UNRECONSTRUCTED NAZISM ON DISPLAY

The Germans warmly support the Croats.

Kenneth Roberts says this reuniting of

second world war allies is distasteful

Split

THE PRIESTS were in black, as were the gunmen — two of each, across a ping-pong table, playing red-faced and shouting for forfeits of travarica, the local herb brandy. A scatter of nuns sat round the room, drinking Turkish coffee served by a buxom, peroxided blonde with thick make- up and a dark moustache. Party time in Croat-controlled Bosnia — Hogarth would have had a field day.

I had been invited by Goran, who stood at the door, mirror sunglasses reflecting the neon light, grenades hooked into his bootlaces. He too was in black — black T-

shirt, black fatigues straining against a generous gut, black fingerless gloves, black pistols, and black beret sporting the silver badge of the second world war Ustasha fascists. I had first met him that afternoon, at the entrance to the Mostar headquar- ters of the Croatian Defence Council (Hrvatsko Vijece Obrane, or HVO). He had introduced himself memorably, in a broad American accent: `Ah'm Goran. Ah like three things in life: Ah like kissin', Ah like fuckin' an' Ah like killin'.' A British army driver, smoking by his Land-Rover, had offered helpful advice between puffs — 'I'd kiss 'im 'n drop me trousers, mate

— two out of three ain't bad.'

But Goran had contented himself with handing me his pre-war business card, which bore a photo of the Catholic shrine at nearby Medjugorje and the legend `Goran's Taxis and Tours — Pilgrimages a Speciality'. His gleaming Mercedes, also black, shone amongst the rubble. Its taxi sign had been replaced by an HVO badge and grenades rolled on the dashboard: Goran's taxi-driving days were over, at least temporarily. Fifty years old, and Rambo at last. I don't know whom Goran kisses, but he kills Muslims. His tally is branded into the butt of his AK-47. He considers the 'Turks' a stain on the Catholic lands of Hercegovina and is an enthusiastic supporter of the symbolic destruction of Mostar's 500-year-old Ottoman bridge. Taught the Turks a les- son. Goran is unlikely to be impressed by this week's agreement on a Muslim-Croat federation.

There are many Gorans in Bosnia now, in all the armies, but those in Croat ranks are the most distasteful for their open dis- play of unreconstructed Nazism. Such dis- play is not limited to Bosnia — the swastikas daubed on gutted Bosnian Mus- lim homes are replicated in Croatia proper, sprayed on walls alongside the horseshoe `If of Ustasha. The Croatian government has revived many of the paraphernalia of the Nazi puppet regime headed by Ante Pavelic in the early 1940s. Streets and squares have been renamed after Ustasha heroes. Zagreb's former Square of the Vic- tims of Fascism — named in memory of the millions of Jewish, Serb and Muslim victims of Pavelic's concentration camps and massacres — is now the Square of the Rulers of Croatia. Plans are well under way to reinstate the kuna, the currency of the fascist state. The Croatian flag once again sports the sahovnica, the red and white chequered shield which symbolised Pavelic's state — symbolism which some veterans of Tito's army equate with a reunited Germany flying the swastika. The Croatian President, Franjo Tudj- man, is himself a former Partisan. But in a display of coat-turning exceeded only by his ex-communist counterpart in Belgrade, he has become lioniser-in-chief of the `Independent Croatia' which his erstwhile Nazi enemies established in Zagreb in 1941. This unashamed harking back to the second world war is commonplace — the Croatia Airlines in-flight magazine now trumpets the 're-emergence of Indepen- dent Croatia', leaving out the fact that its only previous emergence was by Hitlerian decree, while the government suggests reburying Ustasha dead in the same plot as the Jewish victims of Croat-run concentra- tion camps. Hand in hand with this glorying in for- mer fascism walks Croatia's growing pre- tence of being a sound European nation. The EC flag flutters all around the coun- try, normally in close juxtaposition to the Croat emblem. Croatian papers refer con- stantly to the modern European nature of the nation, as if such repetition would eventually allow them to slide unnoticed through the EC's back door. To be sure, Croatia looks European. Zagreb's opera house is as perfect an Aus- tro-Hungarian inheritance as will be found anywhere outside Austria. The Italianate coastal towns of Istria and Dalmatia owe as much to Greek and Venetian expansion as any Mediterranean ports. It is only the atmosphere of the place that jars. The one aspect of governing 'Independent Croatia' in which Tudjman has found immediate common ground with his fascist predeces- sor is the omnipresence of the state. The country lives under a heavy police influence, overt and secret. Military police- men are entitled to stop cars in the street, as are the traffic cops. Political opponents run old-fashioned risks — in September nine leading members of the secessionist Dalmatian Action Party were incarcerated `on suspicion' after their offices had been destroyed by a bomb. Non-Croat citizens are effectively without rights — in Novem- ber the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights claimed that over 1,500 non-Croat families had been forced from their homes in Split alone.

The media are not disposed to make waves — Hrvatska Television is state-con- trolled and managed by one of Tudjman's closest cronies, a former vice-president. Most of the major newspapers are owned by government pension funds, or leading supporters of Tudjman's HDZ party. Even so, editors who display independence of thought find themselves periodically sum- moned to police offices for 'guidance'. The military police recently issued instructions that no paper should refer to the Serbian Krajina without the prefix 'so-called' or `self-declared'.

Much of the heavy-handedness and most of the fascist symbolism derive from the new-found influence of the Croat dias- pora. Expatriate Croats, many of them for- mer Ustasha activists who fled to South America or Australia after Tito's victory, leapt to the defence of Croatia in 1991, pumping more than $8 million into the coffers of Tudjman's party as Yugoslav army tanks tried to batter Zagreb back into the Federation. Their subsequent financial and military assistance has gained them a strong voice in domestic policy.

One of the strongest voices is that of Gojko Susak, a Canadian millionaire whose practical and financial contributions in 1991 resulted in his appointment as Croatia's defence minister. With continu- ing influence over the inflow of funds, Susak and his partners have guided a gigantic rearmament programme in open defiance of UN and EC embargos. Over the last year the Croatian air force has increased its fleet of MIG-21 aircraft and MI-17 helicopters several hundredfold and has also bought a number of Hind heli- copter gunships. The army has upgraded its weaponry of all natures, from small arms to anti-tank missiles. The helicopters, along with Croatian army troops and armoured vehicles, have been deployed in operations against the Muslims in central Bosnia in full view of EC monitors and British troops.

From a purely domestic viewpoint, all of this can be satisfactorily explained. Croatia is an embryonic and vulnerable nation which has over the past two years suffered humiliating reverses at the hands of the Krajina Serbs and the Bosnian Muslims. Rabble-rousing nationalism and heavy- handed rule can be rationalised as essen- tial means to the end of victory. Flouting international resolutions and embargos is a cheap way for an embattled leader to show strength — especially when the interna- tional community turns a blind eye.

It is less easy to explain that lack of international reaction to the resurgent fas- cism so evident in the building of the new Croat nation. British suggestions of eco- nomic sanctions on account of Croatia's military involvement in Bosnia have been repeatedly blocked by Germany. German monetary aid has flowed into Zagreb's cof- fers. High-ranking Bundeswehr officers have visited the Croatian army, including units with elements deployed against the Bosnian Muslims. In November the Croa- tian press announced that the American government had signed a contract for the repair of US naval vessels in Croat ports. And when the UN attempted weakly to threaten Zagreb with Serb-style sanctions in order to lift the Croat blockade of key Bosnian routes, the Americans declared that the time was not ripe for `symmetry' in sanctions, a view enthusiastically endorsed by the Papal nuncio in Zagreb.

There are several possible explanations for such international tolerance. First, the bulk of Catholic German opinion seems vaguely well disposed towards Croatia in its struggle against Islamic or Orthodox foes. Many Germans have fond memories of or continuing links with Croatia, which in the 1980s became the German holiday- maker's equivalent of the Costa Brava. The Bonn government produces uncon- vincing reasons for its policy of support a desire to avoid domestic trouble from Croat gastarbeiters, or "a need to maintain links in order to exert pressure on Zagreb. But at present there are also upwards of 250,000 Bosnian refugees in Germany, some of them made homeless by Croat troops. And, almost two years into the Bosnian war, there is no discernible sign of German influence preventing Croat atroc- ities. The uncomfortable truth appears to be that Germany is siding with Croatia, at least tacitly, to avoid domestic pressure from those who feel emotional ties with their former partners in tourism and geno- cide.

On the American side, there are none so blind as those who will not see. Swastikas, black uniforms, rape and pillage fade into insignificance beside the demonic image which the State Department has built for the Serbs. To talk to a US official about Serbia in 1994 is to hear powerful echoes of Iran in 1979. As in Vietnam and Central America, the enemy of America's enemy is America's friend, no matter how reprehensible. This week, in Washington, Goran and his colleagues will be trans- formed from brutal thugs into stout defenders against Serb aggression.

The only other party with any knowledge of the area, the UN, has no reason to love the Croats, having had daily experience of their excesses and obstructionism, both in Croatia and in Hercegovina. But the bloat- ed hierarchies of the UNHCR and UNPROFOR are too comfortably installed in Zagreb, single-handedly driving up rental and restaurant prices, to press for the sanctions which would logically lead to their removal to less salubrious surround- ings.

Back at Goran's party, a sweat-soaked priest threw an arm across my shoulder, the other waving to embrace the room. `The Holy Trinity,' he roared. 'The Church sustains us, the HVO protects us, Caritas [the Catholic aid agency] feeds us.' And the world conveniently ignores us, he might have added.