No Man's War

Prevlaka is a long tongue, a stone finger 2,500 metres long and 500 metres wide, pointing in a southeasterly direction; it closes the entry to the Bay of Kotor from the open sea and from it access to this, the deepest bay in the Adriatic, can be effectively controlled. For this reason, an old Austro-Hungarian fortress stands on Cape Ostri - its southeasternmost point. The external zone of the coast lies in Croatia and the internal in Montenegro.

From a military point of view, Prevlaka - like the Bay of Kotor -lost its key importance with the advent of the air force and, in conditions of aerial supremacy, is of no importance whatsoever. This did not prevent the navy of dissolute Yugoslavia from - for highly practical reasons - equipping Prevlaka with underground depots for arming ships, coastal artillery positions and installing naval radar and some anti-aircraft systems there. Like some other installations (the Bihac aerodrome etc.), Prevlaka typifies the former Yugoslav People's Army's static-defensive, sterile way of thinking and there is reason to fear that once again vast quantities of explosives will be spent on destroying something we never had any use for, so as to prevent the enemy from making use of it, as was the case in Bihac.

Prevlaka was first used for military-political purposes last autumn: under the pretext that the strategically extremely important Prevalaka had to be defended against the "Ustashi combatants which Dubrovnik was full of"; the famous Dubrovnik operation under the Podgorica Corps began.

All the nonsense about "Serbian Dubrovnik" and criminally irresponsible promises to the naive Serbs that they would have a "Serbian state right up to the left bank of the Neretva with its capital Dubrovnik", to be called "Niksic-on-Sea", must now be paid for by those who believed in, but not by those who made the promises. The chief protagonists of the whole operation - the generals and admirals from the Podgorica Corps and the Military-Naval sector of Boka and their Montenegrin reservists - have returned home with their spoils and the Mickey Mouse state of Eastern Herzegovina has been left to its own devices and Croatia's revenge. Trebinje is in the range of Croatian artillery, the Dubrovnik hinterland has been taken, the Herzegovina army pushed all the way back from the sea coast to behind Popovo Polje. At the end of last week the bitter chalice was filled to the brim: on a British frigate somewhere out in the deep blue Adriatic the Yugoslav Army reached agreement on a withdrawal from Cavtat to the "border of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia". This removed the last obstacle preventing General Janko Botetka and his forces of the Croatian National Guards Southern Front from totally cleaning up the Dubrovnik hinterland right up to the Montengrin border with Eastern Herzegovina -since the territory of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina is a free hunting ground for all.

"Following reports of large-scale public concern" in Eastern Herzegovina over the Yugoslav Army's announced withdrawal from the Cavtat line to Herzeg-Novi", Yugoslav Army Chief of Staff General Zivota Panic made a statement likely to cause problems in the field. He first promised that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia "would not sign any agreement which would be detrimental to the Serbian nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina", and then insisted on the partial (UN controlled) or total demilitarization of Prevlaka. By definition "the Serbian nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina" knows best what "is detrimental to the Serbian nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina", and since the end of March the premier of this nation in Eastern Herzegovina, Mr. Milos Bojovic, has been issuing strong warnings to Slobodan Milosevic that the Herzegovinians, i.e., the Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, will be left without an access to the sea if something is not done. Mr. Bojovic make oblique threats about an "uprising" staged by the unarmed Serbs or a "mass exodus" from Herzegovina; his demand is clear: access to the sea on the Neum-Klek line, or on the Dubac-Debeli Brijeg line (directly south of Dubrovnik) - "and we will not discuss the Neretva". In a letter to Slobodan Milosevic at the end of April, Mr. Bojovic insists on access to the sea and complains that the "generals say they cannot take Neum-Klek. "So, once they didn't want to and now they're not able to", he says. We are not acquainted with Mr Milosevic's replies, if there were any.

What does Prevlaka have to do with all this now? Quite a lot. The Herzegovinian Serbs' demands for an access to the sea are one of the trump cards in the haggling over a peaceful end to the war on the sensitive Dubrovnik theatre. The Herzegovinians have hopes that the Croats will consent to some sort of exchange of territory which would give them access to the sea. But this should be forgotten right away. Croatia will not give up an inch of coast, what is more it will do everything to safeguard the Dubrovnik hinterland - as much as it can on the south east -against unpleasant surprises in the future.

It has all the diplomatic pre-conditions for this: on many occasions Montenegro has said that it has no "territorial pretensions" towards Croatia and that the "Prevlaka issue is negotiable". The heart of the matter - as Graham Greene would say - lies in the fact that none of the sides have any interest in fighting over Prevlaka: the Montenegrins have had enough and for the Croats Prevlaka is important only insofar as it is a souce of irritation to the Montenegrins. In this sense Dr. Karadzic and Mr Bojovic's demands for the Trebinje Herzegovinians to be given access to the sea will emerge like bargaining chips of dubious value to all.

The Croatian press has already devoted a lot of space to explaining how Prevlaka was always part of the Republic of Dubrovnik and from 1419 formed part of the Republic of Croatia (if this is not a printer's error. . .) "We do not discuss borders", says Mr Davorin Rudolf, member of the Croatian Government , and General Anton Tus, like General Panic,fully agrees with the idea to demilitarize Prevlaka. The way things stand, all those involved are ready to consent to anything -while the participation of the UN is constantly mentioned as an option. They're tired of fighting. And that Sixth Fleet seems a lot nearer of late.