WSJ.com - Nothing to Gain By Sanctioning Croatia

[Ivo Skoric]

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Nicely put - since Croatia already sold out all its strategic assets 
to Western capital (94% of all banks in Croatia are in foreign 
hands, for example), by sanctions, the West would be punishing 
itself, which, as we all know, the West is not really inclined to do....

And the West is also coming up with all sorts of reasons to delay 
Croatia's EU and NATO membership, so they lost coercive 
leverage there, too.

In fact Racan may do what he wants regarding Bobetko. I have no 
idea why did The Hague insist now on Bobetko?! I mean they have 
a shitload of criminals in Republika Srpska, which a) have more 
numerous and gruesome deeds behind them than Bobetko, b) have 
numerous surviving victims and global media that both want to see 
them in the Hague, and c) are real obstacles presently to the 
peace and development in the region (which is why the 
international community cannot withdraw its troops from Bosnia) - 
one would think those would be a priority?!

The possible scenario is that The Hague wants to undermine the 
U.S. unilateralism by calling up Croatian generals. Because, it is 
now well known that Operation Storm was essentially a joint U.S.-
Croatian military operation. The crimes committed in the aftermath 
now are used to implicate American unilateralist position as 
potentially leading to the crimes against humanity. This may have 
a logical explanation given the differences between Europe and the 
US on the war on Iraq issue. But there is no justice in waging a 
proxy judicial war over the back of small nations. And, of course, 
that's why the pro-Bush Wall Street Journal more than welcomed 
this article.

This is sad - because it throws a shadow over The Hague tribunal 
as a political tool - a thing that Milosevic was telling us all this 
time, and not as a tool of justice.

Here is a revolutionary idea: in the case of Serbia, they declared 
Milosevic a war criminal, and they let his subordinates get away 
with just having followed orders, so most of them now appear just 
as witnesses, not as defendants. Why Croatia does not declare 
Tudjman as a war criminal, use all of that meticulously collected 
evidence by various human rights organization, pin it on him, and 
everbody else (Bobetko included) can say, oh shit, was it that bad, 
we just followed orders from the old man, we had no idea what was 
he all about, we are very sorry... In that case they could all be 
called only as witnesses to The Hague. The fact that Tudjman is 
dead is irrelevant. The Hague had enough time to snatch him - 
that's their problem that they were slower than snails in their 
beginnings.

The other thing is the respect for Croatian judicial system. This 
exposure to sudden whims of a foreign judiciary is simply 
unacceptable for any sovereign state. Croatia should insist that 
now, that it achieved democratically elected government and a 
state of law, at least that is how the country is described by the 
West, its own court system should be trusted to prosecute crimes 
committed against Serbian population. 

For years there were talks about establishing Truth Commissions 
(Radio B92 organized a conference with Serbian government on 
that issue) about the crimes in the region, modelled upon the Truth 
Commission in South Africa, but I haven't heard anything like that 
being done in Croatia, although the U.S. supported that model for 
Croatia, and it would probably be more acceptable for Bobetko 
case.

On the other hand, maybe he should go to The Hague, to give them 
a lesson on ethnic wars. He could hardly be described as a 
Croatian extremist Serb-hater: after all, his entire family was 
slaughtered by Ustashe when he was a youth. His anti-fascist past 
and, to put it mildly, exuberant personality, makes him popular with 
all shades of the political spectrum in Croatia, and the West risks 
losing a friendly pro-Western government over the issue of his 
surrender. Furthermore, he cannot be portrayed as a HDZ stooge, 
because he had a fall-out with Tudjman, and he was fired and 
retired by the former president shortly after the Operation Storm.

On the other hand, unrelated to surrender or no surrender of 
Bobetko, the return of displaced persons in former Yugoslavia 
region is still very sluggish. But this is not going to improve with a 
general in The Hague. This requires grassroots initiatives in the 
region aimed towards ethnic reconciliation, conflict transformation 
and transitional justice from the bottom up, not the other way 
around.

ivo