Peace Could be Worse

Last Thursday, November 17, the last POW from the 1991 Serbo-Croatian war left the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. After mediation by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Josip Baban (41), a member of the Croatian Army who had been treated at the Military Hospital was sent to the hospital in Krapinske Toplice. On the same day, Federal PM Radoje Kontic met with a delegation of the Association of Parents and Families of Captured, Arrested and Missing Persons on the Territory of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ), who still hope that their 200 or so sons and relatives are still alive somewhere in Croatia and, if they are not, that they will learn something of their fates.

An earlier meeting of the Association held on November 8 at the Air Force Center in Zemun met with an unusual response in the media. It was unusual because it attracted a lot more attention than during the past year when the Association was founded. It is possible that this attention was due to the presence of "official" participants - in addition to the parents and relatives, there were representatives from the ICRC, the JCK, the Federal Committee for the Exchange of POW's, the Croatian Bureau in Belgrade and the Republic of Serb Krajina (RSK) Committee for the Exchange of POW's. According to reports, all of the above officials said that they were doing all they could to help resolve the problem of missing persons. ICRC representative Francois Belon said that the basic problem in searching for missing persons lay in "the mistrust on both sides with regard to giving information" and that the ICRC could help efficiently only if all sides showed some good will, reached a political agreement, and encouraged cooperation between their militaries.

According to the Belgrade daily "Borba", Republic of Croatia Bureau spokesman Davor Vidis said: "It is a difficult and important issue for both sides. This is not and cannot be linked to nationality, because a parent is a parent and we will try to resolve the issue. All those parents who wish to do so are free to come to the Bureau personally and we will do all we can to help, because there is a similar problem in Croatia. There are parents there, too, who are demanding an answer as to what has happened to their children".

On the other hand, Head of the JCK search office, Branko Popovic, told VREME that cooperation with the Croatian Red Cross (CKH) in searching for missing persons often ended up in a blind alley, regardless of the fact that the number of requests from 1991 (7114 "search" requests for around 3000 persons) has dropped significantly (3900 requests in 1993 and a total of 400 in the first half of 1994). This means that in many cases the divided families have established some kind of contact, some have been reunited, and the search, at least through the JCK, currently stands at 280 search requests in Croatia. Indirectly, this could mean that peace has begun, and with it all that Heinrich Boll meant when he wrote: "Enjoy the war, peace will be terrible".

According to Branko Popovic, almost all Croatian search requests for the missing (at least 98%) concern persons missing in the region of Vukovar and only 2% for others. "There were 32,093 requests for Vukovar in the beginning, but the lists contained only names and surnames. We wanted the lists to be completed in accordance with the Geneva Conventions (name, surname, father's name, date and place of birth, place or time when seen last). After this, they sent us a new list with a total of 11,092 persons, but again with incomplete data. Then we established a form for search requests and received 659 requests, and we answered 49. On the other hand, Croatia did not reply to any of the 459 requests we sent them. Our complete documents were placed at the disposal of the Mothers in Black (Croatia) organization. The 'Vukovar list' was handed over at Croatia's request during a meeting of the joint committee in 1992. We informed them of 783 identified and 357 unidentified persons."

POW exchanges, at least those remembered as "big" ones, took place during the time Dobrica Cosic was Yugoslav President and Milan Panic the Prime Minister. The principle of "all for all" was respected and this resulted in bitterness: "We're letting war criminals go and they aren't".

The fate of the above-mentioned and all other requests, hopes and expectations - literally the fate of many families - depends on whether Yugoslavia and Croatia reach an agreement on continuing to pursue the matter. In expectation of the, for the time being "indefinitely" postponed, return visit of Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Granic to Yugoslavia, the federal government, after a reshuffle in which former vice-PM Zeljko Simic and others involved in agreements on POW exchanges were dismissed, a Commission for Humanitarian Questions was set up last week, and the Group for searching for missing persons will be incorporated into it. Pavle Todorovic has been named chairman of the Commission and it is expected that bilateral contacts between Yugoslavia and Croatia (if there are no changes) will begin on December 1. The ICRC will deliver a new JCK search request to Croatia on November 23.

In late 1991 and early 1992, realistic estimates put the number of missing citizens from the future Federal Republic of Yugoslavia at around 6,000 men; two-thirds were members of the now former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), while the rest were "civilians". Former top military-state officials say today that they faced two problems at the time: a terrible disintegration and terrible procedure. "Our" disintegration and "their" procedure. The Army, regardless of how responsible it was for what happened, was not prepared for the following: "Captured officers were subjected to rigorous measures, court-martials, punishments, torture, murder and suicide... On the other hand, we didn't know who had fled, deserted, completed their service or not, got killed, etc. It later turned out that there was incompetence in keeping evidence, or rather that no evidence was kept... Only soldiers serving under young, intelligent officers received ID tags, since they realized immediately that a real war had started" (competent estimates believe that there were only 15% such officers).

Fear and bitterness were the normal consequences of such chaos: fathers and mothers received information of their son's death, capture or disappearance after they had already buried him, often at great expense and pulling all possible strings. Or worse yet, upon opening the coffin they would discover that an unknown body was lying in it.

Top officials at the time (not including Borislav Jovic, Petar Gracanin, Jugoslav Kostic, Branko Kostic and a large number of those whose "memoirs" we will read one day), claim today that all exchanges of the captured, dead, arrested and others were carried out without bias. "We didn't seek those who were important to us, in order to give them their important ones." But, it is a fact that JNA generals (Aksentijevic) were exchanged for Croat street rebels and Antun Kikas (Croatian arms smuggler), pilots for "criminals" (members of the "Labradors" secret service for Vesna Bosanac - "Vukovar's Dr. Mengele" - for whom the military investigative judge did not find any evidence of guilt, which had already been proclaimed in the patriotic media - and by some doctors and priests), and along with them pilots, secret police, and "our" people. All of our collaborators deny the existence of a special order on the "quality" of the exchanges, but claim that the instructions were: "Give all for any one of our soldiers."

In the first big exchange (POWs under JNA sponsorship were exchanged in the later notorious Manjaca camp), around 400 of "our" captives were exchanged for a handful of "theirs". At that time, the JNA had started implementing Defense Minister General Veljko Kadijevic's order on the systematic collection of data: it proved that the most valuable source of information were "our" men who had been exchanged by the other side. But compared to today's statements by former top officials, the lucky ones that were exchanged say that in the end no one talked to them. All agree on one thing: if you don't get onto a list immediately, you're a dead man. Most of those who were registered by the international community's observers or the ICRC at the very beginning have "survived", at least as data that they are no longer alive. Luckily, there are survivors who today claim that exchanges, regardless of how much they are sanctioned by international law and its "executors", boil down to luck, or the lack of it.

Last Thursday, Federal PM Radoje Kontic agreed to all the demands made by the parents and relatives of those whose fate still hasn't been "resolved". The only unresolved question is the demand that the Yugoslav authorities approve and guarantee the safe and unlimited movement of at least three parents or relatives of those missing from Croatia, in order that the same might be demanded of the Croatian authorities by the parents and relatives of those missing from these parts. For some reason, or perhaps it was just "a coincidence", the day before Kontic was to meet with the parents, the federal authorities introduced strict limitations on entering Yugoslavia.

This does not mean that something is being hidden, but that someone, for some reason, is still playing games. It is difficult to say who is "worse" when talking about the trade in people. It sounds even worse when one says: who knows if it's a better thing that "our" traders are better than theirs (or vice versa), and that perhaps it doesn't matter that all the trading is being done "blindly" with the living or the dead. However, in two days, officials of the national societies of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent will meet again: the JCK will hand over the "latest" list with 280 names to the ICRC. It remains to be seen what the "counter-demand" will be like. The only comforting information we received, if that is at all possible, at the JCK search office was: "A search request is never closed until an answer is received".