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Will YPA Officers Lead Us To NATO?

If Bosnia-Hercegovina joins NATO, it will have to adopt NATO standards. And here the military training system has been disturbed, modern standards have been damaged because rigid communists and Yugoslav People's Army officers are being appointed to important posts. After 20 or 30 years of bad training they cannot change their mental framework

by Petar MILOS

Slobodna Dalmacija, Split, Croatia, April 12, 2002

No one in the media commented on the brief note that appeared in the newspapers stating that General Zeljko Glasnovic, the commander for training and military doctrine of the Federation Army, has resigned and left the Federation Army. Since resignations, departure from the Army, honorable and dishonorable dismissals, firing of officials, arrests and such are not so rare in the Federation, it makes sense that hardly anyone reacts to such news at this point.

However, regarding General Glasnovic, it is important to consider his reasons for resignation and leaving the army. Namely, General Glasnovic is a true professional who forged his military skills in the (professional) Canadian armed forces and then as a legionnaire fought in several wars all over the world, including the Gulf War, and then joined the Croatian Army and the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) [Bosnian Croat armed forces], and finally led the operation train and equip. Is his resignation motivated by personal dissatisfaction with his status and disputes with the Minister of Defense Mijo Anic?

Everything Is Politics

"No way," says General Glasnovic. "My resignation was motivated by more important issues and principles. If Bosnia-Hercegovina wants to have an army and if the goal is to join NATO, then NATO standards must be adopted. And here the military training system has been disturbed, modern standards have been damaged because rigid communists and Yugoslav People's Army officers are being appointed to important posts.

"After 20 or 30 years of bad training they cannot change their mental framework. Modern army is an organization, which provides conditions for leadership and initiative at the lowest levels, to each and every soldier. And mistakes are corrected on the spot. We cannot wait for the Sixth Fleet.

"In armies of Communist countries, just like in those societies, self-initiative was suppressed and totally destroyed. That is why, for example, Germans immediately retired all the senior officers from Eastern Germany."

It is without exception difficult to prompt General Glasnovic to discuss politics, but in ten years spent in Bosnia-Hercegovina, where his roots are, he realized that everything is politics.

"What sort of state is this if in Sarajevo we still have a monument to dictator Tito and in Brcko a gilded statue of Draza Mihajlovic? I want to say that here people still haven't faced their own past, which happened in most countries in transition".

General Glasnovic does not want to pass on double standards of the international community.

"No one can convince me that General Blaskic's verdict was not politically motivated. Politics also determines which indictments are issued and when. For example, the CIA established that Serbs committed 90 percent of crimes, and that is not obvious from the number of issued indictments. Then, what about those constructions that Croatia carried out an aggression against Bosnia-Hercegovina with the goal of ethnic cleansing?

"Just consider the facts. After the Serb aggression, Croatia received hundreds of thousands of Bosniak refugees. Croatia provided military training of the members of the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina, it provided logistic support and passed military shipments for Bosnia. Just consider that Croatia even allowed 5,000 Mujahedeen to go through. From the military point of view, I wonder which fool would have armed and trained its enemy?

"This was not an aggression but a series of local clashes which were the consequence of the Serb aggression. Bosniaks were escaping in front of Serbs and settled free space, modifying the ethnic composition of the population.

Communist Model

"In such an atmosphere conflict was unavoidable. No one mentions that as early as 1993 Konjic was cleansed of Croats. However, media and politicians keep repeating that this was a Croat aggression, so that it is implied that the HVO was also an aggressor."

General Glasnovic believes that not a single key problem has been resolved in Bosnia-Hercegovina.

"It's like the Bible says - the truth will set you free. But the truth is nowhere to be seen. Then people from the international community come here and they are historically illiterate, totally illiterate. They do not know what really happened here, but base their actions on Serb propaganda.

"Of course they are also hypocritical, so that now we are getting an administrator from England in Bosnia-Hercegovina, although that country permitted after the war [WWII] a massacre of Croats. My family went at that time through a tragedy. I do not want to discuss that, but I do know that at the time people had to keep quiet about that.

"They again force us to keep quiet. The authorities from Zagreb suggest to our people to keep their mouths shut. The old Communist model is back. If you are a Catholic, then you must be a religious fascist. If someone from your family died in Bleiburg, then you must be an Ustasha. Besides, here corruption is rife at all levels, in addition to chronic inefficiency and break down of morality."

They Fooled Us

In Tomislavgrad, where Glasnovic has lived for ten years already, everyone is proud of him, his honorable fight during the war, his altruism and ascetic lifestyle. Here he is known by two nicknames: Glava [head, leader] and Legenda [legend], based on the word he most often uses to address his collocutors. They are proud of his numerous decorations for military and wartime achievements, dating from 1991 and 1992, when he fought on Croat frontlines.

"It is true, Zagreb gave me all sorts of decorations, but now, when I look back, it seems that only decorations are left, because they did not acknowledge a single day of the time I spent on the front. I do not want to complain, but I wonder how they treat ordinary soldiers, if such things happen to me.

"After everything I feel sort of quixotic, or perhaps like Joseph K. from Kafka's Trial. My impression is that the whole Croat people feels like Kafka's hero. It does not know either who prosecutes it, or who the judge is, or how it is supposed to defend itself.

Homeland War Forgotten

"Collective memory was erased during the seventy years of Greater Serbian rule of Communist idiotism. For example, here every child knows who is chimneysweeper in 'Kapelski Kresovi' [TV show about Yugoslav WWII communist partisans, fought against Nazis], and no one knows who is Cvitan Galic from Sovici. And Cvitan was a pilot in WWII and destroyed 45 airplanes on the Russian front [as a member of Nazi German forces]. Here, we need lustration and must write a new military history.

"However, everything is going in a different direction. They are trying to make us forget even the Homeland War. People simply do not know what they fought for. Now they are being evicted, thrown out in the street, while politicians fight for cabinets. It seems that soldiers have wartime memory, but do not have wartime experiences".

Translated on June 4, 2002