Mesic, Milosevic and The Hague

[Ivo Skoric]

As The Hague Tribunal moved from Kosovo to crimes against 
humanity committed under Milosevic's auspices elsewhere in 
former Yugoslavia, Croatia's president Stipe Mesic was called to 
testify.

His testimony was largely a disappointment. Given that at the time 
when the atrocities in Croatia attributed to Milosevic took place 
(like Vukovar), Mesic was in effect the president of former Yugoslav 
presidency and the supreme commander of Yugoslav Army, one 
would expect that he should both have a more detailed knowledge 
of those days and that he should display a more pointed 
resentiment towards a man who literally took the command over 
the army and the country out of his hands by extra-legal, populist 
means.

Milosevic is an expert putsch-maker. He took over Serbia in 1987 
by a putsch against his mentor Stambolic (who disappeared in a 
white van during Milosevic's last days as Serbia's strongman - 
never to be found again...), and he took over Yugoslavia in 1991 by 
a putsch against the constitutional president Stipe Mesic. Not only 
did Milosevic take the command over the army so succesfully, that 
Mesic could only shrug his shoulders over the shelling of 
Dubrovnik, but he also sent an air-force's MIG-29 to drop a TV-
guided Maverick missile on the building of Croatian parliament, 
missing the room, in which Croatia's president Tudjman, f-Yugoslav 
president Mesic and f-Yugoslav prime minister Markovic met at that 
time, just by one window.

Therefore, it is puzzling that Mesic would be willing to utter the 
words about the 'shared responsibility for collapse of Yugoslavia by 
all its national leaders'. Such self-incrimination was not called for 
by the Tribunal. It was given voluntarily. And, unless Mesic knows 
something that we don't, it has no basis in facts. It is true that 
former Yugoslavia was a very de-centralized federation, and that 
leaders of all federal entities (republics and autonomous provinces) 
were indeed thugging the country apart during the 1980-s. But it 
was Milosevic who first made a dangerous precedent, in a country 
that was still healing its wounds from the crimes of ethnic hate 
committed just 50 years ago during the WW II, by using the 
nationalism of the largest f-Yugoslav ethnic group, the Serbs, to 
establish his political victory, setting the stage for the breakup.

I lived and wrote in Croatia, f-Yugoslavia during 1980-s. Croatian 
political leadership was federalist, almost unitarist in appearance 
after 1971 and the purge of Croatian nationalist from the communist 
party. As late as 1985 people could get long prison sentences just 
for hanging Croatian nationalist flags even inside their apartments. 
And Tudjman did not appear in public until May 1989. There is no 
doubt in my mind whatsoever that Tudjman would never be elected 
for Croatian president should it not be for Milosevic and the fear of 
growing Serb nationalism and the threat of Yugoslav Army that 
Milosevic co-opted.

Tudjman's 'shared responsibility for Yugoslav failure' appears post-
facto. He is, indeed, involved as a culprit, together with Milosevic in 
Bosnia. But this was already when Mesic stepped out of the HDZ. 
His only responsibility was for not stopping Milosevic (and 
Tudjman) while he was the president of f-Yugoslav presidency. He 
was a HDZ cadre at the time. Under the circumstances it is not 
clear what could he have done to stop Milosevic and save f-
Yugoslavia in the form we remember. His own political party, HDZ, 
did not have interest in saving Yugoslavia, and the only force that 
could preserve it, the Yugoslav Army, would never follow a HDZ 
politician.

Maybe Mesic now feels guilty for once belonging to HDZ, but the 
witness stand at The Hague Tribunal's trial against Milosevic, is not 
exactly the right place for expressing that feeling. Given that 
Mesic's political fate was largely dependent on Milosevic's at that 
time, his testimony against Milosevic was unhelpfully self-indulgent.

ivo