The Croat victory in the Krajina shows that the Serbs are not invincible – but it is not necessarily good news for Bosnia
The past week has seen the most significant turning point in the war in former Yugoslavia since it began in 1991. On that, everyone agrees, regardless of political persuasion. For the first time, the forces of Serb nationalism have suffered an overwhelming – in fact, catastrophic – military defeat, and have been forced to cede territory seized and "ethnically cleansed" in the first couple of years of the conflict.
The first, obvious lesson of the successful Croatian assault that took the Krajina, overthrew the rebel Serb nationalist regime in Knin and relieved the besieged Bosnian government enclave of Bihac, is that the Serbs are far from invincible on the battlefield. They can be forced to yield their conquests. Slobodan Milosevic rose to power in the 19805 promising a Greater Serbia stretching from the Macedonian border with Greece to the Adriatic coast. His militarist dream motivated the Serb nationalist land-grab in Croatia and then Bosnia when the Croats and Bosnians decided to secede from Yugoslavia rather than submit to his hegemony. Now it is shattered.
It is hardly surprising that the first response to the news of the Croatian victory among the Bosnians fighting Serb nationalist occupation of their own country was unalloyed glee. Of course, the Krajina Serb forces were not as large or as well-equipped as those of the Bosnian Serbs, and it is relatively easy to reinforce the Bosnian Serbs from Serbia proper, particularly in eastern Bosnia. It is unlikely to be as easy to crush the Bosnian Serb army as it was to crush its Krajina counterpart.
Nevertheless, just weeks after the fall of Srebrenica and Zepa to the Bosnian Serbs, the Bosnians appeared, in the immediate aftermath of the Croatian victory, to have grounds for optimism. With Serb morale at an all-time low, the Bosnian Serb leadership apparently irrevocably divided and Bihac relieved, it seemed that the military prospects of the Bosnian government – and therefore the prospects of restoring a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, liberal society to the whole of Bosnia – were rosier than they had been since the beginning of the war.
As the dust has settled, however, the picture has begun to look more complex and rather less optimistic. Most obviously, almost the entire Serbian population of the Krajina – estimates range up to 200,000 people – have decided to flee rather than find out whether the Croats will keep their promises of democratic rights and religious tolerance. No matter that it appears, on the scanty available evidence, that the Croat army did not engage in "ethnic cleansing" as practised by Serb nationalists in Bosnia – the result is a giant refugee crisis, accurately described by a United Nations High Commission for Refugees spokesperson as "a major humanitarian catastrophe". Croatia's insistence that it will welcome the return of Serb Croat citizens and will guarantee the rights of all who are not war criminals will reassure only a handful of those who have left. Even at this early stage, it seems likely that many Krajina Serbs will become permanent exiles in Serb-occupied Bosnia, adopting a stance of resentful ultra-nationalism.
Then there is the whole question of the intentions of Croatian president Franjo Tudjman now that he has taken the Krajina. Is there an understanding with Milosevic, formal or informal, for the latter to sit back and watch the Croats defeat the Krajina Serbs in return for Tudjman allowing the Serbs to keep Eastern Slavonia? More important, is there a deal to carve up Bosnia between Belgrade and Zagreb? So far, the evidence for a Tudjman-Milosevic pact is weak and circumstantial: Tudjman's scribblings on the back of a menu, Milosevic's inaction last weekend and his attempt to supplant Radovan Karadzic with Ratko Mladic as Bosnian Serb leader. The evidence against, on the other hand, is no stronger: veiled Croatian government threats to take Eastern Slavonia by force, Tudjman's public appearance with his ally president Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia, the despatch of Serbian tanks in an easterly direction.
Obviously, a deal is a worse prospect for the Bosnians than no deal – but even in the absence of one there is a real danger that the Sarajevo government will now find itself even more at the mercy of Zagreb's whims than it has been so far. Control of supply routes to Bosnia has long been used by the Croats to ensure that the Bosnian government has only the military capacity that they want it to have. With Tudjman successful in his primary aim of taking the Krajina, the Bosnians could find all too easily that their supply of arms is effectively cut off. More than ever, it is imperative that the arms embargo on the Bosnian government is lifted.
