As always in this jerry-built confederation, each outbreak only masked a deeper conflict. Slovenia and Croatia are Western-oriented republics, moved to declarations of sovereignty by the changes sweeping Eastern Europe in the last two years. Opposing them is the powerful Serbian Republic, one of the region’s last bastions of orthodox communism, and the Yugoslav People’s Army with its Serbian-dominated senior-officer corps. The confrontation is at once ideological and ethnic: a combustible mix fed by centuries of grudges and feuds, including a full-scale civil war that took place under the umbrella of World War II.
Now the future hinges on the generals, for whom Yugoslav unity is virtually an article of faith (page 24). And last week the central government seemed powerless to restrain them. It was without a commander in chief for seven weeks until international pressure forced Serbia to let Stipe Mesic, a Croat, take his turn as head of the eight-member federal presidency, effectively controlled by the Serbs. Mesic promised that “the Army will remain in its barracks.” It was a pledge of doubtful value. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Blagoje Adzic, a Serb whose family was killed by Croat militiamen during World War II, made plain his intent to ignore civilian control. “Depoliticized and confined to barracks, the Army would lose its soul and its popular spirit,” he said.
Even as Mesic struggled to put together a cease-fire in Slovenia, the generals were preparing for the next battle. In a three-pronged pincer movement, they deployed 180 additional tanks and armored personnel carriers in Croatia (map). It is a volatile landscape. Croatia’s substantial Serbian minority opposes independence bitterly. Dozens of people have been killed since May in clashes between Serbian guerrillas and Croatian police-at least as many as have died in Slovenian fighting. The tank deployment seemed to be a crude reminder of the Army’s pro-Serbian tilt. And in the Serbian capital of Belgrade, the republic’s volatile President Slobodan Milosevic warned Serbs to prepare for war and “the defense of their country.”
The conflict in Croatia has intensified since the June 25 declaration of independence. In Zagreb last week, tanks rolled against protesters who had barricaded an army barracks. They crushed cars and burst through barriers, some flaming from Molotov cocktails thrown by protesters. At least one man was killed. Three more were killed when troops fired on a crowd that pelted them with rocks as they returned to their barracks. An additional 30 people were reported killed at Borovo, on the Croatian side of the Danube. That incident followed what has become a pattern: Serbian guerrillas, known as Chetniks, attack a Croatian installation, usually a police or militia station. Croatians fight back. The Army moves in, ostensibly to restore order. In this way, the Army has occupied more than a dozen towns in Croatia’s southern region during the last six months. At the weekend, Croatia’s Vecernji List newspaper reported that 83 more people had been killed or injured on the border northeast of Zagreb during the biggest skirmish yet between territorial forces and Serbian nationalists. Said Milan Brezac, the republic’s deputy interior minister: “A new storm is coming.”
Croatia is the real trigger to an all-out war in Yugoslavia. Its cultural divisions with Serbia are deep. Before 1918, when Serbia gained dominance within the new Yugoslav state, Croatia was ruled by Austria’s Hapsburg dynasty; Serbia had been part of the Ottoman Empire. During World War II, a fascist puppet government in Croatia slaughtered some 350,000 Serbs. After the Nazi defeat, Serbian partisans murdered 100,000 Croatian prisoners of war. A separatist Croatian government elected last year has restored some of the symbols of the fascist Ustashi regime and attempted to “purify” the language. It has foreed ethnic Serbian policemen to sign loyalty oaths. At the same time, the 600,000 ethnic Serbs, 12 percent of the republic’s population, are trying to create their own “autonomous province of Krajina” inside Croatia but allied with Serbia. The Croatian defense force reportedly has distributed automatic weapons to civilians in the border regions. Serbian villages have stockpiled ammunition, apparently provided by the federal Army.
Will the Army lash out again? Probably not in Slovenia. It would mean a bloody guerrilla war-and a diversion of resources from the Croatian theater. In Belgrade, government officials conceded privately that there was little they could do from now on to keep Slovenia from bolting. “A full, all-out offensive against Slovenia is now unthinkable,” said one Serbian politician. Croatia is a different story. The Army’s humiliation in Slovenia could only stiffen its resolve to keep the country from unraveling further. “The Army has suffered a great defeat at the hands of the Slovenes,” said Antonije Nicolic, a Belgrade attorney. “Nothing will be the same again in Yugoslavia.”
The biggest cheek on the military is world opinion. Even though Slovenian militiamen shot first and broke two cease-fires before the fighting eased, the breakaway republic successfully portrayed itself as the victim of an attack by vicious, better-armed forces. The New York-based human-rights group Helsinki Watch condemned the use of force as “excessive and unlawful.” Germany accused the Army of “running amok.” The Army wants to stay in power, but does not appear ready to stage an outright coup. “The military does not want to become a junta,” says one Western diplomat. “It does not want to become the pariah of Westernized Europe.” Yugoslav politicians also were protecting their images. Prime Minister Ante Markovic and Serbian President Milosevic both distanced themselves from the debacle in Slovenia, denouncing Army “excesses.”
That gave the diplomats leverage. Western governments that had earlier called on Slovenia and Croatia to exercise restraint in pressing their demands for independence shifted to trying to stop unilateral actions by the Army to crush the rebellion. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker warned of the danger of “a full-fledged civil war.” Meeting in The Hague, the European Community announced a freeze on arms sales and $925 million in financial aid to Yugoslavia and warned of tougher measures to come if the Army went on the offensive.
Peace was Europe’s to win, but its own historic divisions tempered its response. France was reluctant to endorse any fragmentation of Yugoslavia, lest it increase German influence in the region. The EC could do no more than demand a restoration of the status quo before June 25, backed by the sanctions.
That alone won’t be enough to avert a disaster. “We’re trying to use rational carrot-and-stick incentives to influence irrational people-people in the grip of centuries-old passions and hatreds,” said a U.S. official. “The only incentives these people would understand is massive force, and neither we nor the Europeans are about to get involved on that level.” Clearly, the key to peacefully resolving Yugoslavia’s future is to get the Army out of polities. That would require sustained European pressure, the presence of international observers and a heavy degree of foreign “interference” in Yugoslavia’s internal affairs. It would have been unthinkable until now. The West still may not be willing to meet the challenge.
