Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise - Indymedia

THE TRAGEDY OF THE WEST 221
Broek, Lord Carrington, and those who stood behind them, nonetheless invited
the members of the state presidency to The Hague.
Second: On 7 October 1991 the moratorium, which the EC had imposed on
Slovenia and Croatia as regards their independence, expired. Slovenia had made
it crystal clear to Lord Carrington that it remained committed to full
independence and did not want to hear anything about a new Yugoslav
association. 66 Only the Croatian leadership still tried to maneuver. The Yugoslav
Army was on the verge of completing the withdrawal of its last units from
Slovenia; as foreseen, the last soldiers left Koper by ship on 23 October and the
commander of the Slovenia TO, General Janez Slapar, could report to his
president, in a short ceremony, that Slovenia was “free of the enemy”. 67
Third: The army and the Serbian insurgents had, in association with the events
connected with the state presidency, escalated their attacks on Croatia in early
October; as a result, one had to speak of a completely new situation. The army
under Kadijević now showed itself quite openly, as Kadijević claims in his book
—to his own credit—to be the agent of Greater Serbian politics. 68 Osijek,
Dubrovnik, Vukovar, Šibenik, Zadar, and other Croatian cities came under heavy
artillery bombardment; valuable Croatian cultural treasures were threatened with
destruction. The attack on Dubrovnik was flanked by a Montenegrin move to
plunder the area south of Dubrovnik, the Konavlje.
The siege of Dubrovnik was also a particular provocation to the European
Community. Today many people say that the EC should have intervened at this
point. These attacks effected the long-overdue reversal in Tudjman’s policy; now
the Croatian president finally realized that his republic was confronted with a
war and that he had to behave accordingly. He could set aside the hopes he had
pinned on the international state community. Already at the end of September
1991, Croatia had begun to move against those army garrisons which lay within
unoccupied territory, i.e., within territory under the de facto control of the
Croatian government. This strategy was now intensified. This was the so-called
“war for the barracks”, i.e., the systematic attempts on the part of the Croatian
combat forces to isolate the barracks and other installations of the army, in order
to compel army units to surrender; in this way, Croatia could finally arm itself
suitably. Events proved what Špegelj had suspected from the beginning, viz.,
that some commanders, for example the commander in Varaždin, had no will to
resist. It seemed that this new strategy had to be wrung out of Croatia’s wavering
president.
The EC and UN mediators naturally found Croatia’s new strategy of defense
extremely inconvenient and dangerous. The UN inserted itself into the conflict
with a direct reprimand of Croatian defense efforts. The then-Secretary General
of the UN, Javier Perez de Cuellar, was approaching the end of his term of office
and was visibly unwilling to assume this new burden. He therefore sent the
former U.S. Secretary of State (under President Jimmy Carter) Cyrus Vance as
his personal representative to Yugoslavia on 8 October. Vance had played no part
in the deliberations at The Hague up to then. As soon as he entered into this field