"Collapse or Destruction? The Construction of the Yugoslav Wars"
Chip Gagnon

Paper presented at National Convention of AAASS, Boston, Mass., November 15, 1996

Draft: Please do not cite without author's permission

Croatia

From the Croatian side, the threat to the status quo arose after the 1990 elections. The reformist communist party had agreed to hold elections, and although they thought they had rigged the elections to ensure their victory, in the event they lost to the nationalist HDZ. The HDZ had run on a program of democratization of politics and liberalization and privatization of the economy. But once in power it pursued the opposite policy. The HDZ merely replaced the communists with HDZ members and proceeded to take over and reinforce the party-state, putting its own people into positions in politics, the media and the economy. The effect was to strengthen the grip on structures of power more than the communists had had near the end. Yet clearly this did not accord with the expressed preferences of most of the population for real change, and opened the HDZ up to the possibility of anti-regime mobilization. In addition, there was a serious split within the HDZ, between more moderate, democratically oriented people who sought to loosen the grip of the ruling party on society, and a more authoritarian faction that was instrumental in tightening that grip. Consistently in political polling those members of the authoritarian or hard line faction were the least popular. Thus there was the danger that the more popular moderates would possibly take over the party and oust the hard liners, again by appealing to the wider population. These moderate positions reflected the desire among the population for real changes in the political and economic structures in Croatia; not only regarding Croatia's place within Yugoslavia, but also the political and economic order within Croatia itself. And as in the rest of Yugoslavia, the trends toward political democratization and economic liberalization abroad, and the need to further integrate into the world economy, put further pressure for changes in the structures of power within the republic.

A key part of the hardline faction in the HDZ came from Western Hercegovina; within Bosnia-Hercegovina Croats made up 18 percent of the population. But Croats in Western Hercegovina made up only 1/3 of those Croats, only about six percent of Bosnia's entire population. Their ability to have influence in Bosnia was thus clearly limited. But they had inordinate amounts of influence within Croatia itself, due to their power within the HDZ. They had hardly any electoral base in Croatia however, and were indeed among the least popular politicians. Their desire to overcome this handicap, and to dilute the more moderate and reform- oriented urban populations in Croatia has led them to try to partition Bosnia and attach Western Hercegovina to Croatia. Yet the 2/3 of Croats in the rest of Bosnia, especially in Central Bosnia, were opposed to any such division, seeing that they would be the main losers in any such division.

The HDZ hardliners constructed threats first focusing on Serbs in Croatia. Of course Milosevic’s strategy was also portrayed, quite convincingly, as a threat; but Belgrade's policies played right into the hands of the extremists, who pursued policies against local Serbs that were very conflictual, and were aimed not only against extremists but against apolitical people or people who were economic managers. While the HDZ was tightening its grip on society, it was justifying this by pointing to the “Serbs” who controlled Croatia; its policies were thus only just, returning Croatia to Croats (although only HDZ Croats). These people also colluded with extremists in the SDS to provoke violent clashes in the fall of 1990 and winter and spring of 1991. Once all-out war broke out in Croatia in the summer of 1991, they also perpetrated atrocities against Serb civilians and pursued a policy of “ethnic cleansing” which was hidden from the population. The stress was on threats to innocent Croats, Serb bombings of civilian targets and cultural monuments, massacres of civilians, etc. In short, the HDZ hardliners colluded with the SDS hardliners to destroy those facts on the ground that contradicted the newly defined, hard-bordered political communities of "Croats" and "Serbs."

From 1992 an additional threat was added, that of Islamic fundamentalists against Croats in Central Bosnia. The images again were of innocent Croats being massacred by crazed Muslims, and continued through 1993. The very existence of Croats in Bosnia-Hercegovina was put into question, and the prospect of an Islamic fundamentalist state on Croatia's borders loomed large in the HDZ-dominated media coverage of the war.

In reality, the HDZ hardliners and their allies in Bosnia-Hercegovina started violent conflict against Muslim civilians, especially from April 1993 onward. First they undertook a coup against the moderate leadership of the HDZ-BH, in the fall of 1992, and replaced it with hard liners from Western Hercegovina on orders of Zagreb. They then proceeded to take over the HVO (Bosnian Croat armed forces) and to pressure Croats to leave the B-H army and transfer to the HVO. They also eliminated the armed units of the Croatian Party of Right (HSP), the HOS, which included many Muslims and which had fought against the Serb attacks. This is notable because the HSP had consistently called for a united Bosnia, rejected dividing the country, and saw Croats and Muslims as natural allies. From April 1993 through the fall of that year the HDZ-BH provoked violent conflict, expelled and massacred Muslim civilians, blew up mosques, and undertook every measure possible to cleanse the regions awarded as "Croat" under the Vance-Owen plan of Muslims, and to create fear and animosities between the Croats and Muslims of central Bosnia.

The goal of this strategy was not to mobilize Croats in Croatia; indeed the truth was kept from them until late in 1993; and when that truth was revealed the HDZ was harshly condemned not only by the opposition parties, but also by the Catholic church hierarchy; in addition some of the most notable HDZ founders (moderates) left the party and founded an opposition party due exactly to the question of the Croatian war in Bosnia. Thus the goal of the images of threatened Croatians in BH was to hide the reality of the HDZ policy there. The goal of the actual policy was clearly to restructure political space in Bosnia-Hercegovina: to destroy the existing realities of ethnic heterogeneity and tolerance on the ground in central Bosnia, to radicalize the moderate Croats of that region, and to discredit moderate Croat leaders who called for coexistence with Muslims. Again, the goal was to create "hard" borders of a Croat political community, defined in terms of a solidarity of fear. This homogenization also made it more likely that Bosnia would be divided: the opposition of 2/3 of Croats outside of Hercegovina was now neutralized. And a divided Bosnia meant a high likelihood of joining Herceg-Bosna (as the HDZ-BH named their ethnically-pure Croatian ministate) to the Croatian "motherland."

These strategies have been relatively successful. The HDZ, although losing many local elections, especially in urban areas of Croatia, has managed to maintain control of Croatia as a whole, and has a firm grip on national political structures as well as much of the economy and almost all of the mass media. In addition, the Hercegovinian Croats have de facto been brought into Croatia as a political factor: in the 1994 elections 12 seats were set aside for "Croats living abroad", which in effect meant Croats in Herceg-Bosna; all of these seats were won by the HDZ, which provided the HDZ with a comfortable margin in the Croatian parliament. But while the HDZ in Croatia, and in particular its hard-line faction, has a firm grip on institutions and structures of power, its ability to maintain electoral successes, even with the inclusion of Herceg-Bosna, seems much more vulnerable than the SPS's in Serbia. But while this threat to their power is a very real one, many of the HDZ members have managed to transfer some of their bases of power over to economic structures. Enterprises that were formerly owned by the state have been transferred or privatized into the hands of HDZ faithful, who have often profited quite handsomely in the process. This ability to accumulate large amounts of capital will perhaps mean that changes in the actual structure of political power in Croatia now presents much less of a threat than it did in 1990. The only question is the reaction of the Hercegovinians to their rejection by the Croatian electorate.

Forward to part 8, Conclusion

Back to part 6, Serbia

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