Nationalism and mythology
outbreak of war, suggested it was merely ‘ the resumption of the 1941 – 1945 civil war in which the Croatian Fascists, collaborators of the Nazi regime, and Muslim religious extremists murdered between 600,000 and 1,200,000 Serbs. The issues are the same, the battlefields are the same, even the flags and army insignia are the same. ’ 20 The effect of such equivalency was twofold; it served to heighten fears within Serbia around the threat of Croatian extremism, and thus to encourage the perpetuation of conflict, but also to legitimize that very conflict. If there was no difference between the Croatia of Ante Pavelic, leader of the NDH, and the Croatia of Franjo Tudjman, then an armed struggle was both necessary as a defensive measure and a righteous continuation of the fight against fascism fought by the whole world only fifty years previous. Alongside quasi-academic institutions like the SUC, the Serbian Orthodox Church also had a hand in using popular history as a means of condoning and fostering conflict. In a circular letter released to all Orthodox churches in 1991, as the fighting escalated, Patriarch Pavle sought the protection of those Serbians living in Croatia, arguing it was necessary because of ‘ the Croatian neo-fascist regime – the successor of the Ustashas who massacred 700,000 Orthodox Serbs in WWII ’ . 21 Once again, Serbia’s recent history was used as a means of legitimizing its actions in the present – when judged in light of the rebirth of Croatian fascism, the actions of the Serbian military in the Krajina region were much easier to justify. Such militarism was, in fact, necessary, to protect the majority Serbian communities living there from those who supposedly wished to exterminate them. The alleged collaboration between Tudjman’s regime and Germany, which lobbied hard to secure Croatia’s recognition by the European Community, enabled this equivalency to be drawn even more obviously. Those in government made references to the advent of a ‘Fourth Reich’, while propaganda video that juxtaposed a meeting between Tudjman and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl with footage of Hitler meeting Ante Pavelic, featured prominently on Serbian television. 22 While such rhetoric helped to justify and legitimize Serbian actions, it also directly shaped the prosecution of the war. The fixation upon Jasenovac as a unique evil perpetrated against Serbians by Croats meant that, in comparison, any atrocities they committed were justified and acceptable. When, in the words of the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, ‘ Nothing can be worse than Jasenovac ’ , you can adopt the moral high ground regardless of your own actions. 23 Indeed, when the Bosnian Serb concentration camp at Omarska was first visited and publicized by reporters, the response of some officials at the camp was to compare it with the horror of Jasenovac. Milan Kovacevic, indicted by the ICTY for his role in running the camp, admitted that in the past ‘ they committed war crimes, now it is the other way around ’ . 24 Similarly, Ratko Mladic, a Serbian General responsible for commanding forces in the Croatian Krajina and Bosnia at various stages of the war, and also later convicted of war crimes by the ICTY, invoked history when discussing the conduct of his army. Mladic, explaining his military actions, said that ‘ I have not conquered anything in this war. I only liberated that which was always Serbian, although I am far from liberating all that really is Serbian. ’ 25 The war in the Krajina and Bosnia was, for him, not an act of wanton aggression on the part of Serbia, it was in fact an entirely logical move to repatriate what was very plainly Serbian territory. It was Croatia, with their persecution of Serbians living in the Krajina, that were the aggressors, and as such it was perfectly justifiable to wreak havoc in
20 Macdonald, D. (2002). 21 Perica, V. (2002): 160. 22 Engelberg, S. (1991). 23 Macdonald, D. (2002). 24 Vulliamy, E. (2013): 6, 50-51. 25 Macdonald, D. (2002).
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