Grabar-Kitarović and Vučić in a joint mission of (de)stabilization of the region

The International Institute for Middle Eastern and Balkan Studies (IFIMES) from Ljubljana, Slovenia, regularly analyzes events in the Middle East and the Balkans.

IFIMES, on the occasion of the destructive actions and threats to regional and EU stability by the President of the Republic of Croatia, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, has prepared an analysis of the situation and the harmful consequences of her policy for the region, the EU, and Croatia.

From the analysis titled "Croatia and the Region: Grabar-Kitarović and Vučić in a Joint Mission of (De)stabilization of the Region," we highlight the most important and interesting parts.

Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović (HDZ), President of the Republic of Croatia (RH), has in recent months been intensively shifting the internal political problems of the Republic of Croatia, personal political conflicts, and aspirations to the foreign policy arena, thereby destabilizing the Western Balkan region and consequently endangering the security and defense system of the EU.

 

In Serbia, the President of the Republic of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić (SNS), waged and won his internal party war for dominance in Serbia against Tomislav Nikolić (SNS), the former President of the Republic of Serbia. President Grabar-Kitarović is still in a permanent conflict with key figures of the HDZ, which she is simultaneously transferring to the relationship between the President of the Republic of Croatia and the Government of the Republic of Croatia. The starting point of all problems is the internal personal political realignment of the HDZ of Croatia and preparations for the next general elections in the Republic of Croatia. President Grabar-Kitarović is doing everything in her power to secure an absolutely dominant position within the HDZ of Croatia and thus ensure her next candidacy in the race for the President of the Republic of Croatia in the elections to be held in 2019. The conflict between Grabar-Kitarović and Andrej Plenković (HDZ), the current Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia, is just the "tip of the iceberg" of political conflicts and internal party combinations within the HDZ of Croatia.

Is the Croatian President a hostage of certain lobbies?

Grabar-Kitarović is gaining political points within the HDZ by escalating relations with neighbors, opening political topics on which there is no minimal political consensus between the Republic of Croatia and other countries, and even directly interfering in the internal affairs of neighboring countries. Unfortunately, Prime Minister Plenković often tries to imitate her irrational and dangerous (in)security foreign policy, which creates additional implications in relation to the foreign policy of President Grabar-Kitarović already described. For internal political recompositions, not only within the HDZ, the so-called generals' and (again) Herzegovinian lobbies are important. Grabar-Kitarović is trying to establish a "close cooperation" with the aforementioned lobbies, which since the time of Franjo Tuđman (HDZ), the first president of the Republic of Croatia, have shown insatiability when it comes to power, but also brutality in the dismemberment of Bosnia and Herzegovina by forming, and later revitalizing, the para-state of so-called HR Herceg-Bosna. There are numerous results of the aforementioned "close cooperation" between Grabar-Kitarović and the mentioned lobbies, from the appointment of SOA director Daniel Markić, who is proposed by General Ante Gotovina, personal connections and relations with the controversial Zdravko Mamić, to constant pressure from Grabar-Kitarović on the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the EU and NATO, to formally establish the defunct para-state of so-called HR Herceg-Bosna in Bosnia and Herzegovina through federalization and/or changes to the electoral law. Of course, the aforementioned lobbies will be assessed and valued in the future based on the principle of "who gives more," and General Damir Krstičević (HDZ), the current Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense of the Republic of Croatia, is already being mentioned as a possible candidate of the generals' lobby for the future President of the Republic of Croatia. The recent statement by Davor Domazet-Lošo, a retired admiral of the Croatian Navy (HRM), that the Croatian Army will march into Ljubljana in 48 hours is just another confirmation that the so-called generals' lobby has reactivated in Croatia and that President Grabar-Kitarović is "most responsible" for Croatia's return to its previous rigid policy that led Croatia to near isolation by the international community and which is partly being tried or has already been judged at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.

It is known that the former President of the Republic of Croatia, Stjepan Mesić (2000-2010), retired the war generals who tried to "steal" the state, as they had become a "state within a state," but the current government has reunited them, so the dismissal of the aforementioned retired admiral Domazet-Lošo resembles the dismissal of the president of HDZ BiH and the president of the so-called HR Herceg-Bosna, Mate Boban (HDZ BiH), by Franjo Tuđman due to pressure from the international community and responsibility for the destruction of the "Old Bridge" in Mostar. In the appendix to the analysis, you can read how Franjo Tuđman used his generals and the report of Croatian General Ljubo Ćesić-Rojs (HDZ), who, on Franjo Tuđman's orders, secretly and in parallel sent a report from the 5th Congress of HDZ BiH held in Mostar on May 16, 1998, and practically gave his proposals and assessments which, viewed from the current temporal distance, were accepted and realized by Tuđman (document in appendix number 1).

Croatia's instrumentalization of the EU and NATO for the destabilization of BiH and the region

Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović spent a significant part of her professional career dealing with foreign policy, both for Croatia and for international organizations, including NATO. She was elected President of the Republic of Croatia precisely because of her international experience, connections, and voters believed they could entrust their confidence to someone who knows how the international system works, with the aim of integrating the Republic of Croatia into Western civilizational value systems as quickly as possible, from political and economic to security. Unfortunately, Grabar-Kitarović has, at a meteoric pace, adapted to Croatian daily political games and gambits and succumbed to precisely those structures that still "dream" of the Greater Croatia project, aligning herself with (post)war lobbies and causing security problems on a regional and European level.

Unlike Aleksandar Vučić, who will have to use his entire mandate to pretend and simulate as President of the Republic of Serbia that he upholds and advocates for European and Western values, while on the other hand being firmly tied to Russia and war-profiteering structures of Serbia, Grabar-Kitarović is undergoing the opposite process, as in Croatia she must pretend to be a "greater patriot" than the "Father of the Nation" himself, the late President Tuđman.

Analysts warn that the aforementioned processes involving the President of Croatia and the President of Serbia have dangerous repercussions and effects on regional and EU security and stability. Both countries are destabilizing BiH based on the already established matrix of policies of Franjo Tuđman and Slobodan Milošević (SPS). Vučić supports the separatism of the president of the entity Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Milorad Dodik (SNSD), the "new Radovan Karadžić," while Grabar-Kitarović supports the Herceg-Bosna policy of the "washed" Dragan Čović (HDZ BiH), president of HDZ BiH and member of the Presidency of BiH from the Croat people in BiH.

Grabar-Kitarović and Vučić, each from their own side and in their own way, are jointly responsible for misunderstandings and disputes with the following countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Hungary, Kosovo, Romania, Albania, and even Italy, while direct relations between Croatia and Serbia are characterized by constant war-mongering actions with an emphasis on the last regional and World War II.

Analysts warn that the alliance of war-profiteering structures with the presidents of Croatia and Serbia poses a great danger to peace in the region, especially considering that Grabar-Kitarović formally represents the Euro-Atlantic option (EU and NATO), while Vučić is tied to Russia and its interests in the Western Balkans. Croatia is instrumentalizing its EU membership for its specific nationalist aspirations in the region, particularly towards Bosnia and Herzegovina, while it is trying to "Croaticize" its NATO membership, ignoring the fact that NATO is a transnational organization for collective defense and security. Analysts believe that it is necessary to further alert the leadership of the EU and NATO to Croatia's past and announced abuses of EU and NATO membership for the realization of some of its policies from the recent past, which are being tried or have already been judged at the International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) in The Hague.

Saving the dead Tuđman

The hysterical and unfounded attacks by Croatian President Grabar-Kitarović on Bosnia and Herzegovina have found their expression in the latest annual report of the Croatian Security Intelligence Agency (SOA), which states that as many as 10,000 members of the Salafi movement operate in the "southeastern Croatian neighborhood." Accusing and framing Bosnia and Herzegovina by Grabar-Kitarović as a base for Islamic fanatics and potential terrorist actions is nothing more than a recycling of Franjo Tuđman's views on BiH. Namely, by criticizing and denigrating the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague and the first-instance verdict against the wartime president of the so-called HR Herceg-Bosna, Jadranko Prlić, and other convicted individuals, Grabar-Kitarović stated that in her diplomatic contacts she warns other countries about the alleged inconsistent practice of the ICTY regarding the Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE), through which, according to Grabar-Kitarović, collective guilt is being established. Precisely in many so-called presidential transcripts approved by Franjo Tuđman, who secretly recorded all his meetings, and which Croatia submitted to the ICTY, Franjo Tuđman spoke of BiH as a conceived and invented Islamic state and a potential terrorist threat to Europe. Grabar-Kitarović is precisely the spokesperson for the policy of the dead Tuđman, who is trying to achieve the annulment of the legal conclusions of the verdict against Jadranko Prlić and other convicted individuals, by annulling the JCE and the conclusions about the aggression of the Republic of Croatia on BiH, and thus try to remove Tuđman's name from the ICTY verdict, as one of the key organizers and participants of the JCE.

Grabar-Kitarović's statements about thousands of Islamic fighters (jihadists) in BiH are nothing more than a well-thought-out diplomatic action that would send a message to the key countries of the world, showing that Tuđman fought against the creation of an Islamic state in BiH and "Islamic terrorists" in the nineties, and not that Tuđman was part of a criminal plan and enterprise, through which camps were established and numerous serious crimes were committed in BiH with the aim of annexing parts of the territory of a sovereign state and attaching them to the Republic of Croatia.

Grabar-Kitarović has precisely "harnessed" her intelligence agency SOA to support her "Islamophobic" rhetoric and activities by falsifying and inventing the number of 10,000 Salafis, in order to try to put pressure on the ICTY and influential countries that have their links and personnel at the ICTY regarding the upcoming appellate verdict scheduled for November 2017. It is being concealed that more than 25,000 Bosniaks-Muslims participated in the defense of Croatia, of whom 1,180 lost their lives fighting for Croatia and its survival.

In the appendix to the analysis, there are some examples of so-called presidential transcripts that were used before the ICTY in The Hague in the proceedings against Jadranko Prlić and others (Appendices 2-4). A meeting of Franjo Tuđman on March 8, 1993, with representatives of the so-called HR Herceg-Bosna (appendix number 2), a meeting of Tuđman on December 4, 1993, with representatives of the Croatian Home Guard (appendix number 3), and a meeting held on January 12, 1994, with bishops of the Roman Catholic Church from BiH (appendix number 4) stand out. In all meetings, President Tuđman negatively defines and comments on Bosnian Muslims from BiH and explains his theses about an Islamic state in BiH as a potential terrorist base. The identity and/or similarity of Tuđman's observations about BiH and Bosniaks can be recognized in the appearances of the current President of the Republic of Croatia, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović.

By endangering regional peace, Grabar-Kitarović endangers EU security

By state-sponsored and deliberate fabrication of disinformation and lies about the invasion of alleged jihadists and terrorists from BiH, while simultaneously reviving the para-state of so-called HR Herceg-Bosna, abolished by the Washington Agreement, Grabar-Kitarović is directly destabilizing the region, the EU, and Croatia itself.

Analysts warn that intelligence and security agencies from BiH have played and continue to play the biggest role in preventing and stopping any incidents in the territory of the Republic of Croatia, especially during the tourist season, which includes stopping false disinformation about potential terrorist targets in Croatia. If officials from BiH were to behave in public appearances towards Croatia in the same way as Grabar-Kitarović behaves towards BiH, while misusing government security and intelligence agencies, Croatia's position as one of the safest tourist destinations in the world would certainly be endangered.

The President of Croatia, Grabar-Kitarović, has entered and engaged in a very dangerous geopolitical game by producing alleged jihadists in BiH, which in the end can cost and harm Croatia, Croatian tourism, and Bosnian Croats the most. By wanting to save the dead Tuđman from the second-instance verdict of the ICTY in The Hague, Grabar-Kitarović is endangering regional, European, and Croatian peace and relative stability.