Croatian Victory in Krajina Region

* While the U.S. may have looked the other way as Croatia reasserted its control over the rebellious Krajina region, there is little evidence to support Walter Russell Mead’s hypothesis that the U.S. “sent in the Croats,” “helped train the Croatian attackers,” or orchestrated arms shipments (Opinion, Aug. 13).

Croatia was hellbent on re-integrating the Krajina and needed no encouragement from the U.S. The region has been Croatian territory for hundreds of years, albeit with a large Serbian population. The U.S. generals assisting the Croats are retired officers working under contract to the U.S. State Department to create a civilian command structure for the relatively new Croatian army and a far cry from training the Croats to retake the Krajina.

As to arms shipments, where is Mead’s proof of U.S. government involvement? If the U.S. was willing to surreptitiously break the U.N. arms embargo to help Croatia, wouldn’t we have done the same for the Bosnian government, the more aggrieved victim by U.S. analysis? Croatia, the second richest of the former Yugoslav states, and the extensive Croatian emigre community have been able to finance the heavy weaponry needed to retake the Krajina.

Finally, there is no evidence that the Croatian government or army has engaged in ethnic cleansing. While over 100,000 Serbs have indeed fled the Krajina, there are literally no reports of the systematic house-to-house campaigns of intimidation, summary execution, rape, incarceration and deportation practiced by the Bosnian Serbs against Croat and Muslim civilians over the last four years. It is ludicrous for Mead to compare a few isolated incidents of buses being stoned or the regrettable deaths of a few Serb refugees at the hands of inflamed Croat soldiers to the Serbian military practice of executing thousands upon thousands of noncombatants and captured soldiers alike.

MARK RYAVEC

Venice

* How ironic that when The Times at least partially abandons its head-in-the-sand stance on the Balkans, you’re attacked for your “ignorance” by a pro-Serb zealot who demonstrates a pretty impressive ignorance of history himself (letters, Aug. 11). The fact that the Croats are the ones behaving like savages today in no way excuses the inhumanity of the Serbs over the past four years. The Bosnian Serb leaders weren’t indicted for war crimes because they’re naughty boys, they were indicted for mass murder, gang rapes, genocide and atrocities on a scale not seen since World War II.

And in his anti-German diatribe, your reader is apparently unaware that Serbia owes its liberation from the Ottoman Turks largely to the efforts of a German (Bismarck). But if he hasn’t heard about history made in the 1990s, how can he be expected to know anything about 1878?

ALLEN E. KAHN

Playa del Rey

* In “Serbs’ flight Is Latest Turn in Cycle of Hatred” (Aug. 11), the word Chetnik is explained as “referring to the Serbian royalists known for their brutality in both world wars.” These Chetniks, if they showed any brutality at all, were exercising it towards the Germans and the Austro-Hungarians, who in both in stances invaded their country, and the Croat Ustashas, who were the Germans’ allies. If I remember correctly, the U.S. and the Serbs were fighting on the same side, while the Germans and the Austro-Hungarians were the enemies!

As to Krajina and huge parts of Bosnia--they have for centuries been Serbian lands.

MIKE and ELENA GOJICH

Sun City