See you in the next war

The beginning of August is traditionally reserved for the collective Serbo-Croatian return to the war. Of course, the occasion is "Storm": Croatia celebrates the establishment of a constitutional and legal order on the entire state territory, and Serbia commemorates the ethnic cleansing. The rhetoric of officials is almost the same as in the nineties of the last century. Why this is so is obvious when you look at who was in power then and now: in Zagreb it is the same party with different people, in Belgrade the same people are in a different party.

I don't know how many articles I have written about Krajina in the past three decades. I am also the author of a feature-length documentary film on the subject, and a considerable amount of footage is dedicated to it and several others, filmed with my colleague Radoslav Ćebić. Then, just like today, I believe that everything that happened in Croatia between 1991 and 1995 was a joint criminal enterprise. It was started by Slobodan Milošević and finished by Franjo Tuđman.

That the Serbs in Croatia were instrumentalized and abused was clearly visible even when the first barricades were erected on the roads around Knin. Also, that apart from the great suffering and suffering of both peoples, nothing else can bring it. However, Milošević needed the manipulation of the Serbs in Croatia - but also trading with their fate - in the transition from a party apparatchik to an undisputed nationalist leader, and that is how the ethnic cleansing of Croats from Krajina, the Vukovar apocalypse, Škabrnja and Ovčara, the shelling of Dubrovnik, Karlovac and other Croatian cities... This policy elevated Vojislav Šešelj and his general secretary Aleksandar Vučić.

Basically, four years later, Krajina was on its knees. Tuđman was able to carry out the peaceful reintegration of that area with ease. How - the example of Eastern Slavonia in the fall of 1995 shows. However, crimes like the one in the Medak pocket clearly indicated that Tuđman wanted a territory without Serbs; he considered them a "disturbing factor" in Croatia. That is why, despite the practical capitulation of Krajina, the "Storm" followed, arson, looting, killing of old people who did not escape... In four days, after more than four centuries, the Serbs disappeared from that area.

All this should be history, largely established in The Hague and, here and there, in national war crimes tribunals. But it didn't.

In Croatia, other people in the same Tuđman party use "Storm" to portray themselves as the only, proven and eternal defenders of sovereignty and independence from the Serbian danger, external and internal. It is therefore not surprising that the celebration in Knin is a right-wing festival where, despite all their humility, Croatian politicians outside the Hadeze national orbit never did well. It cannot be otherwise, even though the Ustasha features are becoming less and less every year: Croatia gained its independence in 1991, and in 1995 the Serbian question was "solved". For nationalist triumphalism, nothing is, nor can be, more important than the latter.

On the opposite side is Vučić and the same people in the other party. Since in Croatia the modalities and consequences of the "Storm" are not in question, in Serbia they do not talk about 1991, Vukovar and everything else that preceded it. In a similar way as in Knin, Vučić uses the commemoration of the fall of Krajina in Busija, Krušedol, Rača and other places to advertise himself as the only protector of all Serbs, but also to reaffirm the policy that made the lion's share of the exodus of 250.000 Krajišniks. Of course, he no longer tells those people that their towns and villages will never be in Croatia, nor does he repeat after Seselj that Serbia is where the Serbian graves are. For Vučić, the "Storm" today is like a bolt from the bucket, something he has nothing to do with and for which everyone is to blame except him. And through the promises that they will never allow its repetition and bragging about military power, a clear and undisguised revanchist undertone, so dear to every nationalist heart, shines through.

Although the authorities in Serbia and Croatia have not denied war crimes for a long time, they mostly present them as excesses or revenge for the actions of others. If these inactions were an integral and inseparable part of the politics of which they are heirs, they would not even admit that their lives depend on it. This is why official Serbian-Croatian relations remain permanently poisoned; that's why every August it seems that all they can say to each other is - "Goodbye until the next war". That, of course, is not true and a lot has changed from the nineties to today, but it is still good for distracting attention from the depopulation of Serbia and Croatia, the robbery of their own citizens, the vegetation in the European periphery...

And finally, let's not lie - ceremonies and commemorations of historical dates, war victories and the suffering of compatriots are important for all peoples and countries. In this context, it does not matter whether each side has its own truth; Serbs and Croats can hardly ever agree on "Storm". The key is therefore in something else, and that is not to use the past to maintain hatred, mistrust and create new conflicts.

Could the visit to Knin by Boris Milošević, the Vice-President of the Croatian government from the Independent Democratic Serbian Party, and, subsequently, the presence of Croatian President Zoran Milanović and Minister of Defense Toma Medved at the commemoration in the village of Grubori, where, twenty days after the "Storm", a group was killed, contribute to this? old men of Serbian nationality?

A certain relaxation of Serbian-Croatian relations should certainly be expected, but as after similar gestures in the past, everything will remain cosmetic. This is simply the nature of the current authorities in Belgrade and Zagreb. Will it continue indefinitely? They won't if we honestly tell the children what the war was like and what we did to each other back then.