Congressional Record -- Extension of Remarks

Tuesday, November 26, 1991

102nd Cong. 1st Sess.

137 Cong Rec E 4213

REFERENCE: Vol. 137 No. 177 -- Part 4

TITLE: NORA BELOFF ON YUGOSLAVIA

SPEAKER: HON. HELEN DELICH BENTLEY OF MARYLAND IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

TEXT:
Text that appears in UPPER CASE identifies statements or insertions which are not spoken by a Member of the House on the floor.

[*E4213] MRS. BENTLEY. MR. SPEAKER, I WOULD LIKE TO INSERT THE FOLLOWING PIECES, WRITTEN BY NORA BELOFF, AND PUBLISHED IN THE NOVEMBER 19, 1991 EDITION OF THE WASHINGTON POST, AND THE NOVEMBER 22-28, 1991 EDITION OF THE EUROPEAN.

MS. BELOFF HAS WRITTEN EXTENSIVELY ON THE SOVIET BLOC AND YUGOSLAVIA.

[From the European, Nov. 22, 1991

WHY THE ABOMINABLE SERBS DO HAVE A CASE

Television brings home to all of us the horrors of civil war and there is a passionate and growing feeling here that harsh measures are needed to punish the Serbs for what looks to the outside world like a brutal war of communist aggression.

In considering appropriate measures, however, we need to distinguish three separate disturbers of the peace the federal army, the Serb Government, and the leaders of the Serb-inhabated regions of Croatia. The over-mechanised, miserably-led federal army is guilty of shelling Dubrovnik and of demolishing several Croat towns and villages. Its founder Tito was half-Croat, half-Slovene and the majority of senior officers -- though by no means all -- are from Serbia-proper or from Serb-inhabited regions of Croatia.

During the last war, hundreds of thousands of the people from these regions of Croatia were massacred by the Nazi-style Ustashi installed by the German occupiers. The Serb survivors fled to Tito's communist-led guerrillas, the only resistance force operating in that region. It is often assumed that all fights in Yugoslavia are ethnically based. In fact, these peasants formed the backbone of the Partisan army and found themselves forced to fight a long and bloody war against the Serb resisters from Serbia itself, who mainly backed Drazha Milhasilovic, loyal to the exiled king.

After the Russians freed Belgrade and the Allies gave unconditional support to Tito, he was well placed to seize power and kill off his enemies and potential enemies. Turning a blind eye to the slaughter, the West constantly supported Tito and his successors, lavishly supplying the federal army whose officers lived well and had enormous self-interest in preserving the system.

Last year a leading communist officer, Admiral Mamula, was given a hero's welcome when he addressed the Royal United Services Institute in London. He returned, no doubt believing that if the army intervened to preserve the Tito legacy, they could count on Western support.

A solid cause for intervention was supplied when the Slovenes provocatively hauled down the flag on Yugoslavia's internationally-recognized frontier with Austria. The officers, selected for politically rather than military qualities, were anxious, not to lose soldiers and sent heavy armour and aircraft with only a handful of troops. These were easily outnumbered by the Slovene local militia and the world was treated to a televised spectacle of David beating Goliath.

The Croat nationalist leader Franjo Tudjman, not to be outdone, implemented his own UDI by blockading all of the federal units on Croatian soil. These consisted mainly of conscripts stationed in strategic areas. Deprived of food, light and heating, local commanders appealed to Belgrade, giving the army a legal excuse for invading Croatia. In fact, as we know, from leaks in the amazingly free Belgrade Press, they were taking the occasion to reconquer as much of Tito's Yugoslavia as possible. They were also frequently colluding with Serb President Slobodan Milosevic, though his agenda was different -- a greater Serbia under his own control.

Milosevic, like many communists in post-communist eastern Europe, had draped himself in national colors. Tito had always acted on the assumption a strong Serbia means a weak Yugoslavia and his successor Milosevic had plenty of accumulated Serb resentments to play on.

As Tito rigidly censored the media few know that in 1968 after riots, and disturbances, he had transferred power, patronage and most important of all, total police control, from the Serbs to a corrupt gang of Albanians loyal to himself. These enriched themselves from the then lavish development funds and won support by encouraging their compatriots to take revenge on the Serb minority which, in many villages, were put in fear of their lives.

Last year Milosevic whipped up the Serbs in Croatia, who pressed for inclusion in his Greater Serbia. The local military and irregulars from these regions constitute the third Serb participant in the present disorders. When Tudjman came to power he misguidedly dispatched his armed followers to try to take over official buildings and police stations from Serb areas, where the right to autonomy had existed since the 17th century. The Habsburgs had given land and home rule to Serb refuges from the Ottoman empire, in return for helping in defending them against the Turks.

Armed Serb groups fighting in Croatia are motivated by memories of the wartime genocide and are as fanatically self-righteous as the Croats, now fighting to the death in Vukovar. These refuse to admit -- and, in the case of the younger generation, probably do not even know -- the Ustashi holocaust.

It would take a colossal international police force to stop the fighting in a country where there are so many weapons so widely and uncontrollably spread among soldiers, looters and mercenaries, some of them evidently enjoying the fray.

But though the extremists speak the loudest and their views dominate Western newspapers, there is no serious reason to doubt that the vast majority of Yugoslavs are appalled by the violence and eager for peace.

There is perhaps a flicker of hope in a deal currently being pressed by the European peacemaker Lord Carrington and apparently agreed, at least in principle, by Tudjman and Milosevic. The federal army would peacefully withdraw from Croatia while the Serb enclaves would be placed under international authority until calmer times when a plebiscite would then decide their future.

The monstrous behaviour of the federal army of the Milosevic government and of some Serb irregulars does not justify attributing all the violence to the abominable Serbs. Since Tudjman became president, Serbs in mixed regions have been harrased, deprived of jobs, had their homes burnt down and more than 100,000 have been forced to flee.

For this reason, Lord Carrington is right to insist that the Serbs within Croatia have a right to international protection, and however indignant we may feel about the behaviour of some of their compatriots, we should support him.

[*E4214] [From The Washington Post, Nov. 19, 1991]

HOPE AND HISTORY IN YUGOSLAVIA

(by Nora Beloff)

There is a strong and growing feeling, on both sides of the Atlantic, that the civilized world cannot stand idly by while a trigger-happy minority of Yugoslavs, some of whom evidently enjoy fighting, are allowed by Serb and Croat leaders to kill civilians and imperil some of Europe's most precious monuments.

Sanctions have been imposed, the United Nations has been asked to organize an oil embargo, and yesterday the West Europeans agreed to commit naval forces to protect Red Cross missions rescuing refugees from Dubrovnik and other Adriatic ports.

On the diplomatic side Lord Carrington, the European peacemaker, has outlined a possible deal. Croatia would be recognized, but its territory would exclude enclaves where the Serbs are a majority. These would be placed under international governance for 10 years or more with a view to a plebiscite in which the people themselves would decide their future.

All this could easily collapse, plunging the country into even greater violence, either because extremists sabotaged the deal or because the array of private militias, looters and mercenaries took it on themselves to shatter the peace. So far no country is willing to take on the human and material costs of a force sufficient to impose peace. But while there is talk there is hope, and we in the West could also help to dampen fanaticism by holding and conveying a balanced and sympathetic view to peoples in distress.

First, we must rid ourselves of the absurd and unhistorical proposition that Serbs and Croats cannot peacefully coexist. Under the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Orthodox Serbs were invited to settle in the imperial province of Croatia, to defend the territory against the Turks. After the creation of Yugoslavia, the Serb minority had amicable relations with the popular Croat Peasant Party and, under its leader Macek, ran joint electoral campaigns. In 1941 the Germans occupied Zagreb and installed the Ustashas, a Croat equivalent of the Nazis, previously an outlawed terrorist group. These were committed to a genocidal policy and proceeded to murder hundreds of thousands of Serbs.

All the Serbs were pro-allied, but whereas in Serbia proper the activists mostly joined Mihailovic's home army, loyal to the king, in Croatia, those who escaped the Ustashas joined Tito's guerrillas, the only locally accessible resistance force. They thus became the backbone of the Communist-led Partisans.

Mendacity has always been indispensable to Communist systems, and Tito's biggest lie, coercively imposed, held that virtually everyone had been Partisan and that any form of nationalism, however moderate, was treachery. As a consequence, whereas in Germany, the war was followed by systematic de-Nazification, Zagreb simply turned its back on the past. Today, again, the Ustasha flag has been raised, and whereas in Zagreb untaught youths deny the holocaust, in Belgrade figures are wildly exaggerated.

The internal borders, which we treat as permanent features of Yugoslavia, were in reality drawn up secretly by Tito's men in 1943 and were designed as administrative boundaries, within a centrally planned Stalinist state. Tito himself was, of course, aware of the vitality of ethnic feeling, and after physically liquidating his enemies and potential enemies, he suspended terror and ruled primarily by playing off the communities against each other. The Albanians in Kosovo, who in 1945-46 lost thousands of lives resisting forcible reincorporation into Yugoslavia, were at first subject to Stalinist repression by the federal police, locally enforced by Serbs. Then, after 1968 disturbances in Pristina (capital of Kosovo) , Tito switched sides. He transferred power, which in a collectivized society also means effective ownership, to a corrupt group of Albanians. These used development funds to enrich themselves and gained popularity by allowing their compatriots to take revenge on the Serbs. As Tito banned news reporting, this phase of Kosovo's history was unknown to the outside world.

It was by draping himself in nationalist colors and leading a reconquest of Kosovo that in the late 1980s, Slobodan Milosevic, though a Communist leader, survived the East European revulsion against Communist rule. But we were by then in the glasnost era, everything was open, and international groups, including Amnesty, Helsinki Watch, groups of parliamentarians and congressmen, came in and reported that Albanians were being repressed. No one told them that previously it was the Serbs who had been at the receiving end.

In Croatia and Slovenia, as in Serbia, the post-Communist movements have been national rather than liberal, even though all three now brandish democratic and free enterprise slogans. In Croatia the ex-Partisan general Franjo Tudjman was elected president. He had fallen out with Tito and served two prison sentences on charges of nationalism. By the time I first met him in 1980, he was already pathologically anti-Serb. He has allowed himself to be surrounded by Ustasha sympathizers, many of them returning from Canada and Australia.

Tudjman armed his followers, and though they were unable to break into the all-Serb regions, which were ferociously defended, in areas of Croat majority they made life for the Serbs impossible. With jobs denied and homes burnt down, tens of thousands fled long before the federal army and the international community intervened. On a smaller scale, the Serbs retaliated.

In Dubrovnik, 1 year ago, a young Croat girl running her own travel agency described the ravages of the Tudjman regime. To her horror, this little Venice was being transformed into a nationalist stronghold, and she found herself ostracized by her fellow-citizens for rejecting ethnic hatreds which she felt were ruining the country.

The Slovenes also elected a nationalist government, and the new ministers deliberately provoked federal intervention by defiantly hauling down the Yugoslav flag on the Austrian frontier. Tudjman got in first with his independence declaration, and the federal army, heavily outmanned, left Slovenia to concentrate on their more formidable foe.

The misnamed People's Army is the one institution that has outlasted Tito. He had divided his armed forces into territorial units, many of which have now fallen under secessionist control, and a federal army, manned by professional officers, politically selected and committed to preserving Tito's federation. Confronted with massive desertions, they have relied on heavy guns, missiles and aircraft, madly inappropriate for local fighting but -- thanks to their founder -- lavishly available.

Carrington has grasped the complexities of the struggle. Although, like President Bush, he is under pressure to recognize Croatia and Slovenia in their present boundaries, he is holding back until there are adequate guarantees of safety for all the minorities in Yugoslavia, particularly for the Serbs in Croatia. After their recent experiences, these could not be expected to settle for Croat promises of good behavior.

Nora Beloff has written extensively on the Soviet bloc and Yugoslavia.