Like so many others, Mara Gusak lost everything when war came to her village in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Gusak and her family were forced from their homes by Serb “ethnic cleansers.” Two of her children ended up in Germany, where they remain.
“They have university degrees, and today they are cleaning toilets,” she says, bitterly.
For five years, Gusak, 67 and a widow, endured the usual plight of refugees. She shuttled between grim government resettlement centers and the overcrowded flats of relatives. Everything she owned fit in a single suitcase. Her most precious possessions were two photo albums, reminders of better times.
Earlier this year, Croatia’s government provided Gusak and other Bosnian Croat refugees from the village of Korace new homes in Dragotina, a Serb village in Croatia whose residents fled during the Croatian army’s devastating Krajina offensive two summers ago.
Gusak said it didn’t “feel right” to be living in someone else’s house. She would prefer to return to her own house in her own village in Bosnia, but there is little chance of that happening while Radovan Karadzic remains the backstage power in Republika Srpska, the Serb-controlled part of Bosnia.
Her misfortune, however, has turned out to be quite useful for the Croatian government. She and other Croat refugees from Bosnia have become pawns in an ambitious scheme by the government to settle ethnic Croats in areas of Croatia from which Serbs have been driven. Diplomats and human rights activists say it is a flagrant attempt to foreclose permanently the return of Serb refugees.
Gusak’s story illustrates how interconnected the refugee problem is across the former Yugoslavia. Her situation shows how the failure of the Western allies to remove alleged war criminals such as Karadzic from the scene in Bosnia allows other ardently nationalistic leaders such as Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman to further their own policies of ethnic exclusivity.
“What Tudjman is doing is not genocide, but it is still ethnic cleansing,” said Bozo Kovacevic, head of the Zagreb-based Croatia Helsinki Committee. “Tudjman does not want Serbs in Croatia. He wants Croats from all over the former Yugoslavia to be here. It’s not an official policy, but it’s obvious.
“When a Croat from Bosnia wants a house here, he has no trouble getting one. But when a Serb wants to go back to his own house–even when it’s empty–it’s almost impossible,” Kovacevic said.
Before the war, nearly 600,000 ethnic Serbs lived in Croatia, about 12 percent of the total population. Today, the Serbs number fewer than 150,000, most of them elderly or partners in mixed marriages.
Many Serbs left during the first few months of fighting in 1991-92. But the most dramatic exodus took place over a few days in August 1995 when 200,000 Serbs fled their homes ahead of the Croatian army’s sweep through the Krajina, a region that had been a Serb homeland for four centuries.
Over the last year, the Croatian government has launched a huge reconstruction effort in the Krajina. More than $600 million has been committed to the undertaking. Thousands of damaged Serb homes have been repaired–but not for the benefit of the Serb owners.
“Don’t misunderstand, the Croatian government is not being driven by some humanitarian impulse. This is a conscious program of resettlement,” said one Western diplomat.
The repaired homes are being turned over to Croats. Most are being given to refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina such as Gusak, who has little chance of returning to her house in what is now Republika Srpska. Others are being given to Croatian citizens whose own houses were destroyed in the fighting.
The houses also are being used, however, to lure Croats from other parts of the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere in the region. One former Serb village has been resettled by Albanian-speaking Croats from Kosovo. A few Croatian citizens are taking advantage of their government’s largess and acquiring second, third and fourth homes for next to nothing.
In some towns Croatian flags are draped from nearly every building, Signs lettered in Cyrillic have been obliterated or replaced by ones in the Latin alphabet. Individual Croats stake their claim to Serb houses by spray-painting zauzeto on the walls. It means “taken.”
Only about 15,000 ethnic Serbs remain in the Krajina. A few who have attempted to return have been met with violent attacks by the new Croat inhabitants. Croatian police have done nothing to stop the attacks. In some cases, the police have been accused of instigating the violence.
In one of the worst cases documented by human rights workers, eight Serbs who attempted to move back to their homes in the village of Kostajnica last May were set upon by a mob of Croats, some in military uniforms. A Serb woman was nearly lynched. A man was forced to eat dirt. The Serbs fled in terror as more than a dozen homes were torched.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who was in Croatia at the time, made a point of traveling to Kostajnica to inspect the damage. She denounced Tudjman and other Croatian officials for doing nothing to protect the returning Serbs. Tudjman insisted only one house had burned.
Most of the Serbs who fled the Krajina in 1995 are now living in Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, although at least 40,000 are living in eastern Slavonia, the last Serb enclave in Croatia. Now under United Nations administration, eastern Slavonia was supposed to revert to full Croatian control last month.
The Clinton administration has blocked the transfer of authority until the Tudjman government begins to allow the return of Serb refugees to all parts of Croatia.
About 8,000 Serbs have applied to return to their homes in the Krajina, but few have succeeded. The UN has attempted to organize the return of some who now live in eastern Slavonia, but so far the numbers are minuscule.
Croatian law regards Croats who fled their homes during the war as “displaced persons” entitled to restoration of property rights and full compensation. It views Serb citizens of Croatia routed from their homes by the Croatian army and now living in eastern Slavonia as “internal migrants” who left “voluntarily” and who, therefore, are entitled to nothing.
What typically happens is that as soon as a Serb family applies to reclaim an empty house, Croatian authorities quickly assign a Croat family to move into the house–or the Serbs return to find the house has just been destroyed by fire.
The United States has grown increasingly frustrated with the Tudjman regime, its erstwhile ally in the Bosnian war. Albright was unusually blunt in her recent meetings with Croatian officials. The U.S. has backed up the strong words not only by delaying the return of eastern Slavonia but also by taking the unusual step of holding up millions of dollars in loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
