Croat Nationalists Imperil Goal of Unified Bosnia

In the dead of night, hundreds of NATO troops in armored vehicles descended on the Hercegovacka bank, backing up safecracking experts equipped with explosives and blowtorches.

Twelve days earlier, international officials had tried to take over and audit the bank, but the attempt ended in ignominious retreat when an organized mob attacked inspectors and NATO-led peacekeepers, injuring 21 of the troops and holding some auditors hostage for hours.

The troops took no chances in the second try. They assembled overwhelming force and conducted the operation from 2:30 to 6 a.m. They blew the lock off one safe and removed documents. They took away another, unopened safe that was harder to crack. They also removed truckloads of files from the bank.

The raid in mid-April was the most stunning step yet by international authorities in an expanding campaign to wrest power in Bosnia-Herzegovina from hard-line nationalist Croatian, Muslim and Serbian political parties and start building the structures of a unified state. The authorities targeted Hercegovacka because the bank is believed to be at the financial core of an illegal ethnic Croatian separatist movement.

Moderate Governments Key to Nation’s Future

More than five years after the end of a war marked by brutal “ethnic cleansing,” governments composed of Muslim and Croatian moderates took power in February both at the level of the Muslim-Croat Federation that controls 51% of Bosnia’s territory and at the national level, which loosely unites the federation and Republika Srpska, a Serb-dominated entity.

International authorities--whose power here flows from the 1995 Dayton peace accords--for the first time have the cooperative political partners they need to build institutions that could replace the ethnic-based structures that provide most government services.

If they fail, Bosnia could end up being divided into three entities, and the Croatian entity could ultimately merge with Croatia, and Republika Srpska with Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia. That would leave a Muslim-dominated Bosnia with much-reduced territory, and would essentially hand hard-line Serbs and Croats the victory they had sought in the 1992-95 war.

Some observers argue that this sort of division would provide a more secure foundation for lasting peace in Bosnia. But critics say it would reward hard-liners’ wartime policies of ethnic cleansing, might trigger new wars and must never be allowed. A key goal of international authorities is to head off this scenario through a combination of threats, direct intervention and economic enticements.

Chief international administrator Wolfgang Petritsch, who ordered the bank raid, said it was needed because the Croatian Democratic Union, or HDZ, which is believed to control the bank through a complex ownership structure, had made it clear that tax revenues passing through the bank would not be forwarded to federation authorities.

“That of course would have basically driven this government--which for the first time in 10 years is a non-nationalist government, a reform-oriented government--into bankruptcy and, at the same time, would be a continued financial source for the illegal structures of the HDZ hard-liners,” Petritsch said. “Therefore, I needed to act in such a decisive manner.”

Petritsch said that although there is no way to know what documents were hidden or destroyed in the nearly two weeks between the first auditing attempt and the nighttime raid, “according to the experts that have screened the material so far, we got what we needed.”

Most tools of the international officials’ campaign to dismantle the political machines of hard-line nationalist parties are not as dramatic as post-midnight bank break-ins. Some critical ones are as mundane as plans for a unified customs service.

In addition, a landmark Bosnian Constitutional Court decision last July on freedom from ethnic discrimination is being used to help political moderates. One of the key steps that has been justified under the ruling was the revision of voting rules for elections in November. Those changes threw out a provision of the federation constitution that was favorable to nationalist parties and made it easier for moderates to win seats.

Supporters of efforts to dismantle the foundations of hard-line nationalist power also are encouraged by last year’s rise of democratic governments in neighboring Yugoslavia, including Serbia, as well as in neighboring Croatia.

But the international efforts to undercut hard-liners’ power have infuriated leaders and supporters of the HDZ, which is still the strongest party among Croatian voters and dominates the separatist Croat People’s Assembly, a body that international authorities view as illegal.

The assembly announced March 3 that it was establishing “self-rule” in Croat-dominated areas in the western part of the country, a move that represented one of the most serious threats to hopes for a multiethnic Bosnian society since the war ended. The assembly later postponed “implementation” of that decision until mid-May.

The bank raid was in part an effort to ensure that Croatian nationalists won’t have the resources to carry out self-rule.

Precise population figures are not available, but within the Muslim-Croat Federation, Muslims make up a roughly 3-1 majority. While Serbs have their own formal mini-state in Republika Srpska, the federation’s Croats have only the informal or illegal ethnic-based structures that are now being targeted.

Moderate Croats say that what is important is equal rights for Croats throughout Bosnia. Hard-line nationalists say that what is needed is a separate ethnic entity.

“The key problem is the understanding of what is Bosnia-Herzegovina,” said Marko Tokic, president of the Croat People’s Assembly. “Is it a country with three equal nations, three free nations, nations who have a right to express their will in elections? Or is it a unified state of individual citizens?”

In the nationalist view favored by Tokic, Croats within Bosnia should have rights to speak with a collective voice and to veto measures they oppose. Tokic and other leading HDZ politicians say that since their party has the strongest support among Croatian voters, the HDZ should have the right to speak for Croats rather than Croatian politicians who have joined the moderate Alliance for Change, the Muslim-dominated coalition that rules at both the federation and national levels.

Many international officials charge that HDZ leaders are primarily interested in protecting their personal financial interests rather than the rights of Croatian citizens.

The HDZ recently called on “all Croat soldiers to basically defect [from the federation army], all Croat policemen to defect,” said Thomas Miller, the U.S. ambassador to Bosnia. “They used a lot of threats, intimidation [and] money to buy, bribe and threaten people, but eventually the money’s going to run out.”

Miller noted that a bomb recently destroyed a car owned by a prominent Croatian family opposed to the HDZ and said he views the organized mob resistance to the auditing of Hercegovacka bank as further evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

“If there was nothing to hide, why all the violence? Why so well organized?” Miller asked. “And it was extremely well organized by the HDZ. It was quite nasty.”

Muslims Embrace Idea of a Unified State

As the largest single ethnic group in Bosnia, Muslims tend to feel comfortable with the idea of a unified state and have drifted away from previous levels of support for the Party for Democratic Action, the main hard-line Muslim party. Many Muslims find hope in recent developments.

The changes pushed by international authorities have not yet had so much effect in Republika Srpska. But the strategy is that, as nationwide institutions are strengthened, the separate Muslim-Croat and Serbian entities established by the peace deal will be weakened and perhaps fade away.

“I believe we will have one state, because Croatian self-rule does not have support from Croatia or the international community, and step by step, Republika Srpska will disappear,” said Madzida Teftedarija, 40, a Muslim businesswoman in Sarajevo, the capital.

She predicted that if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization undercuts extremist power by arresting war crimes suspects who are still free in Bosnia, then foreign troops could be pulled out in 2005 without new wars erupting or the country falling apart.

But incidents such as the battle over Hercegovacka bank also provoke a backlash from ordinary supporters of hard-line nationalist groups.

Jadranko Zmijanac, a Mostar Croat angry at what he called the “attack” on the bank, said, “The international community should leave and go home, because nobody can create life by force.”