Failed Greater Serbia project is no Holocaust
By Andrej Plenković (HDZ/EPP – Croatia), Vice-Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament and Chairman of the EP's Delegation for Ukraine
On Wednesday, August 5th Croatia marked the 20th anniversary of its operation "Storm", which in 1995, following the Srebrenica massacre of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys prevented a similar tragedy in another UN safe area of Bihać. US Ambassador in Zagreb at the time, Peter Galbraith, wrote that 40,000 new casualties were projected, on top of tens of thousands of refugees. Thus, Washington decided not to object to an otherwise very risky operation.
A series of Croatian military operations in 1994 and 1995, culminating with the Storm, turned the conflict in the former Yugoslavia upside down. It saved Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) from Slobodan Milosević proxies there, Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić, and returned the occupied territories in Croatia from a yet another surrogate Milan Martić. All four were indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague (ICTY) for various crimes including genocide.
Croatia, which has been encouraging and facilitating the return of all its citizens, has marked this event annually as a day of victory and thanksgiving to remember all victims of this Milošević aggression and pay tribute to its defenders. But starting this year Serbia decided to mark this day as well, with its own ceremony – as a day of remembrance, to commemorate the departure of Serbs from the occupied territories when faced with a military defeat. Some high officials in Serbia compared this event to the Holocaust.
While Serbia is free to commemorate events at its own choosing, it should be reminded about proper treatment of history and linkages to other events such as the Holocaust in fairness and good taste. These Serbs were victims indeed, but not due to the Croatian actions in 1995, but due to unrealistic and criminal goals of their leaders, who, when faced with defeat, ordered and organised the Serb population to leave for Serbia. The fact that they were coerced into leaving Croatia by their own leaders was reiterated by the ICTY in the Gotovina case and others.
These Croatian Serbs were unfortunate and last victims of the Greater Serbia ideology which was soundly defeated that summer, just like the tens of thousands of non-Serbs that paid with their lives prior to 1995 and hundreds of thousands who fled from BiH and Croatia as refugees under the threat of ethnic cleansing starting in 1991. Thus, any ceremonies that segregate these victims from the Greater Serbia transgressions would be a revision of history, and all linkages to the Holocaust portend an unacceptable perversion of history.
Unfortunately, recently Serbia has been moving to recast several aspects of its past. Long running endeavor to rehabilitate one of Serbia's WW2 leaders Draža Mihajlović could not pass unnoticed. Accused war criminal Vojislav Šešelj, on provisional release in Belgrade for health reasons, contaminates public arena in Serbia with hate-speech and war-mongering with no adequate reaction from the authorities. This includes his flag-burning antics in front of the Croatian Embassy in Belgrade last Wednesday.
Several weeks ago Serbia lobbied and engaged Russia in the UN Security Council to veto the Resolution on Srebrenica in order to promote its agenda of denying the Srebrenica genocide. Many Serb leaders still refuse to accept that what happened in Srebrenica was in fact this, as confirmed by decisions at both the International Court of Justice and the ICTY. However Serbia did not prevent the European Parliament and the U.S. Congress in passing their clear resolutions on Srebrenica.
To operationalize its revision process, Serbia is also implementing its controversial Law on War Crime Proceedings – which entails a hybrid and inacceptable principle of territorial application of its criminal legislation to all the states of former Yugoslavia. With this platform, Serbia is seeking international arrests of citizens of neighboring states for alleged crimes of war, which did not happen on Serbian territory and regardless of citizenship. The EP Resolution on Serbia in March 2015 called on Serbia to reconsider this Law, in co-operation with its neighbors and the European Commission.
Over the years, the commemoration of the liberation of the formerly occupied one-fifth of the Croatian territory was predominantly a Croatian national event. However, the Storm – which was based on the Declaration signed in Split on 22 July 1995 by the presidents of Croatia and BiH at the time, Franjo Tuđman and Alija Izetbegović - should be seen and remembered in a much wider context. This operation resolved, in matter of four days, the Gordian Knot of international affairs of that period that had dragged on for four years by then; seemingly without a solution by July 1995.
Western policy in the region was in disarray at the time, as detailed for instance, in the front page feature column by The Wall Street Journal reporter M.M. Nelson on July 28, 1995, "Vicious Circle." European peacekeepers were gearing up to leave BiH. Washington meanwhile was focusing its policy on Radovan Karadžić, pushing for a peace deal where his entity would have a right to secede from BiH in two to three years, as noted by a White House staffer Ivo Daalder in “Getting to Dayton,” and detailed further by former BiH Ambassador V. M. Raguž in “Who Saved Bosnia.”
Operation Storm was an important lesson in international relations, as it reinforced the view that diplomatic action can only be ensured with credible threat of force. Indeed, a diplomatic surge led by the late US diplomat Richard Holbrooke followed the Storm, and BiH had a peace deal by November that eluded it for four years; agreed in Dayton and signed in Paris.
Likewise, once Croatia established itself as a credible threat of force, cooperating with the West, the whole security architecture changed in the region and two and one half years later Croatia and Serbia witnessed a successful completion of the United Nations Transitional Administration in Eastern Slavonia, which peacefully reintegrated the only remaining occupied part of Croatia - the Danubian region - into its constitutional order. This unique, peaceful and internationally assisted model of reintegration in Europe, I am often advocating as a good example for the reintegration of the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and the Crimea in Ukraine.
The Storm also fortified the developing mainstream thinking that air power alone cannot dictate military outcomes. There is no doubt that the "Storm" influenced the decision-making within NATO to act in Kosovo in 1999.
While western countries had an opportunity to recall many positive aspects of the operation Storm on Wednesday, a life-saving event for the people of Bihac and a face-saving event for the West, regretfully, Serbia's commemoration was disappointing. With charges of genocide leveled against Croatia because of the Storm, and ranking this Serb tragedy immediately after the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide was a serious setback for the reconciliation in the region.
Of course, all victims deserve to be honored and respected. But twenty years later, we should be vigilant and discourage Belgrade from attempts to whitewash its failed Greater Serbia policy by revising this watershed event of the 1991-1995 period. To conclude, if the membership in the EU, thorough reforms and development of good neighborly relations are indeed key priorities of Serbia, it is vital that they are underpinned by the courage of their leaders who accept the truth about the consequences of the Greater Serbia project and are ready for clear expression of regret and apology as a precondition for forgiveness and lasting reconciliation with their neighbors.