1939 revisited
The bitter fruits of 'Realpolitik'
The "international community', as it is called, must now face the impasse of its policy of 'Realpolitik'. The Vance-Owen plan essentially adheres to the logic of territorial dismemberment in Bosnia-Herzegovina along ethnic lines. It ratifies the
International Viewpoint #246 June 1993
THE first Yugosalvia collapsed in 1941, two years after the de facto partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina between the Croats and the Serbs. The second Yugoslavia officially ceased to exist in January 1992
From this point of view, the Vance-Owen plan is a 'Serbo-Croat' plan, as descri-
(with the recognition of Croatia bed by Philippe Koulisher. Organiser of a Geneva association in defence of Bosand Slovenia), one year after the nians (Mirna Bosna, a Bosnian expression of peace and friendship), he has first Serbo-Croat discussions about amassed evidence on the consequences of ethnic cleansing, based on numerous investigations in the region. And the ethnic cleansing is far from over.
the partition of Bosnia-
On the Croatian side, on July 3, 1992 Mate Boban proclaimed the "Croatian
Herzegovina.
Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina", called Herceg-Bosna, with its own flag, its own militias (the HVO, subordinate to Franco Tudjman's party), its own currency -
PHILIPPE KOULISHER * and attached to Croatia. It includes towns with a Muslim majority. For months now, it has refused to take in Muslim refugees and blocked arms destined for
Sarajevo - in keeping with the logic of dismemberment.
On the Serb side, the territories have not yet been united and attached to Serbia
HO remembers? In
- unlike Herceg-Bosna. However, they have been 'cleansed' of their most recal-
W citrant elements. The Serb 'referendum' displayed the determination of that part
March 1991, when of the Bosnia-Herzegovina population to join Serbia - in a climate of war where the war with Sloveneighbours are set against one another through the invocation of the memory of nia (in June) was past violence, the result was a foregone conclusion.
still far off and
Like Philippe Koulisher, Tihomir Loza, a journalist at the Sarajevo-based newspawhen the representatives of the six republics were pretending to look for a new agreeper Oslobodjenje, sees in the Vance-Owen plan a replica of the 1939 agreement ment, under the pressure of a more and more on territorial division agreed by the Serbian government and Croat nationalists.
intransigent Serbia, Messrs Milosevic and
But as he points out, "unlike 1939, the Muslims cannot be ignored". And this
Tudjman met for the first time as virtual explains the ambiguities of the Vance-Owen plan, which perpetuated the myth of
"heads of state", somewhere in Vojvodina, in provinces where one ethnic group 'predominated' (as opposed to homogeneous an old hunting lodge belonging to Marshall provinces), within a single state of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Tito at Karadjordjevo.
But if we accept the idea that territorial separation provides protection, and that it
This meeting, held in secret, was only is no longer possible to live together, inevitably three 'ethnic states' will be built for those who wanted it to remain so. In fact
— more specifically, a greater Serbia, a greater Croatia and a Muslim 'reserve', the Serb and Croat Presidents hit upon the bound together on a small territory, with every reason to become fundamentalist key problem in the disintegration of Yugoslavia, which each of them knew was abso-
The only alternative is the demilitarisation of Herceg-Bosna and Karadzic's selflutely inevitable: the geo political status of proclaimed Serbian republic - within the framework of a new union with Serbia
Bosnia. In Zagreb, as in Belgrade, everyone and Croatia. This would allow the Bosnian provinces to remain multi-ethnic and knew that war would break out between Serthe UN troops to withdraw. - Catherine Samary * bia and Croatia. Milosevic played at being the one "who could hold back the humiliated
Serbian people" and the federal army, whilst
Tudjman, an old military man, understood that he could obtain independence only at the cost of a defensive war against Serbia, the only way to disengage from the Yugoslav yoke.
But these important considerations mean little to the two politicians. Pencils in hand, a map on the table, they draw and redraw the frontiers and dividing lines along the Drina, the Sava, the Neretva, the Bosna.
The big question is still: who will have the right to what in the future Bosnia-Herzegovina (a sovereign member of the United
Nations)? Concretly, little is known about
30 in nature. the steps suggested at the time. But the essential point remains: the two leaders of the most powerful federal republics are, from that moment, agreed on three basic
• Bosnia-Herzegovina will be divided up between Serbs and Croats.
• There will never be a really independent Bosnia, in the same way as as there will never be an "Islamic State' in Europe.
• Bosnia will serve as a bargaining counter when it becomes necessary to regulate Serbo-Croat differences, which are
Free with his declarations because he has a better image, Franco Tudjman never misses an opportunity to recall, in an explicit or implicit way, these grand ideas. On August 17, 1992, he affirmed in Time Magazine that the most serious danger driving the Yugoslav crisis is that of seeing the creation of an Islamic Republic' in Bosnia.
He argued that the only way to prevent that is to leave only a small nucleus of territory to the Muslims. On 16 December, 1992, during a press conference in Chicago, he took an even harder line: "I don't believe the West
* This article first appeared in the Swiss publication Mirna Bosna, no. 2, March 1993. Some alterations to the original have been made by the author himself for publication in International Viewpoint.
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EX-YUGOSLAVIA L conduct of the warlords.
International Viewpoint #246 June 1993 would tolerate the idea of an Islamic state in Bosnia".
Meanwhile common projects took shape. In December 1991, in Graz, the servants of Tudjman and Milosevic, Messrs Boban and Karadvic met and worked out the details of the division: at the time, the Serbian aggression in Croatia was about to come to an end, Vukovar had fallen, a third of the republic was occupied. More than ever Bosnia became an indispensable basis for negotiations to resolve Serbo-Croatian problems.
This was confirmed by a further meeting in May 1992 which was preceded by an accord, signed (again at Graz) on 27 April by Karadzic and Boban, concerning the main lines of demarcation. While the war was raging in the condemned republic, the secret policies of the two leaders bore fruit in the summer, when discussions began at the Peace Conference and there was no longer any doubt that Bosnia-Herzegovina would never arise again.
On September 30, in Geneva, Tudjman and "Yugoslav' President Cosic, came to an agreement denouncing 'ethnic cleansing', but, more importantly, on the return to Croatia of the military peninsular of Prevlaka, to the south of Dubrovnik.
A few days later the town of Jace, defended by the Muslims, fell like a ripe fruit into the "Serbian Republic of BosniaHerzegovina'; a series of unexpected events prevented Croatian forces from coming to the aid of the besieged town and replenishing the Bosnian Army with munitions. Curiously, neither Serbs nor Croats saw anything inconvenient when, in January, the Vance-Owen plan included Jacje in the Croatian zone.
This was not, moreover, a new scenario; in September the town of Bosanski Brod saw, in an identical manner, a division of the para-military HVO (Bosnian Croatian forces) leave the area at the decisive moment and literally allow the town to fall into Serbian hands. This division, the Handzar-Divizija, was just a replica of the infamous SS division of the same name which had been created by the Germans with the help of the Ustashe. A model 'quisling' division the Handzar-Divizija led by the execrable Ekrem Mandal simply returned to Croatia, where it whiles away its days peacefully.
By the purest of coincidences, Mandal is an honourary President of the Democratic Muslim Party of Croatia, whose strident appeals to the Bosnian Muslims are echoes of those of the HDZ (Tudjman's party). 'Muslims! It is a lie to say that if you declare yourselves Croats you will lose your faith. Return to reason!", declared its President Mirsad Birksic during the Croat-Muslim conflicts in January 1993 (Domoniva, Janua31 ry 1993). Bosanski Brod will also return to the Croatian zone under the Vance-Owen plan.
The whole of the north/north east region of Bosnia (called Posavina) will also return to Croatia even though, in spring 1992, Serbian forces carried out terrible massacres in the concentration camps Brcko (4-7,000 deaths) and Bosanski Samac - some of whom were Croats. These Croats were deliberately sacrificed for the policies of ethnic division promoted by Tudjman and Milosevic, along with others in the districts of Prijedor, Sanski Most, Doboj and Bosanska
The intentions of these two map-drawers are clear: each designated zone must be as ethnically homogeneous as possible. If necessary, Croatia and Serbia are determined to 'release' populations to the enemy, whether it is a reciprocal arrangement involving Serbs and Croats or the Muslims. (The Serbs have allowed several zones in the "frontier' regions of Tuzia, Konjic and Bihac to fall, even though this was by no means an inevitable outcome.)
Whatever, as War Report (Auckland St., London) asserted in January, "There is hardly any doubt that Posavina was the object of special negotiations between Serbs and Croats".
Moreover, particular negotiations have taken place behind the backs of the Muslims on the thorny question of the Sarajevo region. According to the same publication (November/December 1992), "fighting between Croats and Serbs have been noticeably absent from the region of Kiseljak and Hadzici, and particularly in the out-posts of Sarajevo where the Muslims were expecting the
Croats to continue their attack on the capital. But the Croats stopped, even establishing customs relations with the Serbs, whilst Croat-Muslim conflicts increased in tension".
For the dynamic set in train by the project of Serbian-Croatian ethnic partition has been inexorably continued since the rapprochement of September 1992. The schema is, nevertheless, clear: every new resolution of a Serbo-Croatian conflict implies a new defeat for the Muslims. This was so in January 1993 when Croatia recovered a new peace of its territory occupied by the Serbs during the 'Operation Maslencia'.
Carried out with the full agreement of Belgrade, this Croatian reconquest took place at the very moment when Serbian pressure was greatly reduced to the north of Tavnik (keystone of the 'unified' CroatMuslim defence) which allowed units of the HVO to carry out 'cleansing' (primarily military, but also civilian) in the regions of Gornji Vakuf, Bugejno and Prozor with their overwhelmingly Muslim population. These are all regions which are to be returned to Croatia under the Vance-Owen plan which, as we know, leaves 26% of Bosnian territory to its more than 45% Muslims.
In 1939, the Macek-Cvetkovic accord anticipated the participation of Bosnia through the means of its division into three banovina ('principalities'), of which two would be returned to Serbia and the third would fuse with the rest of the Croat lands.
It is astonishing and revealing to compare this partition with that proposed in January 1993.
Clearly, the Croation provinces of 1993 recoup exactly the banovina of 1939. There is no doubt that the terms of the accords between Serbs and Croats, especially the April 1992 'pact', envisaged the restoration of the system created 50 years earlier. Certainly, for the Serbian side, the Vance-Owen plan does not does not completely return the two banovina of the first Yugoslavia; but it is the weight of accomplished fact which remains determinant.
For half the zones ascribed to the Muslims they currently find themselves under Serbian control and it is highly improbable that Karadzic would agree to their return, especially if one bears in mind the events of February/March 1993 in the east of the republic when the Serbs — with the help, voluntary or not, of the UN forces and the American parachute drops - proceeded with new 'cleansing' of the Bosnian pockets of resistance (Cerska and Srebenica especially).
It is glaringly obvious that, with the exception of the residual Muslim zone in the centre and around the city of Sarajevo, the map hardly differs from that of 1939. The only striking differences concern the restitu-
International Viewpoint #246 June 1993 tion to Croatia of Posavina and the region to the north of Travnik.
It is important to remember that all the confrontations between Croats and Muslims have taken place in the regions that are to be returned to Croatia under the Geneva plan (Prozor, Travnik, Vietz, Busovaca, Jablincia, Konjic) in which the Muslims are the most numerous, and that the administrative centre of province No. 10 is supposed to be the town of Gornji Vakuf, where the conflict between the HVO and the Bosnian army has been the most violent.
It is not a question of implicating the Croats, whatever the effects of their Realpolitik. It remains the case that the extermination/deportation of the Muslims has, up till now, been the preserve of the Serbians, with one or two exceptions (Prozor, Novi Travnik and Mostar).
It is merely a question of being aware that the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina has been implicit in the relations between the two neighbouring republics for more than two years, in any case, (and no doubt for longer) and that it is simply a replica of what happened previously with the collapse of the first Yugoslavia. One can even ask to what extent the Tudjman-Milosevic accord, ratified by the meeting of Boban-Karadvic in April 1992, had been anticipated for a long time, down to the smallest details, always with the aim of leaving the Muslims the smallest possible part of Bosnia, making every zone as ethnically homogeneous as possible and preventing any Bosnian attempt to create a sovereign state, whether Islamic or not. We just have to look at other maps, those of the 'UNPA' zones or under the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) mandate in Croatia, which have recovered, as we know, exactly the Serbian annexations of 1991. The merest glance convinces us of a significant fact: above everything else these zones totally isolate Bosnia from Croatia on more than half of their common borders.
What is most striking is that one sees that the western border is entirely in the hands of the Serbs or/and under the control of the UN as far as the town of Drnis (and
SREBRENICA S
TWINNED WITH
GUERNICA even further since the UNPROFOR is stationed to the south of this town covering over 20 kilometeres of what is called a 'pink zone'. Now it is exactly at the point where this ends that, on the Bosnian side, Croatian Herzegovina begins (a little to the south of Kupres) which skirts the border down to Nevesinje, where Serbian Herzegovina begins. In other terms, along more than 500 km of common borders the Muslims directly control less than 100 km along the Sava in the north. Now, as we have seen, the Sava region (Posavina) must be returned to the Croats and the fighting there makes passing from one republic to another extremely risky. We have to bear this in mind to understand two important elements:
• The destruction of the bridge between Bosanski Brod and Slavonski Brod in Summer 1992, which prevented the exit of refugees to Croatia, except by boat;
• The theoretical closing of the Croatian frontiers to Bosnian refugees on 13 July, 1992, at the very moment (3 July) of the proclamation of the 'State of Herceg-Bosna' by
In this way the isolation of the peripheral zones of Bosnia (under Croat or Serb control) has been almost total since the end of the summer of 1992; the central zone can no longer really be supplied with arms and it will be the Croats and Serbs who will be in possession (at Split, Gornji Vakuf, Kiseljak, Zvornik) of the key humanitarian corridors. Around Sarajevo itself, it is also the forces of the HVO (to the south of Visoko and at Stupe) or the Chetniks (at Ilidza and Pale) who control entry to and exit from the capital. As for the airport, again in July, it has been under international control with the establishment of the "air bridge".
We should also recall that since December 1992, the Croats (military and civilian) have an unrestricted right to cross the Serbian positions at Ilidza whilst the Muslims can only try to beat an unrealistic path through the zone of Dobrinja, the focus of the 'sniper alley' which leads to the airport where UNPROFOR, in theory, prevents all traffic towards Butmir held by the Bosnians.
During spring 1993, the dynamic of the tacit Serbo-Croat accords made itself clearer, even more urgent, and with a new dimension: that of the impeccable timing between the actions of the Chetniks in the east and those of the HVO in the west.
Thus whilst all the media controversy revolved around Srebenica and its 'cleansing facilitated by the UNPROFOR, Croat forces carried out new operations in the districts of Prozor and Jablancia, forcing over 3,000 people to flee and causing murderous outrages (nearly 300 victims on the Bosnian
Whilst the deportation of Muslims from Srebenica was in full swing (with, among other catastrophes, the death during the journey of more than 20 people 'forgotten by' or "fallen from' the UN vehicles, the HVO even tried a particularly audacious coup at the end of April: the bombardment, after Vitez, of the town of Zenica, up till then a sanctuary for the Muslim forces.
At the beginning of May, with Srebenica fallen, the Serbs continued their offensive and "cleansed' Zepa, the third enclave in the east (after Cerska and Srebenica) to fall, with the total indifference of the UN 'observers' and the Security Council. The very same day the HVO launched a mass offensive against the city of Moslar, causing hundreds of Muslims to flee from their burning houses and then interning a thousand or so men of combat age in the municipal stadium (a method used by the Serbs at Zvornik, Bratunac, Bosanski Novi exactly a year earlier).
In future the Muslims will have to constantly face both ways and when they try to force a breach to the east they will automatically find themselves taken by surprise
Thus the margin for manoeuvre by the Bosnians is minimal: decimated by the Serbs, 'cleansed' from the Croat side, they were, however, forced to sign agreements on co-operation with the HVO and accept the plan proposed at Geneva. In effect the Croats hold all the trump cards: 275,000 muslim refugees in Croatia and 50,000 in Herzegovina are real hostages that Izetbegovic cannot afford to abandon. The Serbs, for their part, in closer collaboration with the international community, have, for the future, total latitude to make use of their best weapon: time.
And we should remember that it is in the best interests of everyone (that is the Croats, Serbs and the West) that Bosnia disappears as a sovereign state and that the minimum possible number of Muslims remain within the project of ethnic dismemberment defined at Geneva and which continues to be called the Vance-Owen plan even though it is purely and simply the plan of Tudjman-Milosevic, which is itself a slightly revised and corrected version of the Cvetkovic-Macek plan
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