The Croat tragedy
YUGOSLAVIA needed, including: a struggle against the fascistic armed bands; incorporation of all the militias into the army; and the nomination of professional officers (deserters from the Yugoslav army) into command posts.
The Belgrade regime clearly understands the new situation. After energeti-
THE UNITED NATIONS resolved on November 26 to send a peace-keeping force to the front line in the conflict in Yugoslavia.
Meanwhile, despite a new ceasefire (the fourteenth), fighting was continuing. Horrific massacres have taken place; in the recently captured Croatian town of Vukovar the Serb nationalist Chetnik militia is reported to have embarked on a systematic policy of terror aimed at driving out the town's Croatian population.
Croatia's president Tudjman has said "l am being criticized by public opinion, by ordinary people, for continuing to negotiate with
Europe and the United States while the war continues." (Le Monde,
November 27, 1991).
The following article was written just after the fall of Vukovar. It appeared in the November 21 issue of the French Trotskyist weekly Rouge.
ALEXANDRE LATINOVIC
NE HUNDRED and twenty days of war in Croatia have wrought an impressive amount of destruction. Some 40% of heavy equipment, roads, bridges, railways, rail stations and ports have been destroyed by the
Yugoslav Federal
Army's onslaught. The country's biggest refinery and its only oil pipeline have stopped working. The plain of Slavonia,
Croatia's bread basket, had been devastated before the harvest. Industrial and agricultural production has fallen by 60% compared to last year.
Ten thousand people have been killed and as many wounded in four months, while 600,000 refugees are trapped in the cities and on the Adriatic Coast.
Many
Serbian believe in their "mission to defend the
Serb people threatened by the Croat fascists" and show little enthusiasm for the fight. There have been massive desertions and widespread refusal to follow orders in
Montenegro and Serbia itself. As a result, every advance by ex-federal troops has been prepared by massive and murderous bombardments by the airforce and heavy artillery which leave few survivors.
Croat villages and towns that resist have been systematically and methodically destroyed in order to stop the inhabitants from returning after the fighting. The fall of Vukovar has discouraged the Croat population, since it had become a symbol of resistance to the invader.
The Croatian "government of national unity" is coming under attack from the
Party of Law (a far right party, represented in parliament, but not included in the govemment coalition). They accuse President
Franjo Tudjman of lack of resolve in the struggle with the Serb enemy and also with collusion with reform Communists, to whom he gave several ministerial posts three months ago.
However, despite the terrible economic crisis and the lack of political support from the Western countries, the ruling coalition of moderate nationalists, liberals, social democrats and reform Communists has taken political and military initiatives with the aim of strengthening the country's defences. At the start of the war there was a flagrant lack of preparation, along with puerile triumphalism and nationalism, a desire to privatize the economy and to break with the still living symbolism of the anti-fascist struggle of the last war. This has now given way to generalized mobilization.
### Army abandons Istria
The army abandoned most of its barracks in Istria, a region of Croatia to the north of the Adriatic, where the workers' movement has a strong tradition and the Croat Communist Party remains the majority force, without a battle. The entry three months ago of representatives of the CCP into the government led to the desertion of a significant number of officers and upper cadres of the former federal army.
This led to a re-organization of the Croat defences and an increase in their capacities. Today, the Croat national guard has become a real army. Its weak point remains the lack of arms, since the Western applied to Croatia. However heavy arms and tanks are each day captured from the enemy.
In order to promote the mobilization of Croat society, including the working class, and unleash the country's defensive abilities, a series of measures are cally refusing to allow foreign observers, the Stalino-nationalist regime is now demanding United Nations troops along the line of confrontation. The Serb bureaucracy is no longer invoking the preservation of a united Yugoslavia as the justification for the attack on Croatia; it is now calling openly for a change in Croatia's frontiers to Serbia's benefit "in order to guarantee the security of the Serb people" (according to president Milosevic, Radio Belgrade, November 18, 1991).
Radio Belgrade also announced on Monday November 18 the "creation of settlement zones on the occupied Croat territories" to the north of Vukovar. This announcement came at the press conference which followed a meeting between Milosevic and the UN special envoy Cyr us Vance, judged "mutually satisfactory", which dealt with the issue of the deployment of UN troops on the existing front line. Translated from diplomatic language this means that the USA is ready to underwrite the new Serb frontiers and accept the cutting off of Croatian territory.
The Kouchner mission
The presence at the same time of the French Kouchner mission in Dubrovnik and its declaration that France "has not chosen between the two sides" (despite using some strong language about the Serb onslaught on Dubrovnik) bears witness to the lack of a clear line among the West European powers.
The Americans are ready to support the militarist and expansionist regime in Belgrade, which they consider sufficiently strong to act as the regional gendarme and guarantee long-term Western interests in the region (the Yugoslav debt has reached
In order to make this unexpected ally more presentable, the Washington Post, in an article devoted to the Vance mission, put an equals sign between the Serb and Croat governments, explaining to its readers that while the Belgrade regime is dictatorial, there are also Communists in the government in Zagreb.
The failure of the Hague conference Serbia having refused to guarantee the civil and national rights of its own minorities (including the two million Kosovo Albanians) at the same time as demanding Serb-populated territories in other republics - has shown that the European Community is unable to play an independent role. The EEC will now return to the role of humanitarian observer, while the Americans, under the guise of the UN, draw the new frontiers. *
----- photo credits and running heads -----
3
Antiwar rebellion
9861} 36 in Vojvodina
ANY just solution to the Yugoslav crisis depends on the development of a democratic movement inside Serbia opposing the expansionist policies of the Republic's president, Slobodan Milosevic.