CROATIA BETWEEN AGGRESSION AND PEACE

Authors: Zvonimir Baletic, Josip Esterajher, Milan
Jajcinovic, Mladen Klemencic, Andjelko Milardovic, Gorazd
Nikic, Fran Visnar
Editor: Dr. Gorazd Nikic
Translator: W.E. Yuill

Published by: AGM, Zagreb 1994

C O N T E N T S

1. Introduction
2. The Break-Up of Yugoslavia
3. Were Croatia (and Slovenia) guilty of secession?
4. Frontier and territorial issues
5. The War Against Croatia
6. UNPROFOR in Croatia
7. A Proposal for the Implementation of the Vance Plan on the Territory of Croatia under the Protection of the United Nations (UNPA)

THE WAR AGAINST CROATIA

The Intelligence War

The war in Croatia had two phases: the first phase was characterised by intensive intelligence and counter- intelligence operations on the part of the Yugoslav National Army; the second phase involved the open armed attack on Croatia.

Already in the summer of 1990 Croatia was faced by an unseen but formidable enemy - the intelligence services of the Army, of which the most notorious was the counter- intelligence service, known as KOS for short. In addition to the military police and the military security service involved in purely counter-intelligence operations in the barracks of every military district and the larger garrisons throughout the country, there were counter-intelligence groups - KOG - also made up of intelligence experts who had set up a dense intelligence network.

Specially trained staff, officers and NCO's of the KOGs operated under counter-intelligence rules, exclusively in civilian clothes; they possessed the most up-to-date equipment for monitoring and tapping communications and for undercover surveillance and represented an elite within the military security hierarchy. They were the "untouchables" operating in strict secrecy, even in their contacts with their own army. All their reports went to the relevant department in Belgrade, and the commandant of the Zagreb military district found on his desk only crumbs of information, censored surveys, or generalised impressions of secret KOG operations in Croatia. The KOG's principle function was supposed to counter foreign intelligence services, but they were in fact more concerned with the observation and investigation of the "enemy within". Thus two parallel and independent intelligence systems existed, connected above all to the civilian political department of the police, then called the State Security Service (formerly known as UDBA). These arrangements were introduced after 1966 and maintained in Croatia until the collapse of the ruling League of Communists which neither controlled the KOG's nor knew anything of their activities, even in the broadest outline. In various "critical" periods at the end of the 1960s, in the 1970s and on into the 1980s, the Army in Croatia skilfully manipulated a vast amount of independently compiled material by which it demonstrated to the Communist party and the police that it was "always one step ahead" and was hence the central intelligence agency when it came to protecting the existing order. When a change of government came in the spring of 1990, the KOGs were already prepared. Making various forecasts in February 1990 as to the likely results of the elections counter- intelligence officers estimated that in March 1990 the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) was likely to gain up to 50% of the votes in an election, most of them in the Zagreb area. That was enough to prompt secret action (largely without the knowledge of the Croatian authorities), in which weapons were removed from the arsenals of the Croatian territorial defence forces (about 257 - 260,000 items of small arms and artillery). The official Party forecast was that the League of Communists along with Racan's reformist wing would share power with what was then a coalition of "national understanding", with the HDZ gaining at most one third of the votes. Franjo Tudman (leader of the HDZ and later president of the Republic) might be given one of the less senior ministerial posts (education or tourism, perhaps technology and science).

The actual outcome of the election was a severe blow to the Communist regime. It lost power overnight, and the Yugoslav National Army failed to go into action at once. In August 1990, when the well planned "barricade revolution" was implemented by a section of the Serbian population, and the military flight controllers in Bihac turned back Croatian police helicopters on their way to restore order in Knin, the general staff in Belgrade felt it had sufficient pretext to begin planning full-scale armed intervention. But then something happened which greatly surprised the professional officer corps of the Yugoslav National Army: Martin Spegelj, a retired majorgeneral and erstwhile commander of the Fifth Military District in Zagreb and popular in the Army, became Minister of Defence in the new Croatian government. As former commander of the Fifth Military District, Spegelj was extremely well informed and was able to reorganise the Croatian police and security apparatus, and convert it into a purely military force.

Federal military agents kept a close check on the conversations of the leading Croatian ministers and their confidential advisers, tapping and recording them wherever possible. The Army analysts soon realised that, if it came to confrontation with the Yugoslav National Army, then Croatia was determined to take drastic action - ranging from a total blockade of all barracks and other military facilities to surveillance of apartments and houses occupied by senior officers in the Fifth Military District. In order to do this, Zagreb decided to upgrade the armament of its police force.

Open Aggression

In June 1991 the Yugoslav National Army decided finally to "pacify" Croatia. It committed huge forces to this operation. When the all-out war against Croatia began in July 1991, the Army had at its disposal 19,029 artillery pieces of various kinds - 1,799 anti-tank guns, 4,200 recoilless rifles, 6,400 mortars. The heavy artillery comprised 1,934 guns, there were 250 self-propelled guns, 4,286 anti-aircraft guns and 160 multiple rocket launchers. Croatia was faced with what was literally the second strongest artillery force in Europe and beyond.

The attack on Croatia was carried out by a total of l00,000 officers, other ranks and members of paramilitary formations, 1,600 tanks, 1,150 armoured troop carriers, 489 war planes and 165 helicopter gunships; the Croatian coast was blockaded by 200 warships of 39 various types. Through combined attacks with artillery and aircraft the Army began systematically to destroy 45% of Croatia, 95% of their targets being civilian buildings and installations. Although the Yugoslav National Army ruthlessly and systematically destroyed those areas and installations it had earmarked as its prime targets, it did not succeed in destroying or disarming what it had gone to war to destroy - the 20,000 members of the Croatian police force and National Guard. On the contrary, within only 100 days and under constant enemy fire, a Croatian army had been created, which by November 1991 had increased to 10 times its original size. By the beginning of 1992, 220,000 men and women were fighting in the Croatian armed forces and expending up to 5 million rounds of ammunition a day in fierce battles with the enemy.

Not counting their forces stationed in Bosnia and eastern Herzegovina, at the end of 1992 Serbia had at its disposal an army of 135,000 men on active service (including no less then 90,500 officers, NCOs and regular soldiers) plus 400,000 reservists (see Table 1). The Serbian forces in Bosnia operated with a further 70,000 trained soldiers, 300 tanks, 180 armoured troop carriers, 400 large calibre guns, not counting light field artillery and rocket launchers. The total strength of the Banja Luka Corps, including volunteers from Serbia, was 100,000 men, backed up by 50 combat aircraft and a squadron of helicopters stationed on the airforce base in Banja Luka. In the course of 1992 Serbia deployed its artillery over the whole territory it controlled: 3,000 artillery pieces of all calibres were stationed in Bosnia, 4,000 in Montenegro, while more than 10,000 guns were sited in Serbia itself, in Vojvodina and Kosovo. All the armament factories and arsenals were also situated on Serbian home ground. Serbia was fully prepared for a war of attrition lasting several years, in which its artillery would play a major strategic role.

Table 1. The total number of Serbian Weapons Stationed on the territory of Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina (end of 1992).*

* These data and deductions are based on recent British, American, French, German, Austrian, Italian and Swedish sources. The margin of possible error in this table amounts to +/-2%. The table quotes a scale of expenditure of reserve munitions on the assumption that hostilities occur daily.
** The presence of Russian volunteer pilots allegedly flying MIG-21 and MIG-29 fighter-bombers is deduced from intercepted radio messages in Russian between pilots of attacking aircraft.

War Damage

The attack on Croatia has had the gravest consequences, both in terms of damage to property and installations and in disruption of the lives of the population. No overall estimate of war damage can yet be made, because the destruction still continues daily.

a) Casualties

Losses in human life are irreplaceable. According to figures issued by the Information and Research Department of the Ministry of Health and the Croatian General Medical Staff, on 23 August 1993, since the start of hostilities in Croatia 6,651 persons have lost their lives and 24,028 have been wounded.

These figures refer to casualties of which we have proof, and there are grounds for fearing that the number is significantly higher, since, according to figures issued by the Croatian Red Cross, 13,700 persons are still missing. The most tragic situation is obviously that of Vukovar, where 2,642 persons are still unaccounted for. The largest number of dead and wounded was recorded in the district of eastern Slavonia, where material damage is also greatest. The scale and nature of the war is most clearly indicated by the fact that, in all the areas which fell to the attackers, the number of dead and wounded civilians is significantly greater than the number of casualties among the police and soldiers. In the course of the war a large number of children have been killed or injured: 702 children have been wounded, and 162 killed. In the course of 1993 and the two preceding years thousands of soldiers and civilians from Croatia have been detained in concentration camps in occupied areas of Croatia, but also in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. This detention, involving illtreatment, poor diet and psychological humiliation has left indelible marks on the psychological condition of these people. Many of those who suffered in the concentration camps were frail and elderly individuals, children and women.

b) Damage to property and installations

Material damage is one of the first and most obvious signs of the war in Croatia. It was not caused exclusively by fighting. Much of it was the result of the deliberate wrecking of buildings and facilities by the aggressor on territory he had already occupied. Estimates by the State Institute for Macroeconomic Studies and Forecasts and by the Ministry of Culture state that 590 towns and villages have suffered damage (with 854 communities being subjected to attack): 35 of them have been razed to the ground, and 34, including several major towns and cities, have suffered significant damage. Moreover, 323 historical sites and settlements have been destroyed or damaged. 210,000 houses destroyed or burned down, equivalent to 12% of the housing stock in Croatia.

Croatia is a tourist country, and the destruction of a significant proportion of its tourist facilities will have grave repercussions on the revival of this important branch of the economy. Estimates suggest 10% of tourist facilities having been destroyed or damaged. The economy as a whole has suffered enormous damage. About 30% of the country's industrial capacity has been put out of action by destruction or occupation. Agriculture has also suffered untold damage, ranging from the slaughter or theft of livestock to the destruction or looting of agricultural machinery. Much land has been left to deteriorate and it will require great efforts to get it back into cultivation.

A particularly difficult situation has been created through the destruction of communications, 33 bridges destroyed and 24 damaged, among them the Maslenica bridge, which is of vital importance to Dalmatia. Its destruction meant that one fifth of the total population of Croatia, who live in Dalmatia, together with their whole economy, have become dependent on a single ferry link. Damage and occupation have caused major impairment of communications, many basic links having been cut or disrupted, e.g. the railway lines Zagreb-Vinkovci (via - Okucani) and Zagreb-Split (via Knin). There is no traffic on 37% of the rail network. 92 railway engines were either stolen or put out of action, along with 475 carriages and as many as 1,445 goods wagons. Some thousands of kilometres of arterial, regional or local roads were damaged or occupied together with a number of river ports. An entire navigable reach of Europe's largest river, the Danube, was occupied. Not even the postal services could function as they did before the war. Many arterial routes have been severed. No fewer than 223 telephone exchanges (about one third of the number Croatia had before the war) have been put out of action. About 200,000 subscribers have been cut off on account of the war and the occupation. Not even hospitals, schools or university buildings were spared. 9 major hospitals and countless smaller medical centres were totally destroyed or damaged as were 469 nursery, primary and secondary schools, university departments and student centres. The children of displaced families are forced to continue their education in overcrowded schools in those parts of Croatia that are still free.

The occupiers also seized a number of local water authority facilities and electrical installations. The whole of Dalmatia was cut off from the Croatian power supply system and reduced to purely local sources of electrical energy and uncertain supplies from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Numerous museums, libraries and historical towns were ruthlessly attacked. 479 ecclesiastical buildings were damaged and most of those that survived the actual fighting were later damaged by the insurgents when they occupied parts of Croatia. Many items of cultural value on displays in museums and galleries, where they survived the destruction of the war, were looted and are now in the museums and galleries of Serbia, in private collections in the "Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia", or elsewhere in Europe.

A number of wireless and television relay stations were destroyed and occupied, and at one point it was impossible to transmit or receive radio and TV programmes in Croatia. A considerable number of transmitting studios together with all their equipment, as well as printing presses, were destroyed. Not even cemeteries and churchyards were spared, the attackers shelled them in an attempt to obliterate evidence that they were occupying territory that had been inhabited for centuries by Croats. National parks and nature reserves, part of the world's nature heritage, e.g. the Plitvice Lakes, the River Krka, Kopacki Rit, were deliberately damaged.

c) Refugees and displaced persons. Europe's greatest refugee crisis since the Second World War

The initial damage wreaked by the war and the first homes that were deliberately set alight released a flood of refugees in Croatia. In the middle of 1991 the first displaced persons were forced to leave their homes after constant harassment and ill-treatment by Greater Serbia rebels to seek refuge in other parts of Croatia or else abroad. One of the greatest waves of refugees was set off when Baranja fell (Baranja had, incidentally, a majority of Croats in its population), and tens of thousands of people had to leave their homes. Many took refuge in Hungary, since routes into other parts of Croatia were blockaded. With the fall of Petrinja, Hrvatska Kostajnica and, especially, of Vukovar a further major population exodus took place. To receive them numerous hotels were opened in central Croatia, Slavonia, Zagreb, and on the Adriatic. Apart from hotels, worker's holiday homes, motels and camps were also commandeered. Figures from the Office for Refugees and Displaced Persons show that refugees were billeted in 225 Category B hotels (or in accommodation of equivalent standard) and in 97 buildings of a somewhat lower standard, as well as in 32 refugee and transit centres. The feeding of refugees and displaced persons housed in private accommodation was organised in a further 60 facilities. The homes of Croatian citizens were generously opened to take in relations, friends and acquaintances. Accommodation with families throughout Croatia was a fundamental feature of the care taken of refugees and displaced persons.

Demands for a return home to the occupied areas of Croatia have been made with increasing frequency by the refugees themselves, and also by the institutions caring for them. Up till now return has been possible only for displaced persons (and refugees who sought refuge abroad) whose homes were in areas affected by the war, which were, and which have remained under the control of the Croatian authorities.

It ought to be emphasised in this connection that UNPROFOR to date has been unable to arrange the return of a single refugee to the UN Protected Areas. In fact, their assumption of responsibility for these areas has not in any way reduced the expulsion of the Croatian and other non-Serbian inhabitants. Expulsions have continued to the present day, with the last remaining groups of Croats being driven from their ancestral homes. Old people, the blind, the sick and infirm who would not or could not leave their homes have not been spared: they have suffered ill-treatment, harassment, hunger and even murder. This state of affairs is referred to in many reports and in statements by UN officials.

The basic policy pursued by the aggressor in the occupied areas of Croatia is ethnic cleansing. Not a single non-Serbian ethnic community is able to survive the tyrannical conditions imposed by the Greater Serbia militias. Given this anarchy and the Greater Serbia policy being pursued in the occupied territories, Croatia has been unable so far to solve the problem of the return of its refugees. About 330,000 Croatian refugees and displaced persons are still waiting to return from Croatia and a number of neighbouring countries mainly in Western Europe. These are not only persons of Croatian nationality. In Croatia at present there are large numbers of individuals of other nationalities who have been forced to leave their homes, including even Serbs. There are about 7,000 Serbs with refugee status in Croatia, and even more Hungarians, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Ukrainians and others. At the same time the number of refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina was steadily growing, and also - which is not generally known - from Vojvodina and Kosovo. About 279,000 refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina have taken refuge in Croatia, while many more passed through Croatia on their way to other countries. About 38,000 refugees have entered Croatia from the other republics of former Yugoslavia. Among the refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina Moslems predominate, and about 150,000 of them are at present being cared for in Croatia. All this constitutes an enormous burden on the Croatian economy: the cost of caring for refugees comes to about 62 million US dollars each month, and a great deal of this is met from the Croatian budget.

It is estimated that the total cost of war damage in Croatia exceeds 21,000 million US dollars, equivalent to 4,500 US dollars per head of the country's population. Since the destruction of homes and other facilities is still going on, especially in the Zadar and Sibenik, area, war damage costs continue to rise daily. A special problem may arise through the forceful imposition of town planning ideas that are totally out of keeping with the period and the environment to which they are to be applied: Serbian architects, for instance, are planning to rebuild the ruins of Vukovar with its baroque town-centre in a "Byzantine style".

Any prolongation of the status of refugees and displaced persons in the case of many families from occupied areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina is bound to give rise to fresh problems and tensions and adversely affect, not only the social and psychological state of these people, but also the social stability of the entire population of Croatia. Croatia is obliged to cope with the problems of refugees until they are able to return to their homes, and the task will become increasingly difficult and complex as the people concerned become more and more restive. The chances of a more effective solution to the problems caused by the war will depend on the speed and efficacy of the UN peace-keeping operation, of which an essential feature must be the voluntary return of refugees to their homes. It is the rapidity of this return and the comprehensiveness of its organisation that will determine how soon the consequences of the war can be eliminated throughout Croatia and particularly in the areas under United Nations protection. In the absence of rapid action to return refugees to their homes there will be at least three major consequences: first, growing unrest among Croatian refugees (and refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina); secondly, the economic exhaustion of Croatia on account of the need to set aside funds to care for the refugee population; and thirdly, the acknowledgement of the Greater Serbian annexations and agreement to a change of European frontiers by the use of force.

d) The occupied areas

The occupied areas of Croatia - calculated according to the situation on the battle-fronts on the day the armistice was signed in Sarajevo (2 January 1992) - amount to almost 15,000 square kilometres, or 26.5% of the state territory.

Table 2. Population of the occupied territories (figures from the 1991 census; occupation as on 3 January 1992).

Thus in these areas, according to the 1991 census there were 549,083 inhabitants or 11.5% of the total population of Croatia. In the population of the occupied areas, Serbs represented 52.4%, Croats 37.1%, and members of other nationalities (Hungarians, Ruthenians, etc.) 10.5%. In order to "protect" the allegedly "threatened" Serbs in Croatia, territory was seized which contained an almost equal number of non- Serbs, most of them Croats! For the vast majority of non-Serbs occupation has meant physical liquidation or brutal expulsion from the occupied areas. That the true object of military operations directed against Croatia was not the "protection" of Serbs, but the seizure of Croatian territory is also shown by the fact that Serbs in the occupied territories registered in the 1991 census as resident in Croatia account for no more than 49.5% of the total of Serbs living in the country.

More than half of the Serbs living in Croatia have gone on living intermingled with Croats in those parts of the country that have been continually under the authority of the legitimate Croatia government.

The true nature of the Serbian aggression is also shown by figures relating to the nationality mix in the occupied community. Table 2 shows that, of 1,074 municipalities in the occupied territories, a Serbian majority was registered in only two thirds, while in the remaining third other nationalities predominated, mostly Croats.

Table 3. Occupied settlements showing the nationality mix (figures from 1991 census; occupation as of 3 January 1992)

*** One municipality had an equal number of Serbs and Croats; 13 had Hungarian, 3 had Ruthenian, 1 a "Yugoslav" majority, 4 were depopulated.

Most villages with Croatian majorities have been burned down or razed, so as to obliterate any evidence of the existence of a Croatian population. Other homes of expelled Croats, Hungarians and Ruthenians and other non-Serbian nationalities have been used for resettlement of Serbs from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and other parts of Croatia. An attempt is being made to change by force the original nationalities mix of the occupied areas to the advantage of the Serbs.

How deceitful the argument about the "protection" of the Serbs was is best illustrated by the nationality mix of the population of the Croatian territory of Baranja. According to the 1991 census, in that region, which coincides more or less with the municipality of Beli Manastir, there were 54,265 inhabitants, of whom 41.9% were Croats, 26.5% Serbs, 16.5.% Hungarians. 16.1% declared other nationalities. Of 52 settlements in Baranja, Serbs represented more than half of the population in only 8, while in another 6 settlements they were the largest single ethnic group with less than 50%. Here, the alleged "protection", in fact the ethnic cleansing of a territory forming an integral part of the Croatian state, was carried out on behalf of a bare quarter of the local population. This, like other examples from the occupied areas, confirms quite clearly that the aim of the Serbian aggression was the annexation of Croatian territory, in other words, to change by force the internationally recognised frontiers of Croatia.

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