The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (52 page)

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The breakup of Yugoslavia began in 1991 when Slovenia and Croatia moved toward independence and pleaded with Western European powers for support. The response of the West was defined by Germany, and the response of Germany was in large part defined by the Catholic connection. The Bonn government came under pressure to act from the German Catholic hierarchy, its coalition partner the Christian Social Union party in Bavaria, and the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
and other media. The Bavarian media, in particular, played a crucial role in developing German public sentiment for recognition. “Bavarian TV,” Flora Lewis noted, “much weighed upon by the very conservative Bavarian government and the strong, assertive Bavarian Catholic church which had close connections with the church in Croatia, provided the television reports for all of Germany when the war [with the Serbs] began in earnest. The coverage was very one-sided.” The German government was hesitant about granting recognition, but given the pressures in German society it had little choice. “[S]upport for recognizing Croatia in Germany was opinion-pushed, not government-pulled.” Germany pressured the European Union to recognize the independence of Slovenia and Croatia, and then, having secured that, pushed forward on its own to recognize them before the Union did in December 1991. “Throughout the conflict,” one German scholar observed in 1995, “Bonn considered Croatia and its leader Franjo Tudjman as something of a German foreign-policy protege, whose erratic behavior was irritating but who could still rely on Germany’s firm support.”
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Austria and Italy promptly moved to recognize the two new states, and very quickly the other Western countries, including the United States, followed. The Vatican also played a central role. The Pope declared Croatia to be the “rampart of [Western] Christianity,” and rushed to extend diplomatic recognition to the two states before the European Union did.
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The Vatican thus became a partisan in the conflict, which had its consequences in 1994 when the Pope planned visits to the three republics. Opposition by the Serbian Orthodox Church prevented his going to Belgrade, and Serb unwillingness to guarantee his security led to the cancellation of his visit to Sarajevo. He did go to Zagreb, however, where he honored Cardinal Alojzieje Septinac, who was associated with the fascist Croatian regime in World War II that persecuted and slaughtered Serbs, Gypsies, and Jews.

Having secured recognition by the West of its independence, Croatia began to develop its military strength despite the U.N. arms embargo levied on all the former Yugoslav republics in September 1991. Arms flowed into Croatia from European Catholic countries such as Germany, Poland, and Hungary, as well as from Latin American countries such as Panama, Chile, and Bolivia. As the war escalated in 1991, Spanish arms exports, allegedly “in large part controlled by Opus Dei,” increased sixfold in a short period of time, with most of these presumably finding their way to Ljubliana
[inSlovenia]
and Zagreb
[Croatia]
. In 1993 Croatia reportedly acquired several Mig-21s from Germany and Poland with the knowledge
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of their governments. The Croatian Defense Forces were joined by hundreds and perhaps thousands of volunteers “from Western Europe, the Croatian diaspora, and the Catholic countries of Eastern Europe” who were eager to fight in “a Christian crusade against both Serbian communism and Islamic fundamentalism.” Military professionals from Western countries provided technical assistance. Thanks in part to this kin country help, the Croatians were able to strengthen their military forces and create a counter to the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army.
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Western support for Croatia also included overlooking the ethnic cleansing and the violations of human rights and the laws of war for which the Serbs were regularly denounced. The West was silent when in 1995 the revamped Croatian army launched an attack on the Serbs of Krajina, who had been there for centuries, and drove hundreds of thousands of them into exile in Bosnia and Serbia. Croatia also benefited from its sizable diaspora. Wealthy Croatians in Western Europe and North America contributed funds for arms and equipment. Associations of Croatians in the United States lobbied Congress and the President on their homeland’s behalf. Particularly important and influential were the 600,000 Croatians in Germany. Supplying hundreds of volunteers for the Croatian army, “Croat communities in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Germany mobilized to defend their newly independent-homeland.”
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In 1994 the United States joined in supporting the Croatian military buildup. Ignoring the massive Croatian violations of the U.N. arms embargo, the United States provided military training to the Croatians and authorized top-ranking retired U.S. generals to advise them. The U.S. and German governments gave the green light to the Croatian offensive into Krajina in 1995. American military advisers participated in planning this American-style attack, which according to the Croatians also benefited from intelligence supplied by American spy-satellites. Croatia has become “our de facto strategic ally,” a State Department official declared. This development, it was argued, reflected “a long-term calculation that, ultimately, two local powers will dominate this part of the world—one in Zagreb, one in Belgrade; one tied to Washington, the other locked into a Slavic bloc extending to Moscow.”
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The Yugoslav wars also produced a virtually unanimous rallying of the Orthodox world behind Serbia. Russian nationalists, military officers, parliamentarians, and Orthodox Church leaders were outspoken in their support for Serbia, their disparaging of the Bosnian “Turks,” and their criticism of Western and NATO imperialism. Russian and Serbian nationalists worked together arousing opposition in both countries to the Western “new world order.” In considerable measure these sentiments were shared by the Russian populace, with over 60 percent of Muscovites, for instance, opposing NATO air strikes in the summer of 1995. Russian nationalist groups successfully recruited young Russians in several major cities to join “the cause of Slavic brotherhood.” Reportedly a thousand or more Russians, along with volunteers from Romania and Greece,
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enlisted in the Serbian forces to fight what they described as the “Catholic fascists” and “Islamic militants.” In 1992 a Russian unit “in Cossack uniforms” was reported operating in Bosnia. In 1995 Russians were serving in elite Serbian military units, and, according to a U.N. report, Russian and Greek fighters participated in the Serbian attack on the U.N. safe area of Zepa.
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Despite the arms embargo, its Orthodox friends supplied Serbia with the weapons and equipment it needed. In early 1993 Russian military and intelligence organizations apparently sold $300 million worth of T-55 tanks, antimissile missiles, and antiaircraft missiles to the Serbs. Russian military technicians reportedly went to Serbia to operate this equipment and to train Serbs to do so. Serbia acquired arms from other Orthodox countries, with Romania and Bulgaria the “most active” suppliers and Ukraine also a source. In addition, Russian peacekeeping troops in Eastern Slavonia diverted U.N. supplies to the Serbs, facilitated Serbian military movements, and helped the Serbian forces acquire weapons.
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Despite economic sanctions, Serbia was able to sustain itself reasonably well off as a result of massive smuggling of fuel and other goods from Timisoara organized by Romanian government officials, and from Albania organized by first Italian and then Greek companies with the connivance of the Greek government. Shipments of food, chemicals, computers, and other goods from Greece went into Serbia through Macedonia, and comparable amounts of Serbian exports came out.
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The combination of the lure of the dollar and sympathy for cultural kin made a mockery of U.N. economic sanctions against Serbia as they also did to the U.N. arms embargo against all the former Yugoslav republics.

Throughout the Yugoslav wars, the Greek government distanced itself from the measures endorsed by Western members of NATO, opposed NATO military action in Bosnia, supported the Serbs at the United Nations, and lobbied the U.S. government to lift the economic sanctions against Serbia. In 1994 the Greek prime minister, Andreas Papandreou, emphasizing the importance of the Orthodox connection with Serbia, publicly attacked the Vatican, Germany, and the European Union for their haste in extending diplomatic recognition to Slovenia and Croatia at the end of 1991.
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As the leader of a tertiary participant, Boris Yeltsin was cross-pressured by the desire, on the one hand, to maintain, expand, and benefit from good relations with the West and, on the other hand, to help the Serbs and to disarm his political opposition, which regularly accused him of caving into the West. Overall the latter concern won out, and Russian diplomatic support for the Serbs was frequent and consistent. In 1993 and 1995 the Russian government vigorously opposed imposing more stringent economic sanctions on Serbia, and the Russian parliament voted almost unanimously in favor of lifting the existing sanctions on the Serbs. Russia also pushed for the tightening of the arms embargo against the Muslims and for applying economic sanctions
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against Croatia. In December 1993 Russia urged weakening the economic sanctions so as to permit it to supply Serbia with natural gas for the winter, a proposal which was blocked by the United States and Great Britain. In 1994 and again in 1995 Russia staunchly opposed NATO air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs. In the latter year the Russian Duma denounced the bombing by an almost unanimous vote and demanded the resignation of Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev for his ineffectual defense of Russian national interests in the Balkans. Also in 1995 Russia accused NATO of “genocide” against the Serbs, and President Yeltsin warned that sustained bombing would drastically affect Russia’s cooperation with the West including its participation in NATO’s Partnership for Peace. “How can we conclude an agreement with NATO,” he asked, “when NATO is bombing Serbs?” The West was clearly applying a double standard: “How is it, that when Muslims attack no action is taken against them? Or when the Croats attack?”
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Russia also consistently opposed efforts to suspend the arms embargo against the former Yugoslav republics, which had its principal impact on the Bosnian Muslims, and regularly attempted to tighten that embargo.

In a variety of other ways Russia employed its position in the U.N. and elsewhere to defend Serbian interests. In December 1994 it vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution, advanced by the Muslim countries, that would have prohibited the movement of fuel from Serbia to the Bosnian and Croatian Serbs. In April 1994 Russia blocked a U.N. resolution condemning the Serbs for ethnic cleansing. It also prevented appointment of anyone from a NATO country as U.N. war crimes prosecutor because of probable bias against the Serbs, objected to the indictment of Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic by the International War Crimes Tribunal, and offered Mladic asylum in Russia.
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In September 1993 Russia held up renewal of U.N. authorization for the 22,000 U.N. peacekeepers in the former Yugoslavia. In the summer of 1995 Russia opposed but did not veto a Security Council resolution authorizing 12,000 more U.N. peacekeepers and attacked both the Croat offensive against the Krajina Serbs and the failure of Western governments to take action against that offensive.

The broadest and most effective civilization rallying was by the Muslim world on behalf of the Bosnian Muslims. The Bosnian cause was universally popular in Muslim countries; aid to the Bosnians came from a variety of sources, public and private; Muslim governments, most notably those of Iran and Saudi Arabia, competed with each other in providing support and in attempting to gain the influence that generated. Sunni and Shi’ite, fundamentalist and secular, Arab and non-Arab Muslim societies from Morocco to Malaysia all joined in. Manifestations of Muslim support for the Bosnians varied from humanitarian aid (including $90 million raised in 1995 in Saudi Arabia) through diplomatic support and massive military assistance to acts of violence, such as the killing of twelve Croatians in 1993 in Algeria by Islamist extremists
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“in response to the massacre of our Muslim co-religionists whose throats have been cut in Bosnia.”
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The rallying had a major impact on the course of the war. It was essential to the survival of the Bosnian state and its success in regaining territory after the initial sweeping victories of the Serbs. It greatly stimulated the Islamization of Bosnian society and identification of Bosnian Muslims with the global Islamic community. And it provided an incentive for the United States to be sympathetic to Bosnian needs.

Individually and collectively Muslim governments repeatedly expressed their solidarity with their Bosnian coreligionists. Iran took the lead in 1992, describing the war as a religious conflict with Christian Serbs engaging in genocide against Bosnian Muslims. In taking this lead, Fouad Ajami observed, Iran made “a down-payment on the gratitude of the Bosnian state” and set the model and provided the stimulus for other Muslim powers such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia to follow. At Iran’s prodding the Organization of the Islamic Conference took up the issue and created a group to lobby for the Bosnian cause at the United Nations. In August 1992 Islamic representatives denounced the alleged genocide in the U.N. General Assembly, and on behalf of the OIC, Turkey introduced a resolution calling for military intervention under Article 7 of the U.N. charter. The Muslim countries set a deadline in early 1993 for the West to take action to protect the Bosnians after which they would feel free to provide Bosnia with arms. In May 1993 the OIC denounced the plan devised by the Western nations and Russia to provide safe havens for Muslims and to monitor the border with Serbia but to forswear any military intervention. It demanded the end of the arms embargo, the use of force against Serbian heavy weapons, aggressive patrolling of the Serbian border, and inclusion of troops from Muslim countries in the peacekeeping forces. The following month the OIC, over Western and Russian objections, got the U.N. Conference on Human Rights to approve a resolution denouncing Serb and Croat aggression and calling for an end to the arms embargo. In July 1993, somewhat to the embarrassment of the West, the OIC offered to provide 18,000 peacekeeping troops to the U.N., the soldiers to come from Iran, Turkey, Malaysia, Tunisia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The United States vetoed Iran, and the Serbs objected vigorously to Turkish troops. The latter nonetheless arrived in Bosnia in the summer of 1994, and by 1995 the U.N. Protection Force of 25,000 troops included 7000 from Turkey, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Bangladesh. In August 1993 an OIC delegation, led by the Turkish foreign minister, lobbied Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Warren Christopher to back immediate NATO air strikes to protect the Bosnians against Serb attacks. The failure of the West to take this action, it was reported, created serious strains between Turkey and its NATO allies.
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