Why is Croatia right ?
Mirko Galich
Correspondent from Paris
Written on the 10th of October 1995.
After Croatia has regained its territory of western Slavonia and krajina there are still eastern Slavonia, western Srijem and Baranja to be liberated and reintegrated. That area represents 4.5% of the entire territory of Croatia located mainly at the right side of the Danube river and is occupied since the autumn of 1991 by Serb secessionists with help of Yugoslav People's Army. In the rebellion whose headquarters was in Belgrade Croatian Serbs of that area declared their own authorities and separation from Croatia planning to join "greater Serbia".
Plan of separating Croatian territories from Croatia fails being unrealistic and without foundation. Are last Serb rebels going to accept Croatian government and peaceful reintegration? Croatian authorities kept emphasizing they want peaceful solution also for krajina but among Serb leaders they didn't find partners for peace. Now they are proposing it to Serb leaders in eastern Slavonia; are they going to be more reasonable? Judging upon fundamental agreement which was made in the first round of negotiations in Erdut, a peaceful way to return the last part of occupied Croatian territory is not excluded. But not without certain difficulties because Serb negotiators have already shown that time is important to them (they seek transitive authorities for a 5 year period).
Croatia is demanding that those territories in eastern part of the country are to be returned in Croatia and is stating all its reasons a country can have. Historically: areas that were captured in 1991 by Serb rebels who were planning to join (greater) Serbia were never part of Serbia but part of Croatia (before this area was a part of Slavonia as one of Croatian constituent parts). What is more, history isn't Serb ally not even in case of wider areas of Vojvodina that were part of Austrian-Hungarian monarchy until 1918. Only after 1945, (after big "colonization") that area has become ethnically mostly Serbian. Ethnically speaking in eastern Slavonia, western Srijem and Baranja (where Croatian Serbs declared krajina in 1991) Serbs were never a majority. What is more, Serbs mainly didn't exceed a quarter (only in some parts the third as in Vukovar) while Croats were relative majority and with local minorities (Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Russians...) the absolute majority. Speaking politically or law-politically area that is still under Serb control was recognized as Croatian territory or a territory of the Republic of Croatia. In former Yugoslavia that in 1945 constituted its borders (Milovan Djilas, Montenegrin and later Tito's opponent and communist dissident led the borders' commission) Vukovar and Beli Manastir (Baranja) at the right coast of the Danube and Ilok at the left coast were included in Croatia. Criteria were, as Djilas often emphasized on the eve of his death, only ethnical.
Borders of former Yugoslavia were recognized by the international community in 1992 when they recognized all the new countries that have risen when Yugoslav federation fell to pieces. On the other hand internal borders of former Yugoslavia became internationally recognized borders of new countries: Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia... They were accepted to the UN with those borders, which are also stated in the documents of the European Union that at the height of war and Serbian aggression obliged not to recognize changing of borders by force. Those borders are also recognized by many resolutions of UN Security Council, every single one of them recognizing sovereignty of the countries in their internationally recognized borders.
There is no doubt at all concerning international law as from the historic or ethnic point of view to whom the area of eastern Slavonia, western Srijem and Baranja belongs. It is Croatian territory that is recognized by the international community as a part of Croatia. Only one thing is unknown: what is the way to return that area to Croatia? Government in Zagreb wants it to be peacefully without casualties. If rebel Serbs agree to it that last dispute of Croatia could be solved peacefully through negotiations.
Written by Mirko Galich, the corespondent of Vjesnik from Paris