The Confession That Never Was
Continued from Mein Abkommen – Part III
– So we had this guy, Stjepan – Stjepan Kljuić in Bosnia. I really was never entirely convinced by the image he cultivated. Imagine – a guy with a bow tie and a beard. Huh. Smoking a pipe. He looked more like a poet, like a bohemian, than a politician – but the guy was serious. So we accepted him as the main candidate for my political party in Bosnia. You know my party, right – the HDZ? My dear “Croatian Democratic Union”. This guy, Stjepan, was from Sarajevo – the main city of Bosnia, a city where there aren’t too many Croats, so he was a good choice for our future plans, since we’d connected with some people there. Stjepan won the Croat vote in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the first democratic elections in 1990. The good thing: he was a democrat; the bad thing: he was too much of one.
The Serbian vote in Bosnia-Herzegovina was won by the SDS – “Serb Democratic Party” – led by Dr. Radovan Karadžić, a psychiatrist and poet. Karadžić was a Serb from Montenegro who came to Sarajevo in 1960 as a student. At first, he was a proud Montenegrin, but later, after some legal problems and some interrogation by the Yugoslav Secret Services, he came to the realization that Montenegrins are Serbs. Well, everyone can change their views, right? Oh, if Stjepan seemed to me like a bohemian, this guy Radovan was something: the guy had disheveled hair and dreamy, tired eyes of a drunkard who hadn’t slept for years, listening to gusle music in some smelly tavern. He was perfect for the job.1
– As you can see, the Serbian and our Croatian parties clearly identified themselves by putting their “nations” in their party names. What about the “Muslims” you may ask? At first, when I learned about their party, I thought, “Clever motherf… Mother of God! What a strategy. They want our votes too.”
They didn’t put something like the “Muslim Party” in their name. They were called “Stranka Demokratske Akcije” (“Party of Democratic Action”). They didn’t base the name on it being the “Muslim” party – as I already told you, in communist Yugoslavia, “Muslim” was a made-up nationality for the Islamized Croats. Later, I realized it was even worse – they probably omitted “Muslim” so they could use this invented “Bosniak” nationality, rescued from the Middle Ages.
Their leader was this guy – Alija Izetbegović. A “Mohammedan” politician, he was a member of the “Young Muslims” movement in his youth and avoided joining any organized military force during World War II. He was imprisoned for three years, as early as 1946, on charges of “anti-communist” activity.
Some years later, he studied law in Sarajevo, but for his “anti-communist” deeds, the “Aparat” eventually sent him back to prison. In the seventies, he wrote a pamphlet called “The Islamic Declaration – A Program for the Islamization of the Muslims and the Muslim Peoples.” Wasn’t a great writer, I can tell you that; the stuff was boring as hell, but the pamphlet helped land him in a Yugoslav prison, and later to get elected by widening his electoral base, and gave the SDS and us in the HDZ a document we could later point to and say: “hey this guy wants an Islamic Republic in Bosnia” – even though, by 1990, he really was all for a multiethnic, secular Bosnia-Herzegovina, despite his activist years. “Multi-ethnic”, eh honey? “Mul-ti-eth”… It already sounds clumsy, doesn’t it? Probably sounds worse than “Islamic”. Heheh. And it is.
Grandpa took a sip of his gemišt, cleared his throat, and continued with renewed enthusiasm.
We loved his “magnum opus” and frequently threw in some, you know, not entirely accurate quotes here and there when talking about it. Just to spice it up a bit. Sometimes even adding a single word to a phrase changes a lot. Who would ever read the damn boring thing to check it anyway?
His granddaughter looked into his eyes, her head tilted slightly to one side.
– Yes, of course. It’s very wrong to tell lies… – he said, taking another sip of his drink – … to your family, and your grandpa. But sometimes – you will learn this as you go through life – you can tell little white lies to protect someone. Like Grandpa did in this case, to protect Croatia.
Some Serb propagandist even spread the claim that Alija was the leader of the “Young Muslims” in Bosnia during the Second World War. According to them, he had organized the movement, collaborated with the Nazis, and as its leader, even received a guy called Amin Al-Husayni in Sarajevo in 1943 – Hitler’s main ally in the Middle East.
When I first heard that one, I loved it. But come on. Who would believe that about Alija? They were turning him into some tremendously important figure inside the SS and the Independent State of Croatia.
The problem, just for starters, was that he was fifteen when the war began. So they were turning Alija – by the way, have you seen this guy? – into some badass teenage SS leader, some sort of commando who had, God knows how, taken control of an organization like that inside the Independent State of Croatia and, by seventeen, was receiving Hitler’s top envoys in Sarajevo? As if the State was some kind of joke.
I thought people would laugh at it. And once they started laughing at one thing, they might start questioning many others.
The amazing part is that people believed it without even checking how old he had been at the time. Serbs, foreigners, even people who really should have known better.
I mean, Alija even had to do his compulsory military service in the Yugoslav Army once the war was over, so think about that for a moment. Do you know how many former SS men and Ustaše went on to do compulsory military service in postwar Yugoslavia? I’d bet my life the answer was zero.
But hey, what can I say? Alija was perfect for all our purposes, or at least it seemed that way then.
In 1990, he was the oldest of the three national leaders of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The most serious one, the least energetic speaker. He spent almost a decade in Yugoslav communist prisons. I considered him a “Mohammedan” washed-up grandpa who would be very useful when the time came. Slobo thought the same.
You already know that the war in Croatia started in 1991, when we declared independence, soon after my meeting with Slobo in Karadjordjevo. You know, where we drew some new maps on napkins. I know for a fact that Milosević tried to win Izetbegovic over to his side even before the war in Croatia started. He offered him the position of the next President of the new Yugoslavia – formed by Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and parts of Croatia – which the Serbs would rename the Republic of Krajina. In exchange, Izetbegovic would have to give him the conscripts for the common army to help break Croatia – they were already part of the Yugoslav Army anyway.
You know what Izetbegovic said? He said something perfect for the Serbs and for us. He said: “This is not our war. We don’t want to be part of it,” and refused any position in the rump Yugoslavia. Even that public declaration he made – “This is not our war” – was a fantastic weapon against him by both sides. For the Serbs, he didn’t want to be part of their “new Yugoslavia” – more like a “Srboslavia”, heheh – and for us Croats it was even better – he didn’t give the Yugoslav Army another 200,000 soldiers for their war in Croatia, but we could use his words to say “he really didn’t support us Croats either”.
As a historian, I again have to say that Slobo was a masterful chess player. It was amazing to watch him play like a grandmaster, pushing his opponent’s pieces into the abyss, where it didn’t matter what move they made, as it would always leave ’em in a worse position.
That was the talent and knowledge of that apparatchik Milosević – zugzwang – Alija was just an “anti-communist” dissident – an ex-prison dweller, a pariah. Alija was a small fish trying to swim away with his head held high, but he was in a pool full of real sharks. He was an easy opponent for Slobo. And for me, of course, I have to say. I know that Slobo knew that I could anticipate his moves – although, to his misfortune, maybe he didn’t understand exactly how far ahead I could see.
I know, I know, now you’ll ask: How then did I not see Kljuić coming? As I said before – I wasn’t keen at all on his candidacy for my HDZ in Bosnia. Oh, that f… friggin’ moron.
End of Part IV
Continue to Mein Abkommen – Part V
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