BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
Further widening the Balkan war, the Croatian government headed by Franjo Tudjman recently threw its military might into the fray, routing Serb forces in the Krajina region. A three-day military offensive launched August 4 included 100,000 Croatian troops, accompanied by tanks, armored personnel carriers, fighter jets, and helicopters. It was the largest army fighting in Europe since World War II.
According to the Financial Times, the imperialist governments of Germany and the United States gave the "green light" to Zagreb to launch its offensive. The okay for the military assault was conditional upon a "quick and clean" battle.
On the other hand, Britain and France, who have thousands of troops on the ground as part of the UN forces in the former Yugoslavia, condemned the Croatian offensive. Russia continues to openly back the Serbian government and its allied forces carrying out the war against the Bosnian people.
Far from being a "clean battle," the town of Knin was bombed "indiscriminately" for more than 24 hours at the start of the siege. Shells landed on the rail yard, hospital, and residential areas. There were "quite significant numbers of bodies in the streets," said Alun Roberts, a UN official in Knin. As many as 150,000 Croatian Serbs were forced to flee.
U.S. officials said the military offensive was a "window of opportunity" that could lead to a so-called peace agreement. Washington signed a military cooperation agreement with Croatia in November 1994 that provided for increased contacts between U.S. and Croatian armed forces. Croatian military officers have traveled to the United States for training and the armed forces has received eight months of direct military advice.
"One cannot forget that Croatia's patience was severely tested by years of Serbian aggression," said Klaus Kinkel, Germany's foreign minister, citing Bonn's approval of Zagreb's military action.
As the imperialist rivalries sharpen over the war "something may be quietly dying," wrote Bruce Clark for the Financial Times. That is "any pretense that the US, Russia, Britain, France, and Germany -partners in the so-called contact group - are prepared to work together."
Battle for territory and resources
Krajina itself sits atop vital oil and rail routes. The
nearby Adriatic beaches are a source of millions of dollars
in foreign exchange and are most accessible through Krajina.
Before the war, tourism brought in about $10 billion a year;
last year revenues were down to $2 billion, while this year
the specter of war has reduced it to less than $500 million.
The success of the Croatian drive to retake territory has sparked fissures among the Bosnian Serb leadership and the Bosnian government. Radovan Karadzic, the most well- known leader of the Bosnian Serbs, stated August 5 that he was assuming command of the military forces from Gen. Ratko Mladic, a close ally of the regime in Belgrade. Mladic called Karadzic's decision "illegal" and declared, "I will remain the commander in chief as long as the Bosnian Serb people and combatants want me to."
In Banja Luka, a Bosnian Serb center in western Serbia, 18 generals signed a declaration of loyalty to Mladic August 6. At the same time the Bosnian Serb parliament approved Karadzic's decision at a meeting in Pale.
"[Serbian president Slobodan] Milosevic will use the Yugoslav army to dismantle Karadzic," Milan Bosic, a member of the Serbian parliament, told the Times. He spoke of "a coup in a couple weeks against Karadzic."
The Croatian regime's assault on Krajina is viewed by many as a step in advancing the partition of Bosnia. "Tudjman has never given up the idea of partitioning Bosnia," asserted a Financial Times analysis of the fighting under the title "Slicing up the Bosnian cake." Among many Bosnians, which includes Muslims, Serbs, and Croats, experiences of the war have reinforced suspicions that the Croatian and Serbian governments will eventually cooperate to carve up Bosnia.
Croatian president Tudjman and Milosevic held a series of secret talks in late 1990 and early 1991 to come up with a plan that would satisfy each of these rival's desires for greater territory and resources. The talks broke down and a civil war erupted, after Croatia declared independence in 1991. Some 10,000 civilians were killed in the fighting, and the so-called "ethnic cleansing," that followed, as rightist forces, heavily armed by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav military, seized a third of the territory of the former republic of Croatia, proclaiming it the "Serb republic of Krajina."
Russian president Boris Yeltsin invited Tudjman and Milosevic to Moscow for negotiations on the current fighting, while ignoring Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic. Tudjman backed out of the meeting at the last moment only after strong pressure from Washington.
Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic, and foreign minister Muhamed Sacirbey rushed to Zagreb August 8 to raise their concerns directly about possible Croatian plans for partitioning Bosnia. "The Bosnian government doesn't want to believe the worst about Croatia, but they are very worried about the developments," a diplomat in Sarajevo remarked.