Tough Road Ahead for Bid to Re-Integrate Eastern Slavonia Into Croatia

Inside an elementary school polka-dotted by artillery fire, Croatian Serb voters took a last stand Sunday against the inevitable: the return of this Serb-held enclave to Croatian rule.

“If it’s possible, I would like to stay--my home and children and grandchildren are here,” said 63-year-old Savo Colovic, who joined other Serbs in approving a largely symbolic referendum calling for, in effect, a degree of political autonomy. “We can stay only if we have guarantees that we will not be mistreated and will have equal rights.”

The fertile, once-rich Eastern Slavonia region on the Danube River in northeastern Croatia was seized by Serbian gunmen nearly six years ago in one of the earliest and most punishing assaults of what would become a wider Balkan war. Today it is one of the last areas of conflict to be resolved.

A 5,000-strong U.N. mission is guiding Eastern Slavonia through a delicate transition that will re-integrate the region into Croatia by the end of the year and oversee the return home of thousands of refugees.

The $20-million-a-month mission has gone relatively smoothly thus far, but in the months ahead the hardest part begins.

An estimated 60,000 to 80,000 Croats who were brutally expelled from their homes are agitating to return as soon as possible, while as many as 150,000 Serbs in the region--many driven from their homes by fighting elsewhere--are afraid of being governed by a Croatian state they once fought. Violent clashes involving returning refugees seem inevitable.

Serbian militias backed by the Yugoslav army battled Croatia’s move to independence in 1991 in a short war that claimed 10,000 lives and left a third of Croatia in Serbian hands. The Croatian army, in two blitz offensives in 1995, recaptured most of the Serb-controlled territory--except for Eastern Slavonia--and triggered a massive flight of nearly 200,000 Serbs. Many ended up in Eastern Slavonia, joining other Serbs who had always lived there.

After Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic agreed, as part of U.S.-backed peace talks, to relinquish control of Eastern Slavonia, Jacques Klein, a career U.S. diplomat and Air Force Reserve general, was put in charge of a U.N. transition mission early last year.

Klein and other U.N. officials are struggling to avert the kind of mass exodus of Serbs that took place after Serb-held suburbs of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, were restored to Muslim-Croat government control after the Bosnian war ended in December 1995. They are encouraging Serbs to stay and obtain Croatian citizenship, and they are pressuring Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, an ardent nationalist, to respect the Serbs’ civil and human rights.

A key test will come next Sunday, when local elections are held. If the Eastern Slavonia experiment works, it will be a rare victory amid the ruins of the former Yugoslav federation.

Signs are mixed. Croatian officials, despite promises made by Tudjman, appear to be obstructing efforts by some Serbs to obtain citizenship and voting documents. In two days of interviews in Vukovar, the most important city in Eastern Slavonia, Serbs lining up to apply for papers told of numerous problems, such as incorrect addresses or misspelled names, that voided their documents.

At the same time, many Serbs, unwilling to admit that they must live under Croatian authority, have been putting off the paperwork until the last minute.

“I’m trying to persuade a Croatian government--that doesn’t want to--to issue documents to Serbs--who don’t want to take them,” an exasperated Klein said in an interview. “Does that tell you how complicated it is?”

Over the weekend, Klein ordered voter registration for Sunday’s election to be extended until Tuesday to enfranchise more Serbs.

The Serbs believe they have good reason to fear Croatian rule. Following the 1995 Croatian army offenses, Serbs who stayed behind suffered considerable abuse, human rights groups say. Long after the fighting ended, elderly Serbian women and men were killed in their homes, and Croatian forces were accused of rampant looting and arson.

In a January letter of intent, and in verbal agreements since, Tudjman has offered a number of concessions to Serbs who will live in Eastern Slavonia when it reverts to Croatian control. He said he will defer the military draft for two years--although not the five years sought by the Serbs--and guarantee the Serbs a role in government. A police force made up of Serbs and Croats is to be formed (although about 1,000 current Serbian police officers have refused to be part of it), and slots in the judiciary are to be guaranteed for Serbs.

Tudjman also pledged not to fire Serbs working in the public sector, which includes health care. But in a meeting last week, the Croatian health minister told U.N. officials that he would never allow a Serb to work in a Croatian hospital or clinic, according to U.N. sources.

Serbs also are worried that Croatian authorities will go on a witch hunt for suspected war criminals. In a campaign spot on Croatian radio, which can be heard in Vukovar, a right-wing Croatian candidate, Josip Vukovic, said over the weekend that “only Serbs under 10 years of age and over 90 may not be considered war criminals.”

The Croats, meanwhile, believe they have good reason to refuse to accommodate the Serbs. In 1991, Serbian bombardment reduced once-picturesque Vukovar, a city of museums and graceful architecture, to jagged ruins. Hundreds of Croats were killed or executed during or after the three-month siege, including more than 200 patients dragged from the Vukovar hospital.

“There is a lot of hate, a lot of revenge, a lot of hubris about winning the war,” Klein conceded. “We have to deal with that.”

What Klein and others are banking on is that both Tudjman and Milosevic will agree that it is in their interest for Eastern Slavonia, and its Serbian residents, to be re-integrated peacefully. Milosevic can ill afford another wave of refugees into the rump Yugoslavia--each forlorn arrival proving a political embarrassment and economic albatross.

And Tudjman, desperate to convince the world that his is a Western-style state fit to join Europe, is being told that a criterion for such membership is a willingness to accept a small Serbian minority and respect its rights.

Vojislav Stanimirovic, a psychiatrist employed at the Vukovar hospital for 17 years, has emerged as a moderate leader of the Serbs in Eastern Slavonia and is trying to convince his people that only by staying, voting and working together can they preserve their political and cultural integrity.

“If the Croats come back in big crowds and attack and murder Serbs and take the law in their own hands, and act out revenge from the war, there will be chaos, and then Mr. Klein’s mission collapses,” he said. “It’s a big experiment that the international community is doing, attempting so soon after a civil war to have people live together again.”