89. For everybody a new time period will start.
Croatian state is working like hell the improve the infra structures
all over the area, grants are promised to everybody in the area who like to
rebuild their house, and the town is more busy like before, building and
cleaning sides everywhere you look, never before there was such a lot of
activity is going on.

"Do you believe that by the end of the year the town is rebuild as
planned" I asked a local friend, who just got a credit from the state, his
answer "If people have collected slowly their building materials as I have
done in the last 3 years, maybe a part will be rebuild, but the state
will run out of money or out of building materials". "You know", another
friend continues, "The problem is that nobody outside really understand
what is going on, or rather what is NOT going on". "So they don't know how
to react ?", is my "logical" question, "No they don't !". And there we are
back with the core question. The world is talking about Milosevic,
Tudjman, Izetbegovic, Karadzic and Martic, but in Pakrac we talk about
Delac and Dzakula, but actually more about how to restart the economy. It
is all over here now, what next.

And the next, some of the abandoned Serbian houses in the area are swapped
with abandoned Croat houses in the Banja Luka area. But that is happening
not the majority of the empty Serbian houses, especially not with those
who are changed in the last 4 years into a hype of stones. Some of those
hypes will maybe change from a Serbian temporary owner, according a new
Croatian law, to a old Croatian owner, since his father or grandfather
owned the property in 1945, f.e. Spanovica. That was a Croatian village
before 1945 in the middle of a lot of Serbian villages, on the road
between Pakrac and Pozega, in 1945 the Partizans liberated that village and
killed the whole male population. After the war the properties were
declared as been owned by enemies of the state and resettled by mostly
Serbian people as well as the name was taken out of the history books, it
now called for almost 50 years "New Village". For this new Croatian
government the former enemies of the state, who lost their property in
1945 are not considered as "enemies", so the change is big that some
relatives will get the houses and farm of their (grand)fathers back. Most
of the Serbian people who lived their from 45 till 91 anyway have leaved
the area.

"We miss our Serbs", is been said, but how..... is the question. ODPR
(governmental office for Displaced People and Refugees) has received a list
of almost 60 names from the UNHCR office in Banja Luka of people from West
Slavonia who like to return to Croatia, they have approved the returning.
Now the burning question is how long will it take before Karadzic will let
those people go, especially since all the men are mobilized into the BSA.
Will they give the permission of "blood-bothers" in their army, who like
to leave to live in the country of their "enemies".

But a bigger question what will Croatia offer when people return, maybe
they return from Banja Luka, but just to make a step over in Croatia on
the way to a northern Third country. "Look all those people who left to
Bosnia and East Slavonia are a bit masochistic, a kind of Serbian habit,
they now they will have a bad time there, but rather than to gather with
the people they know, than a maybe better time but not necessarily
friends in the direct surrounding, rather starving to dead", somebody told
me some weeks ago.

I almost hear the echo from the upcoming reports in the sumer of 1996,
"Why did the peaceful re-intregration in West Slavonia didn't work". The
conclusion "Since the people in the West didn't recognize the dynamics
which are playing a role in the Slavonia area, they just learn the Balkan
rules and this is something different". And it is true, although some
funding suddenly was and will come available in this area of Croatia, the
upcoming problems will not be solved with those good meant drops on the
hot stone.

A major problem will form the enormous high taxes in Croatia, and the
deadly web of official regulations, f.e. which hardly make it possible to
create legally your own work. You give up before you start. A french
development organisation who wanted to invest in every kind of
agricultural product to be sold on the North African market, came to the
conclusion that Croatian product are more expensive than French. And even
if that wasn't the case you are building an economy on a time bomb.

I still believe that when the "rich" countries start to realize that a  
time bomb mechanism can be stopped by already starting to think what have  
to happen when all the fighting is over, they will come to the simple  
conclusion that "peace cost money", and not money only invested in "peace  
keeping" or "peace enforcing" forces. They knew in 1945 that the problem  
afterwards only could be solved by something as the Marshall plan,  
Allthough I realize the word "Marshall" has a strange echo in these  
countries, when General Tudjman some weeks ago appeared in a white uniform  
on a public meeting everybody remember Marshall Tito's outfits, so maybe a  
more neutral code name, but still before the west start missing the next  
set of dynamics in the Balkan, they such start thinking about the next  
step. otherwise, the timebomb will keep on ticking.

Mir od mene,
            Wam:-)


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