It Will Be Easier for Croats

The good news is that the UN High Commission for Refugees will directly help war refugees of all nationalities to return home. The bad news is that they themselves assess that this will be very complicated and could take years.

All political preconditions for UN involvement in the matter of refugees have been met. In the first place, Cyrus Vance's plan implicitly understands the return of refugees, because any political solution of the Yugoslav puzzle will involve a poll of the population living on the contested territories, which naturally requires that there be a population which is more or less made up of those who lived there before the outbreak of war, if this is at all possible. In February, the UN General Secretary asked the High Commissioner for Refugees to "urgently prepare a detailed plan of activities concerning the possible return of displaced persons to the territories for which the protection of the UN is planned."

UN officers say that all those who fled have the right to come back home and to repossess all of their property, and that this must be based upon willing and freely expressed individual decisions (if there is a suspicion that someone is guilty of crime, this shall be later established through regular legal procedure). The UN representatives believe that it is their duty to provide security to the refugees, not only during their homecoming trip, but afterwards as well. They are afraid, though, that there will be some attempts to put the refugees under pressure (again). An indication that such fears are justified is provided by a part of Article 18 of the Serbian Law on Refugees, which gives the reasons for depriving someone of the status of refugee. Refugees, so it states, can be expelled from Serbia when circumstances change. The law, of course, does not specify who will be judge of whether circumstances have changed or not, but this is not hard to guess.

The so-called Yugoslav Party has officially expressed recently its desire that the refugees return to their homes, stating that the right of every refugee to return freely will be guaranteed, that "international aid and the aid from our community" will be provided to those whose houses have been destroyed and burnt down, and it has stressed the "readiness of the republican governments to cooperate with the High Commission".

Mrs. Judith Cumin, the Belgrade representative of the High Commission for Refugees, sees the first problem in the refugees' suspicion that they will not be safe if they return. With the advent of UNPROFOR and demilitarization of the territories on which the "blue helmets" will be deployed, the tension level should be reduced, and something resembling a normal emotional climate should come into existence. Mrs. Cumin, however, believes that it is very important that people should not be under any kind of pressure, that no deadlines be set for their return (contraty to certain suggestions). "The refugees must come to realize and feel that they will be safe when they return", she says. For the time being, they do not feel this way. In truth, a considerable number of the 600 thousand registered refugees wishes to return home since the cessation of larger scale armed clashes. Reports from the Zagreb office of the High Commission say that many people are moving to safe locations in the proximity of their homes, thus preparing themselves, in a way, for a final return - when feasible. It is held that this trend can either be fostered or reversed, depending on the actual situation on the spot. However, in spite of the great interest in returning, and even of certain practical moves in that direction - the total number of displaced persons is not decreasing. New refugees are being registered all the time, especially among Serbs. And these are not those whose life is in danger, but those who have made a conscious decision that they cannot remain, expecting that they will be better off elsewhere.

When discussing the magnitude of destruction, not only of houses and infrastructure, but of jobs also, anyone who has seen Vukovar and other places of a similar fate says that such devastation escapes rational explanation. Once again, it will be necessary to build schools and hospitals, provide water and electricity supply, and to reconstruct the economic infrastructure and prepare the fields for cultivation. And it will not be a case of some minor repairs, but of large scale reconstruction, more or less on a scale of the Marshall Plan. And this, of course, has to be paid for. In spite of Mr. Jovic's rhetoric about "international aid and the aid from our community", nobody has yet appeared who is willing to finance this "renewal and reconstruction", and it is very doubtful if anyone ever will. Meanwhile, the representative of the High Commission for Refugees speaks in Sarajevo about the depleting economic potential of cousins and volunteers, about their ever more frequent turning to the Red Cross, with requests to take over "their" refugees, because they cannot afford to care for them any more. The houses of some refugees have remained intact, but often the "enemy" has moved in. A way of moving the "enemy" out must be found, though nobody has yet managed to conceive of how this can be done.

Finally, another big problem, according to reports from the spot, are landmines. The percentage of mined farmland is not insignificant, there are no maps indicating where the mines have been laid, in short - nobody knows where they are. And how can farmers be expected to return and work the soil then? Nonetheless, there is a gloomy conclusion to the above story. Experience shows that farmers usually do return to their homes, anyway. Those who don't go back are professionals of all kinds, skilled workers from the prosperous economic sectors, people who can sell their skills somewhere else, and thus make a fresh start. This means that these regions will be left without their natural leaders, and when this happens, the farming population also begins to shrink. Many ethnically homogeneous regions have come into existence in the past 15 years in this way in Cyprus, for example. And what could be more to the heart's delight of the local leaders than such an outcome? Many observers who have been visiting the contested territories have doubts concerning the actual willingness of all levels of political leaders to see the refugees return. In other words, they might be interested in the return of refugees of their own nationality, but in no way of the others.

The Commission is coordinating the establishing of tripartite commissions consisting of representatives of the republic from which the refugees have fled, the republic to which they have fled and the High Commission itself. One of these commissions is already functioning - composed of representatives from Slovenia, Croatia and the UN, and talks are currently being conducted with representatives from Hungary and Austria. That, naturally, is the easy part. No major troubles are expected in regard to the return of some 24,000 Croats from the three aforementioned countries, because they mainly fled just as a precaution, from non-conflict areas.

The hardest part will be to return the Serbs and Croats to regions where war clashes have taken place. Here there also exist rather big differences. Mrs. Judith Cumin remarks that not all of the refugees fled from territories which will eventually come under the UN control. Roughly half of them come from places where there will be no "blue helmets". The High Commission will deal with both halves, but it will be easier for the UN representatives, and consequently for the refugees, in the areas where the "helmets" will be staying.

The return of Croatian refugees could prove to be much easier than that of Serbian refugees. Why? Because the UN troops will be deployed, primarily, on the territories under the control of Serbian local authorities, which means that they will be under direct UN supervision, meaning that they will have less opportunity to prevent the return of Croatian refugees, no matter what they really think. The territories from which mainly Serbs have fled are controlled, of course, by Croatian authorities, from whom they fled in the first place. Will they, knowing that there will be no "blue helmets", feel that it is safe enough to return now?