Belgrade Foreign Visitors Club

Very interesting comments from former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith testifying in the Ante Gotovina trial.

Apart from his rather weak contention that the expulsion of the Krajia Serbs was not ethnic cleansing because the population had fled before the invaders arrived, the bulk of his statement is damning.

Galbraith is appearing as a prosecution witness in the UN war crimes court’s case against Ante Gotovina, Ivan Čermak and Mladeni Markač, former Croatian generals charged with war crimes against ethnic Serbs during the 1995 Operation Storm.

In his evidence he said that former Croatian President Franjo Tuđman believed that all countries, including Croatia, had to be ethnically homogenous, seeing Serbs as a threat to this ideal.

Galbraith then addressed one of his previous testimonies, where he said the expulsion of some 250,000 Croatian Serbs did not qualify for ethnic cleansing, “although there had been crimes, committed either on the orders or with the tacit approval of the Croatian leadership, in the presence and with the participation of the military”.

….Galbraith…said that he and other American officials had information months before Operation Storm that there would be a military attack on the Serb Krajina.

…But the U.S. never green-lighted the operation, he contended. However, since the U.S. administration knew the assault might be launched, “it expressly warned the Croatian authorities and president Tuđman of their obligation to protect the Serb civilians and prisoners of war. The atrocities like those committed in the Medak Pocket in 1993 were not to be repeated”.

In the first days after the arrival of the Croatian Army in Knin, Galbraith recounted, the reports of the U.S. embassy personnel indicated there were widespread killings of Serb civilians and destruction of their houses, “thus confirming that the situation in the field was exactly what the U.S. administration wanted to prevent”.

In Galbraith’s opinion, this happened “on the orders or with the tacit approval of the Croatian leadership, in the presence and with the participation of the military”.

Although the prosecution indicted the three for deportation and forcible transfer of the Serbs, its witness, Galbraith, does not see Operation Storm as ethnic cleansing, mainly “because most of the population had already fled when the Croatian army and police arrived”

“You cannot ethnically cleanse somebody who is no longer there, although it doesn’t mean that the Croatian forces would not have done it if the Serbs had remained there,” he told the court.

In his view, the Serb Republic of Krajina (RSK) authorities are responsible for the Serbs’ departure “because they had urged the population to leave”.

However, then Croatian Defense Minister Gojko Šušak “admitted to Galbraith that the Croatian authorities engaged in psychological warfare that partly contributed to the exodus”.

When the Serbs left Krajina, the Croatian authorities did everything to prevent them from returning, issuing a decree to confiscate the property of all those who failed to return within thirty days.

Furthermore, their houses were destroyed and their return obstructed in various ways. According to Galbraith, this fit Tuđman’s idea of an ethnically homogenous Croatia.

Whenever they met, the president would emphasize that every country should be ethnically homogenous, adding that local Serbs posed a threat to the homogeneity of the Croatian state.

“He was not ashamed of his views and I wondered how he could imagine that an American would accept his reasoning,” Galbraith said, noting that the Croatian president “spoke favorably of the so-called humane transfer of population”.

“Tuđman’s attitude towards Muslims was racist and he advocated the division of Bosnia which would lead to the creation of a Greater Croatia,” Galbraith concluded.

[From B92 - News - Crime & War crimes - Galbraith: Op Storm no ethnic cleansing]

It seem rather weak that the Serbs permanent expulsion form the Krajina is not considered Ethnic Cleansing whilst the temporary Kosovo Albanian exodus in 1999, which took placer under very similar circumstances, is on record as Ethnic Cleansing. It would appear that if you are a Serb and you flee your home before an invasion force actually arrives, your departure is not Ethnic Cleansing even though the warnings that drove you to flee turned out to be true and you were permanently prevented from returning home. Other nationalities and ethnic groups do not seem to have to to meet these exacting qualifying criteria for Ethnic Cleansing.

Common definitions of Ethnic Cleansing all pretty much express an understanding of constructive expulsion, namely that when you leave is irrelevant - it could be just before, during or after an action - but rather that you were forced to leave, be it for fear of your safety, at gun point or forcibly removed.

‘Considered in the context of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, ethnic cleansing means rendering an area ethnically homogenous by using force and intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area.” - Commission of Experts, in their first Interim Report 10/2/1993

“…ethnic cleansing can be understood as the expulsion of an `undesirable’ population from a given territory due to religious or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic or ideological considerations, or a combination of these.” Andrew Bell-Fialkoff

What what happened in Operation Storm certainly qualifies for the broader definitions of Ethnic Cleansing and based Galbraith’s testimony, it would appear the narrow definitions stand too.

Area rendered ethnically homogenous? yes. Force and intimidation used? - yes. “Undesirable” population expelled? - yes. Based on a policy (tacit or explicit) - yes?

I think that is pretty damning.

Additionally, I am not sure why Kosovo is considered but many to be legitimate, yet the identical arrangement - an ethnic microstate (Krajina) within a state (Croatia) - was considered to be illegitimate and worthy of clandestine US help in invading and reabsorbing it.

I think the Serbs might very well be onto something when they complain of a double standard. It seems even from my non-Serb perspective that the benefit of the doubt / definitional technicality / failure of the system seem to consistently be to the detriment of Serbs. This is of course labelled paranoia and bad faith, but in my opinion it is well justified.

People fishing in extremely polluted water on the Sava river near Belgrade (March 2005). Detail here.

The same spot in May 2008, nothing has changed.

Water expert and member of the International Press Institute (IPI), Joseph Treaster, has posted a well informed article about Belgrade after  attending the IPI’s annual meeting held here this year.

He touches on a point very close to my heart, namely the state of the environment here in Serbia, particularly the gross neglect of Water resources.

The environment was not formally on the agenda for the International Press Institute’s conference in Belgrade. But climate change and water and other environmental issues worked their way into conversations over several days. Next year the International Press Institute will be meeting in Helsinki and it is purposefully carving out time for the environment.

…According to the United Nations Environmental Program, Serbia is the only country in former Yugoslavia that has not updated its laws on water management in keeping with new science and technology. But that may change. For economic reasons, among others, Serbia wants to become a member of the European Union. Serbia and its neighbors face a string of barriers. But one way they can impress the European Union is to improve the way they deal with water and the rest of the environment.

I think it would have broken Joseph’s heart if he had seen the banks of Sava between the Old Sava Bridge and Ada. Rusting hulks of abandoned river boats snag river pollution in the form of plastic bottles and other junk (see above). The bank-side is littered with river detritus and discarded rubbish. Near Ada,  raw sewerage from Banovo Brdo and Topcider runs into the Ada marina, a beautiful spot ruined by the stench of raw faeces.

The cycle route to Ada from 25th May is supposed to be a premium tourist attraction, one of Belgrade’s best natural heritage sites. It is instead one of the saddest sites one can see in Belgrade, a gorgeous environment abused and neglected to the point of ruin.

Every month citizens of Belgrade pay part of their  local taxes towards River-side care (Listed as Naknada za priobalja here). Apparently this amounts to a mere €30,000 per month (2.2million dinars) , but even €30,000 is a relative fortune with which to address some of the worst horrors, like the eyesore pictured above.

There is some good news however. The new “National Programme for Integration of Serbia into EU” is explicit in addressing both the lack of water legislation Joseph mentions above, and an aggressive action plan for dealing with both the pollution and neglect ( see section 3.27.3. “Waste Management”  and “3.27.4 Protection and management of water resources”).

Government recognition and actions plans are most welcome, but there needs to be a culture change for this to work. The river people (that is, people who live and work on the boats and splavs lining the river banks) need to help with this. If they refrained from throwing their rubbish into the river, installed septic tanks instead of using the river as a toilet (especially the clubs and restaurants) and kept the areas surrounding their riverside properties clean, then there would be a massive improvement.

I am not too hopeful that this will happen any time soon. When even the people who live on the rivers fail to care for them, how can visitors and tourists be convinced to respect them?

I have toyed with the idea of raising money to have a 500m stretch of the Sava river bank cleaned and restored to show people what can be achieved. Perhaps all they are missing is vision of what is possible?