by Viktor IVANCIC
"I wish you, under the auspices of the [Catholic] Church, to finish in Kistanje your 700-years-long and difficult journey," the political prophet said to Croats from Kosovo gathered at a commemorative mass in the church of St. Nikola, a monumental newly built edifice with a sufficiently large cross that will ensure a suitable identity for recently arrived Croats from Kosovo, who now live in the previously Serb majority village of Kistanje. The holy mass was led by msgr. Marijan Oblak [cloud], who announced, with the sonorous support from the belfry, i.e. "from the clouds" - that the territory has been definitively marked as ours. Tomcic proclaimed the final solution, wished to Croats from Kosovo to end in Kistanje their "700-years-long and difficult journey", marked the end of history and consecrated Croat soil, as a perfect spot for a cemetery, with holy political water.
Kistanje was an ethnic pilot-project of Tudman's regime, and the chief executor of the project was the Minister for Reconstruction Jure Radic. After the Serbs left, Tudman's regime settled in the village Croats from Kosovo, by giving them sweet promises and free plane tickets, which were distributed in Kosovo by humanitarian workers such as Slobodan Lang. In early 1997 Nikola Matic, the then deputy envoy of the Republic of Croatia for reconstruction and development of Kistanje, informed the nation that at the said spot "a new town is being created from scratch" with the assistance of "the Council for Transfer of Population", led by him. Today, Kistanje, because of demographic violence and difficulties of Croat settlers from Kosovo to adjust to the new environment as a shining example of a grotesquely deformed identity - with the appearance of a flea market lost in the middle of nowhere - and only the recently built belfry of the church of St. Nikola, like a huge concrete club, guarantees ethnic-religious loyalty.
After all, what could have been the motivation for the expansionist project that would "create towns from scratch", with assistance of "the Council for Transfer of Population"? A little known author from the end of the twentieth century wrote seven years ago lines that today clarify political connections between Croats from Kosovo and Zlatko Tomcic:
"The fatalistic determination with which Croats from Kosovo accepted the fate of snail-people - by loading their homes on their backs and leaving the sad trail of tears all over the former Yugoslavia, and rushing towards the homeland they had never seen before - contains all the truth about the meaning of statehood that has been offered to the Croatian people.(...)
"True, no one needs Croats from Kosovo, least of all their Croat brethren, but their selfless contribution to the idea of ‘humane transfer of population' perfectly fits the Croat patriotic fairytale; fairytale that, true, boasts with an unmistakably Serb flavor: all Croats in one state! (The fact that most Croats from Janjevo, in Kosovo, voted for Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia in the first democratic elections in Serbia only contributes to that.) In their current choice no one, however, seems to see any moral void, just like a majority of Croats, besides, failed to spot anything wrong with the mass expulsion of Serbs from Krajina.(...)
"True, the people that accepted the fate of garbage of history that will be moved by its political leaders - in a process spiked by loud sloganeering and patriotic songs - from one garbage dump to another, had no other choice."
Today, Tomcic, in the era of official condemnation of ethnic engineering and similar geostrategic crimes, with his solemn appearance in Kistanje legitimizes the magic potion of Croatian statehood: the way to get ones own, is to steal somebody else's. He did that as a high state official. The circle of history was nicely closed, credit was given where credit was due, cogs found their place... Is anything missing? Well, Franjo Tudman is missing. Of course, Serbs are gone as well. But, thank God, these shortages are hardly felt. Instead of Franjo, we have Zlatko, and - given that sacred land is involved - truancy of the "heavenly folk" [Serbs] was forgiven by archbishop Oblak.