Travel in the Balkans: in Croatia, neither war nor peace

Christian Century, June 15, 1994 by Paul Mojzes

THE ALMOST empty bus en route from Ljubljana to Zagreb encounters little traffic nowadays. Just a few years ago the trip would have meant standing room only and bumper-to-bumper traffic. Then there was no international border between the cities, only a state line that didn't interfere with the flow of people and merchandise. Now the bus stops at a grandiose Slovenian border station complete with flags flying and Slovenian border guard and customs officers decked out in brand new uniforms. Everyone's passport is checked, visas are issued, car trunks are searched.

Several hundred yards down the road the bus stops a second time at a fancy Croatian border station--flags and new uniforms also on display. Croatian visas are stamped into passports. A Bosnian boy who is returning home after visiting relatives in Slovenia lacks the proper papers. He looks about ten years old. His luggage consists of a nearly empty plastic shopping bag, and he is penniless. The guard wants to take him off the bus, but the boy pleads that he must return to Bosnia to help his mother. His father, he says, has been killed in the war. The Slovene bus driver convinces the guard to let the boy transit across Croatia. Later, when I give him a few bucks for food, the boy tells me he's 16. It is hard to know whether he is telling the truth. In any case I'm glad my journey ends in Zagreb. Even the thought of traveling on to Bosnia is dreadful.

Zagreb shows no evidence of war except for the young men in camouflage uniforms who head toward the train station carrying duffel bags. Are they heading to one of many front lines where Croat forces face rebel Serbs, the antagonists only flimsily separated by UN forces? Or are they destined for Bosnia and Herzegovina to assist Croat forces battling both Serbs and, as of late, Muslims? The media are full of war accounts--about a third of the state is held by Serb rebels--but the city is peaceful and seemingly prosperous.

Prior to the outbreak of the Serb-Croat war Croatia was affluent--just a notch below Slovenia and Austria. Annually, foreign tourists outnumbered the local population. Hard currency income raised the standard of living and helped generate numerous hotels, motels, bed and breakfast lodgings, restaurants, buses, boats and the other trappings of a tourist economy Now foreign tourism has practically ceased. Only some coastal cities such as Dubrovnik (bombarded early in the war) have gradually begun to attract a trickle of foreign and domestic tourists. Their return to the Adriatic coast helps assure others that a once popular vacation spot is safe and peaceful. Elsewhere all available lodging is crowded with refugees--hundreds of thousands of them from both Serb-occupied Croatia and Bosnia.

Resentment toward the refugees is not uncommon. Locals claim that they ruin the hotels and especially that the wealthy refugees spend unseemly amounts of money as they sit idly in cafes all day. Why don't these monied exiles go back to Bosnia and fight the Serbs, the locals complain, expressing the age-old resentment of the have-nots against the haves. (The same resentment toward war refugees simmers in Serbia as well.

Croatia's political scene is volatile. The Croatian Democratic Union which swept into power at the first free election in 1989 remains the pre-eminent political force. President Franjc Tudjman, a former Yugoslav army general turned dissident, is the party's and the country's dominant personality. Most citizens support him, claiming he is a genuine democrat; others see him as an autocrat. Tudjman hails from the same region as Marshal Tito, Zagorje; he also shares Tito's penchant for pomp and circumstance and for being the final arbiter on all matters of state, major or minor. Recently he has surrounded himself with a cabinet made up mostly of Herzegovinian Croats: many observers believe that they are responsible for leading Croatia to take a more belligerent stance toward partitioning Bosnia vis-a-vis the Serbs. These cabinet members are also said to be in favor of annexing the newly created Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia headquartered in Herzegovina's capital city, Mostar.

NEWS IN Croatia brims with details of political intrigues between and within the numerous parties. Within the Croatian Democratic Union the right wing is battling the moderates. Some of the moderates have created a splinter party called the Croatian Independent Democrats. Nasty accusations bordering on slander fill the daily newspapers, most of which are controlled by Tudjman. Only the iconoclastic Feral Tribune, whose masthead resembles the Herald Tribune, pokes mercilessly at the pretensions of the nationalistically intoxicated political elite.

At least outwardly, however, some of the Croat nationalist euphoria has subsided. No longer is every shop window pasted with posters assuring passersby that "God Protects Croatia." Flag-waving has not ceased altogether, but citizens are beginning to realize that independence will not be easy.