Zadar post scriptum

Not long after my visit to Zadar (see journal posting of 18 November 2011), it was announced that the city was granting an award to Ante Gotovina, the Croatian general convicted of war crimes for his commanding role in Operation Storm, which in 1995 returned swathes of previously Serb-controlled territory to Croatia. The operation resulted in the murders of hundreds of Serb civilians, the flight of almost the entire Serb population, and the destruction of thousands of Serb properties with the intention of preventing their return.

A Zadar city councillor from the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) expressed the view of most in Croatia when he said that Gotovina “defended the truth about himself and the Homeland War … with honesty, dignity and pride.” Opposition councillors abstained from the vote, one of them explaining that, while they considered Gotovina a hero, his name should not be used for political purposes.

Indeed, the move is probably connected with the coming parliamentary elections in Croatia. The HDZ faces an uphill struggle in the wake of corruption scandals that have seen its former leader and prime minister Ivo Sanader accused of bribe taking, and an economic crisis that has hit the country hard. The party, which ruled throughout the 1990s, under its founding leader Franjo Tudjman, has appealed once again to wartime patriotism, stressing the rights and dignity of veterans. It may be helped by the 20th anniversary of the fall of Vukovar in November 1991, an event still pregnant with emotion in Croatia. However, with some pointing the finger at Sanader for alleged war profiteering, the appeal to patriotism rings hollow for many Croatian voters. Fifteen years after the end of the war, some object to the power of the veterans lobby, suspecting that the numbers of its beneficiaries are in any case inflated.

Given the image that Zadar, so close to the emptied former Serb-controlled lands, has honed as a centre of virulent Croatian nationalism, it was not surprising that a decision to honour Gotovina came from there. But, whatever the merits of the case against Gotovina, or lack thereof, the move reflects the continuing failure of most in Croatia to face up to the fact that war crimes were also committed by Croats, and that many of their hallowed veterans were far from being heroes. The trial of Gotovina by the international war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia served mainly to burnish Gotovina’s reputation in Croatia, and if anything set back any proper accounting with the sins of the country’s recent past.