From The Wall Street Journal 4/22/99
interactive.wsj.com
Separate Peace
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Why Ethnic Cleansing, Once Under
Way, Is So Difficult To Reverse
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Few Serbs Chased From Croatia
In 1995 Have Made It Back Home
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A "Normal Thing" In Balkans
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By DANIEL PEARL
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
KNIN, Croatia -- Dusan Dujic has a seemingly
modest ambition: to die in his own house.
Mr. Dujic hasn't set foot in the small two-story
home in this railroad town since he and thousands
of other ethnic Serbs fled a Croatian army onslaught
called "Operation Storm" in 1995. A city document
confirms that he owns the building, but the ethnic
Croatians occupying it won't budge, and Croatian
officials refuse to evict them.
"I have no country except this one, and it doesn't
want me," says Mr. Dujic, a 69-year-old former
hotel manager, breaking into tears at a sidewalk
cafe near his house. "I was a manager. I always
had some money," he says. "Now I have to crawl
around here like a dog."
Former co-worker Tatjana Grgic, an ethnic Croatian
who works in the Red Cross office here, says Mr.
Dujic was no Serb nationalist. "He was a good
man," she says. "But the war has done what it has
done. It's a normal thing."
Normal in the Balkans, perhaps. To Western
countries, banishing ethnic minorities from a region
is officially abhorrent. The North Atlantic Treaty
Organization has responded to Serbia's "ethnic
cleansing" of Albanian minorities in the Serbian
province of Kosovo with a punishing, four-week
bombing campaign. The U.S. vows to return an
estimated 600,000 Kosovo refugees to their homes.
Chasing a Pipe Dream
The experience of Croatia, Serbia's next-door
neighbor, suggests that a massive return is a pipe
dream. Croatia, which split from the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991, has welcomed back
fewer than 20% of its 350,000 departed Serbs.
Almost all the returnees are elderly people wanting
to claim pensions or be buried with their parents.
Serbs are "free to come," says Croatia's assistant
foreign minister, Josip Paro. But while proclaiming
that policy, Croatia encouraged ethnic Croatians to
occupy Serb homes and stalled thousands of Serbs
trying to get Croatian citizenship or reclaim their
property. Now, it is helping Serbs unload their
homes at a steep discount, and is building houses
for ethnic Croat refugees in formerly Serb villages.
"It's a slow, bureaucratic ethnic cleansing," charges
Ivan Zvonimir Cicak, a Croatian opposition figure
and humanrights activist.
Ethnic cleansing tends to stick, and not only because
of government policy. Younger Serbs have made
new lives in Yugoslavia or in the Serbian-run section
of Bosnia, another former Yugoslav republic. Others
have emigrated to richer Western countries, or
hope to keep their chances of emigration alive by
preserving their refugee status. By some estimates,
half of those who fled Croatia will never try to
return.
Mines in Haystacks
Many Croatians, convinced that "war criminals" are
coming back, predict trouble from returning Serbs.
"I think they should be eliminated," says a Croatian
soldier and Operation Storm participant who
identifies himself only as Ante, drinking a beer
during a rock concert in Knin to benefit war widows.
Human-rights activists say several returning Serbs
in a nearby village have been killed by fresh mines
planted in haystacks.
Even some liberals wonder if separation is best.
"We tried one way and it didn't work," says Zagreb
architect Nikola Oreskovic, in a bus rolling past
Croat villages destroyed by Serbs and Serb villages
destroyed by Croats. "Maybe we should try another
way."
Ethnic cleansing, horrible as it is, can be effective.
Republika Srpska, an almost completely Serb
ministate within Bosnia, has enjoyed relative
tranquillity and growing international acceptance,
while tensions are rising between Muslims and
Croats who live side by side in Bosnia. Croatia is
poor but secure, and when it opened its airspace to
NATO for the current bombing raids, the U.S. lifted
an arms embargo, despite lingering concerns about
Operation Storm.
An Efficient Operation
That operation was "the most efficient ethnic
cleansing we've seen in the Balkans," says Carl
Bildt, former European Community mediator in the
Balkans. "There was a blinking yellow light given to
it in 1995, and there hasn't really been any
sustained international pressure to reverse it." One
of the few critics of the operation, he says
acquiescing to ethnic separation would be
"horrifying" because the Balkans' ethnic patchwork
is so complex.
Croatia denies any ethnic cleansing, noting that it
urged Serbs to stay put during Operation Storm.
But soldiers also shelled residential areas, killed
civilians and let Croats burn and plunder Serb
homes, according to a United Nations report. Many
intact homes in Knin still bear the painted words
"Croat-Don't Touch."
Serbs came here to the Krajina region in the 14th
century, when the Turks routed them from Kosovo.
The Austro-Hungarian empire gave the Serbs of
Krajina (the name means "frontier") free land in
exchange for defending the empire's eastern border
from the Turks. Serbs became the city dwellers,
and the majority in their region, despite Croatian
fascists' attempts to exterminate Serbs during
World War II. Krajina Serbs broke into armed
rebellion in 1991 as Yugoslavia collapsed, and Knin,
with its ancient hilltop fortress, became the capital
of the Republic of Serbian Krajina.
The republic lasted four years and fell in four days.
Knin's Serbs had just minutes to pack on Aug. 5,
1995, when their army warned them to leave. Many
thought they would be back within a few days. Mr.
Dujic says he was at his cousin's house at a nearby
village. He had no time to drive back to Knin to
grab the family jewelry. Instead, he and his
relatives took his son's car, which had the most gas,
and drove to Belgrade, capital of Yugoslavia in the
Republic of Serbia.
The Guroljevskis Move
The flight of about 200,000 Krajina Serbs set off an
ethnic chain reaction. Many refugees pushed east
into Serb-held territory in Bosnia. In the city of
Banja Luka, Josipu Guroljevski, an ethnic Croat,
says Serbs pounded on his door Aug. 16 and told
him to leave the following morning or die. He and
his wife, Stazji, spent a month as refugees before
hearing of empty houses in Knin. Croatia gave
citizenship to any ethnic Croatian, and eventually
6,000 Croatians from Bosnia would settle in and
around Knin.
The Guroljevskis say they went to City Hall and got
a list of available houses. Mr. Dujic's house was in
the best repair, with room for relatives upstairs.
The furniture was overturned, the rooms looted and
humid; but after painting and repair, the house
became the Guroljevski's home, with an official
occupancy permit. A Virgin Mary hangs on the wall.
Potted plants sit outside the door.
Mr. Dujic says he wrote a letter to Knin in October
1995, saying he wanted to come back. But even
when Croatia allowed Serbs to return, it made it
difficult for them to get Croatian citizenship: One
consulate where refugees went to get Croatian
papers wouldn't allow anybody to enter without
Croatian papers, Western officials say. By April
1997, Mr. Dujic had his papers and was staying with
his wife in a friend's house as he tried to reclaim
the home he had built nearly four decades before.
"Let him wait. We're waiting, too," says Stazji
Guroljevski, in Mr. Dujic's living room. She says a
Serb is occupying her newly built home in Banja
Luka, and "for me they're all the same." Even if
their home were empty, the Guroljevskis say fears
for their safety would keep them away. And they
say they can't afford to buy another home in
Croatia, because Mr. Guroljevski received just one
month's salary last year from his work as a night
watchman at a defunct factory. They might consider
a free home, but, "we don't want something worse
than this," says Mrs. Guroljevski.
'A Piece of Paper'
Many ethnic Serbs, tired of waiting, are selling out
their interests to Croatia's new government Agency
for Property Negotiation. One private agent,
Augustin Blazevic, says Serbs get about half the
value of their homes because "nobody wants to buy
a house with somebody inside." Mr. Dujic says he
won't sell out.
Croatia, under international pressure, set up
housing commissions last year to decide who owns
a house and tell the temporary occupier to move
somewhere else. On Jan. 15, Mr. Dujic won his
decision from Knin's Housing Commission. "This is a
piece of paper that means nothing," he says.
Indeed, the Knin Housing Commission has received
585 applications and reviewed 80 cases since
September, keeping them in thin yellow folders, but
it has returned only eight homes to owners.
International monitors say none of those homes
were occupied. Knin officials say Croatia's plan
doesn't require them to evict people if no other
homes are ready.
"We have to be patient," says Ivo Jazinovic, a Croat
from Bosnia who is chairman of Knin's five-member
(three Croats, two Serbs) housing commission.
"Every case that the housing commission works on,
it's deciding at least three destinies." Mr. Jazinovic,
a 35-year-old engineer with a ready grin, himself
occupied a vacated Knin apartment under a law that
gave Croats tenancy rights if the renter was gone
for more than six months. He knows of only one
Croat who has gone back to Banja Luka since the
war ended, and says, "My personal attitude in life is
that man has to go forward, not backward."
'Ethnic Engineering'
To provide new homes, Croatia presented a $2.5
billion housing plan to international donors in
December, but collected just $25 million. Donors
are hesitant partly because Croatia is doing "ethnic
engineering" as it builds, says Branimir Radev, a
monitor with the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe.
A case in point is Kistanje, a village near Knin,
where the Croatian government has helped move
ethnic-Croat immigrants from Kosovo into buildings
owned by Serbs. The village is a bizarre mix of
burned-out, roofless brick hulks (on one wall
sarcastic graffiti proclaims: "We Repaired This for
the Owner") and well-lighted clothing boutiques.
Some businesses carry the name Janjevo, the town
in Kosovo from which most of Kistanje hails.
In a pizzeria, owner Vinko Mazarekic turns down his
Rod Stewart compact disk and explains how he
arrived. Kosovo's gold and silver mines attracted
Croatian settlers centuries before, but Croats as
well as Albanians suffered recent persecution. Mr.
Mazarekic left in 1993, traveled around Croatia, and
finally decided to go to Kistanje because of
government aid and low taxes. The government
repaired the roof and floor of the bar he occupied,
he says. Mr. Mazarekic belittles the returning Serbs.
"They want to expel people who have seven or
eight children, to leave everything because of one
old man," he says, shaking his head. "We just want
to do something useful. It's time to leave us alone."
That's pretty much what Croatia is doing. The
government recently started building 170 tidy brick
homes in Kistanje. The U.S. has promised $200,000
for the infrastructure. Croatia initially said new
ethnic-Croat immigrants from Kosovo would get the
homes, but Western officials protested, so Croatia
agreed to reserve 20 homes for returning Serbs.
Croatia has deflected most diplomatic pressure.
Dusan Karanovic, a Serb who returned to Kistanje in
1996 only to be evicted from his home by ethnic
Croats, gained support from two U.S. ambassadors
and the Croatian ombudsman. Still, his Zagreb
lawyer, Slobodan Budak, says the case has bounced
around the bureaucracy so much that he isn't sure
where it now stands. "It's complicated, on purpose,"
he says.
Renaming the Streets
The Krajina region seems in little danger of going
Serb. Before the war, 11% of the citizens in the
Knin municipality were Croats. Now Knin is half the
size, and 71% Croat. Streets have new Croatian
names. At the police station, where a dozen elderly
Serbs line up each morning to get documents
signed, all the officers are Croats. Serbian staff
members were cleared from the hospital and
schools as well, and replaced with Croats from
Bosnia, says Knin economist and activist Nevena
Zunjic.
Residents compete for economic crumbs. The region
has rocky soil, a moribund railroad and a small
factory that makes screws. Most people live from
government handouts of about $100 a month, and
even that has been drying up. Croatians from
Bosnia say they are second-class citizens because
they don't qualify for the free heating-wood and
fertilizer given to returning Serbs. The few young
Serbs trickling in say they are avoiding being
drafted or bombed in Serbia.
Elsewhere, Krajina Serbs are looking abroad. In
Bar, a port town on the coast of the Yugoslavia
republic Montenegro, Serbs recently petitioned the
U.N. to go to Western Europe, as some Kosovar
refugees are doing. Some Serbs came to Bar
because it was the last stop on the railroad line
when they fled Croatia. They occupied some
abandoned wooden shacks called "the barracks,"
and they survive by selling fish or cigarettes.
Among the barracks residents is Ranka Milosevic,
43, who owned a tavern in the Croatian mountain
town of Slunj. She says a lawyer is trying to
retrieve her home from the Croatian villager who
occupied it. She wants to sell it. When Ms. Milosevic
visited Slunj last year, she says neighbors had her
arrested. "I'll never go back," she says, shaking her
head. "We all want to go abroad somewhere."
In Slunj, neighbors dispute her account. Across the
town square from Ms. Milosevic's house, a Catholic
church that was burned during the 1991 Serb
uprising is still being repaired. In the rectory, over
brandy, Rev. Petar Bogut notes that the law says
nobody should lose property, the church says to
love your enemy, and no one accuses Ms. Milosevic
of atrocities. Still, he says, covering his face with his
hands, "maybe it would be best for her" to stay
away. |
