The Hidden Balkan War
Corry, John
The Hidden Balkan War As our correspondent discovers, a religious war between Croat, Serb, and Muslim Slays is following a medieval logic no one in the West seems willing to ponder. by John...
...Perhaps feeling sheepish then, some men who had taken shelter there emerged from behind the trolleys...
...Knin fell to the Croats two days later, along with all the rest of Krajina...
...The correspondent's attitude was appropriate...
...Retired American officers, presumably with Washington's quiet approval, helped to organize the Croatian army before it moved on Krajina...
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...22 The American Spectator October 1995 victory in 1848 over a Hungarian army...
...Tudjman had drawn it on the back of a menu at a banquet in June...
...His tone suggested the resigned acceptance that appeared to characterize the whole city...
...Thus was born, as the writer Misha Glenny has observed, "one of the most active and disruptive fault lines in Europe...
...As always, nothing had been quite what it seemed...
...One egregious example was in Jasenovac, a village near the Bosnian border...
...Jasenovac Croats who fled the Serbs now have returned, and although the interior of St...
...In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Croatia begged the Austrian Empire to allow it to establish its control there...
...The American Spectator October 1995 25 - Your family's future security is at risk ifyou haven't made adequate life insurance preparations...
...The New York Times had said that Croatia "imagines" it can defeat the Serb militias, but that this "ignores the virtual certainty that the Serbian Government in Belgrade would respond by sending its own powerful military and Bosnian Serb forces into battle...
...been barbarous...
...But Balkan wars have a logic of their own, and the voices of old ghosts call out as distinctly as those of modern diplomats...
...Six people had died then and some 200 were injured, and eventually an international tribunal indicted the Krajina Serb leader, Milan Martic, as a war criminal...
...One must take this very seriously...
...Shrapnel from exploding shells gouged holes in walls, tore chimneys off houses, and splintered old trees...
...If the Serbs fired missiles at Zagreb, then surely they would be aimed once again at Ban Jelacic Square...
...Vienna had permitted the Serbs to settle there in the seventeenth century after they promised to defend the region against the Ottoman Turks...
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...But it is really more a way of moving populations from one place to another, and drawing new lines on a map...
...An hour after the assault began, the United States Embassy warned American citizens that Serb counterattacks against Croatian cities were "very probable...
...The BBC interviewed the U.N...
...John was untouched...
...Croats and Serbs, as well as Bosnian Muslims, are all Slays and thus they are separated not by ethnicity but by religion...
...Knin is a transportation hub...
...protection—and left the impression they were demilitarized, free of Bosnian government forces...
...59 / MO...
...negotiator, made a final try...
...The Serbian weapon of choice was the 120-millimeter mortar...
...It is no coincidence," Glenny noted, that the most savage fighting between Tito's Communist Partisans and Croatia's fascist Ustashas took place in Krajina...
...But it must also be pointed out that most judgments about the Balkans are suspect, and that propaganda is used by all sides...
...I n urban Zagreb, however, war, or the threat of war, has a different face...
...It might also spill over from Krajina...
...On the sweltering Sunday before the army reservists were mobilized, the cathedral had been filled for the popular 11:30 mass...
...In fact, the word had been passed among American expatriates to stay away from Ban Jelacic Square even before the Embassy warning...
...The square has two large open-air cafes on one side, and trolley tracks on the other, and except for a shabby glass and metal high-rise in one corner, it is bounded by substantial gingerbread buildings in gray, yellow, and beige that recall Zagreb's old ties to Vienna...
...The Gothic cathedral that replaced the church once razed by the Turks is only steps away...
...The idea that any diplomatic niceties were being observed in Knin, he said, was "crap...
...By virtually everyone's reckoning they have committed more and greater atrocities than anyone else in the war...
...But then a girl, 17 or 18, say, with punk-dyed red hair, ran out almost to the center of the square, pulled off her black T-shirt, arched her back, and pointed her breasts at the sky, perhaps as a gesture of defiance, or perhaps just for the hell of it...
...All sides, including the Bosnian Muslims, were equipped with weapons that had been left behind in East Germany by the decamping Soviet army, and eventually smuggled into the Balkans from Ukraine...
...No one, though, ventured into the square...
...M eanwhile, press coverage of Bosnia in the United States focused on the so-called safe areas—the cities under U.N...
...Occasionally a male face would peer out from behind the trolleys...
...Villagers genuflect before it and pray...
...Croatia's dawn assault that Friday, employing more than 100,000 troops, was aimed at the entire Krajina region...
...Croatia was conducting the largest military operation in Europe since World War II, but few outward signs were apparent, and the cathedral seemed to be the only place where the war had visibly intruded...
...The embargo never really existed...
...chief of staff in Knin by phone...
...This would betray the Bosnian Muslims, Croatia's sometime allies, but it would keep the Balkan future consistent with its past...
...Croatian identity is inseparable from the Catholic faith, much as Serbian identity is inseparable from the Orthodox faith...
...You can...
...It links Zagreb, among other places, to the Dalmatian beaches of Croatia so favored by German tourists...
...The Orthodox Serbs had destroyed Catholic Croat churches...
...Krajina, or Sector North and Sector South as it was called on U.N...
...Carl Bildt, representing the European Union, was holding talks in Geneva...
...He was right, of course...
...All traffic stopped...
...Ethnic cleansing is an attempt to end centuries-old unfinished business...
...The U.N...
...200,000 deaths would have meant almost 200 deaths each day in the first three years of the war, and the fighting seldom reached that intensity...
...Progress was announced...
...Women alone or in twos and threes knelt in pews all day to pray for their men in the army...
...The day after that, reporters who were allowed into Knin found that the hospital had not been shelled, and that the artillery fire did not appear to have been indiscriminate...
...He said no one seemed to have seen any missile damage...
...Three months before, when Croatia had recaptured the area known as Western Slavonia, vengeful Serbs had fired a dozen missiles with cluster-bomb warheads into Ban Jelacic Square, the center of the city...
...When the sirens sounded, Ban Jelacic Square emptied out...
...In late 1992, Haris Silajdzic, then Bosnia's foreign minister, and later its prime minister, claimed that the Bosnian side had suffered 128,444 deaths, a number he apparently arrived at by adding together the 17,466 confirmed dead and the 111,000 who were reported missing...
...Krajina was part of the border between Islam and Christendom...
...Reminders of war abound, too...
...The only certainty was that brute force had settled an issue that the New World Order and all its diplomatic and mediative appurtenances had been unable to resolve for four years...
...said Knin was being subjected to "indiscriminate" artillery fire, and that shells had landed on the hospital and in residential areas...
...Fans of the New World Order may extol multi-ethnic democracy, but in the Balkans the idea collapses...
...The embargo was controlled by Croatia...
...The Serbs were fleeing the Croatian army...
...Krajina is a hoary boneyard, its ownership long in dispute...
...Russians worked with the Serbs...
...The nearby Orthodox Church of St...
...Buses came in from the country, and people stood in the aisles...
...The secessionist Krajina Serbs had said they would retaliate against any attack by firing missiles at Zagreb, and Zagreb had to take heed...
...If your son or daughter asked you this question, would you have the right answer...
...You're not getting any younger, and every year you delay the more expensive coverage becomes...
...Congress was wrong when it argued about whether lifting the embargo on Bosnia would lead to a wider war...
...Croatians knew they were at war even though their radio and television stations had broadcast entertainment programs throughout the day...
...Neighbor had turned on neighbor, and it is unlikely Western Slavonia will ever show the semblance of harmony again...
...Croatia had barred outside observers...
...What, if anything, had happened...
...If the Muslims found themselves without a land of their own, they would be inspired to start a new civil war...
...24 The American Spectator October 1995 / t was to be expected, therefore, that this new battle would be protracted...
...No one would admit it, but it appeared that Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman had made a deal: Serbia would not interfere in Krajina if Croatia would agree to one day partitioning Bosnia between them...
...But a U.N...
...Nicholas was mined, the roof set on fire, and the interior gutted...
...0 ne thing, however, was always certain: that Croatia would attack Krajina...
...Customers and waiters at the two cafes took shelter, leaving unfinished cups of coffee and bottles of mineral water behind them...
...it was also the violent fissure between Orthodox and Roman Catholic Slays, and Eastern and Western mentalities...
...The steeple in the sixteenth-century Church of St...
...War and more war," a man said at the cathedral...
...maps, is a sickle-shaped swath that begins some twenty-five miles from Zagreb and curves down to Knin...
...Nonetheless, the figure does not stand scrutiny...
...Attacks by the Serbs, often seen on CNN, seemed to be only wanton attacks on unarmed civilians...
...peacekeepers in Knin as human shields, and that at least one peacekeeper had died...
...CIA and State Department analysts, though hesitant to arrive at a final figure, estimated the death toll in the tens of thousands...
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...Krajina was ethnically cleansed...
...Only occasionally could a voice of undeniable authenticity be heard...
...most coveted by the Croatian army...
...Since then that figure has been cited repeatedly by columnists and human rights bureaucrats as proof of genocide...
...The artillery woke me up, but I realized it was ours and not the Serbs, and went back to sleep," said a man who had been in Novska, and then driven into Zagreb...
...Certainly the Serbs haveCroatia, was negotiating in Belgrade...
...Croatian spokesmen said the artillery fire was not indiscriminate, and that the peacekeeper died after the Serbs had tied him to a tank...
...Everything to the west of the line belonged to Croatia, while everything to the east belonged to Serbia...
...Long minutes passed...
...But what was happening in Krajina was blurred...
...No one wants to be a member of a minority that must live in the midst of a majority, and the single greatest misconception about the nightmare in the former Yugoslavia is the one about "ethnic cleansing...
...Croatian police, meanwhile, sit on a bench outside St...
...John to prevent the villagers from making reprisals...
...On the other side of the square a row of trolleys stood with all their doors flung open...
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...The American Spectator October 1995 23 Shipments for the Bosnians passed through Croatia...
...She was old enough to have lived through World War II, and air-raid sirens may no longer have frightened her...
...Croatian television was still showing light entertainment, including the birthday party for Britain's Queen Mum, and the best source of news, if you could get it, was the BBC World Service...
...Nicholas is still gutted, a cross stands on an altar...
...After the Serbs seized Knin in 1991 and proclaimed it the capital of the Republic of Krajina, tourism began to expire, along with a large part of the Croatian economy...
...It also said that Croats had used U.N...
...Western Slavonia, however, was only a limited military operation...
...passengers made their way to underground shelters...
...It is seen only as an expression of old hatreds...
...ambassador to After the Serbs seized Knin in 1991 and proclaimed it the capital of the Republic of Krajina, tourism began to expire, along with a large part of the Croatian economy...
...Much of the war is not what it appears to be, and certainly some of it is hidden...
...Undeterred by this and other stem warnings, however, Croatia began its dawn bombardment...
...The equestrian statue of Ban Jelacic in front of the two cafes commemorates a Croatian John Corry, our Presswatch columnist, is the author of My Times: Adventures in the News Trade (Grosset/G.P...
...Vienna usually said no...
...The Croatian government, it reported, said that a missile had landed in a Zagreb suburb...
...Air-raid sirens sounded in Zagreb at 6:40 that night...
...The doors of blue and yellow trolleys flew open...
...Random murders took place in Serb detention camps, but there was no evidence of systematic and sustained killing...
...Britain, France, and Russia immediately protested, while in Zagreb, Yasushi Akashi, the hapless U.N...
...Why wait to do it...
...It preferred to run Krajina, which, in Serbo-Croatian, means frontier or border, as a military colony...
...An old blood feud would be reawakened, and then sustained by the weapons of modem war...
...The sirens sounded again twice in the next hour, but eventually came the all-clear...
...Reporters in Zagreb attended U.N...
...At the same time, Croatia admitted that Danish peacekeepers had been forced to serve as human shields...
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...briefings at the airport and government briefings at the Intercontinental Hotel...
...Much of the war is not what it appears to be, and certainly some of it is hidden...
...This may be a poor reason for war, but when buttressed by old enmities it becomes almost plausible...
...Bosnia was divided with a line from north to south...
...He said he was "seriously concerned about a further escalation of the conflict," and called for more "peaceful dialogue...
...But the scars are all in the Croat parts of the towns and villages, while the Serb areas appear untouched...
...In London, Paddy Ashdown, the leader of Britain's Liberal Democratic Party, produced a map of what Bosnia would look like in ten years...
...History lives, and ancient passions abide...
...In the cathedral, meanwhile, mass was just ending...
...Other scars of a low-intensity, but nasty and quite intimate war are everywhere still fresh...
...When the assault began, Knin was the prize It is hard to think of a war being waged to allow Berlin office workers and their families to sun themselves, but as it happens it was a factor...
...T here was evidence of this in Western Slavonia, the patch of land in northern Croatia that was seized by rebel Serbs four years ago, and then recaptured by government forces in May...
...Moments later, an elderly woman with a shopping bag walked diagonally across the square...
...Certainly Zagreb was not surprised when the sirens began their high-pitched whining...
...They are fighting a medieval war...
...Stone walls around its base show the ravages of a sixteenth-century invasion...
...The mass was unadorned by either organ or choir, but Croatian Catholicism is marked by its austere piety, and the intensity of feeling was apparent...
...by John Cony Zagreb C roatia went to war at dawn on a Friday...
...German newspapers reported that the Croats levied a kind of surcharge, keeping 40 percent of the shipments for themselves...
...Then, in mid-1993, the Bosnian deputy minister of information told journalists that 200,000 had died...
...It also found that when the Serbs responded to offensives by the Bosnian army, they usually did so against military targets...
...The diplomats will talk and talk," a Foreign Ministry official told me a few weeks before the offensive, "and then it will just happen...
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...It is hard to think of a war being waged to allow Berlin office workers and their families to sun themselves, but as it happens it was a factor...
...Retired American officers, presumably with Washington's quiet approval, helped to organize the Croatian army before it moved on Krajina...
...At the same time, the great debate in Washington about whether to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia was always based on a false premise...
...The BBC correspondent, however, sounded skeptical...
...Some Embassy family members, it said, already had fled Zagreb...
...report in May, largely ignored by the press, found that the Bosnian government was maintaining "a substantial number of troops" in Srebrenica, Gorazde, and Zepa, and that Sarajevo was the home of the Bosnian army's central command...
...History seemed to demand it...
...On the eve of the attack, Peter Galbraith, the U.S...
...Putnam's Sons...
Vol. 28 • October 1995 • No. 10
