The VOPP and the Croat-Muslim civil war

The role of the Vance Owen Peace Plan (VOPP) in sparking the war between Bosnian Croats and Muslims of 1992 to 1994 has been greatly exaggerated.

The VOPP, named after the international mediators Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen, first took shape in 1992 and was presented in its final form in January 1993. It divided Bosnia into provinces with ethnic majorities.

The argument of those who blame the VOPP for the fighting is that it placed Muslim majority areas under the control of the Croats, something that could never be accepted by the Muslims, who wanted Bosnia to remain unified as a multi-ethnic republic. The Muslims resisted a Bosnian Croat army (HVO) order, first made in January 1993 then repeated in April, to submit to its command in areas that were allocated to the Croats. The Croats, who had previously declared their “Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna” over much the same areas that were awarded to them by the VOPP, saw the plan as a useful vehicle for their expansionist aims. Their determination to pursue these and the Muslims’ resistance to ethnic division made war between the two sides inevitable.

The appeal of this interpretation is that it can be used to tidy up a very messy and complicated state of affairs, providing a context for what would otherwise appear as a struggle between two ethnic groups who were ultimately only interested in defending the areas of Bosnia they inhabited. Without the framework of the VOPP (and the Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna that was declared by the Croats in 1991) to explain events, attempts to apportion blame would descend into a futile chicken-and-egg-type argument about who first attacked or provoked the other group. Invoking the spectre of Croatian expansionism settles the matter.

But this interpretation assumes that, had the Croats co-operated fully with the Muslims, the Muslims would have returned the favour. An examination of evidence seen by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) makes this extremely difficult to believe.

Gornji Vakuf

After several clashes in 1992, fighting between Croats and Muslims broke out in January 1993 in Gornji Vakuf, one of the three Muslim-majority municipalities (according to the 1991 census) assigned to a Croat-majority canton (aside from Donji Vakuf, which was assigned to a Croat-majority canton, but was under Serb control).

On 16 January, it was reported by international monitors that the HVO commander in Gornji Vakuf had demanded that the Bosnian Army (ARBiH) “must be subordinate to the HVO.”

The commander also demanded that ARBiH units from Jajce, a town that had fallen to the Serbs in 1992, should withdraw from the area. He called for the establishment of mixed patrols and demanded the removal of three Muslim commanders, with their replacements to be picked by the Zenica-based 3^rd Corps of the Bosnian Army. The ARBiH in Gornji Vakuf said they could not accept all of the demands, but, perhaps because they agreed to remove their 305^th Brigade, which originated in Jajce, from the area and transfer it to Central Bosnia, large-scale fighting did not erupt in Gornji Vakuf at this time and tensions between Croats and Muslims in Central Bosnia calmed.

Konjic

They resurfaced in March in Konjic, another Muslim majority municipality assigned to a Croat-majority canton, where, despite the HVO order for subordination of ARBiH troops in Croat-majority provinces to the HVO, there had been no clashes between the two armies in January, only tensions.

According to Croat sources, the ARBiH attacked the HVO in Konjic on 23 March 1993. As in Gornji Vakuf, a major problem for the Croats appears to have been the arrival of Muslims from outside the municipality. The Croats blame the escalation of violence on the arrival of Safet Cibo, who was appointed by the Sarajevo authorities to lead the war presidency in Konjic, Jablanica and Prozor, following the removal of Konjic’s mayor Rusmir Hadzihuseinovic. Sarajevo authorities appear to have been unhappy with cooperation between the authorities in Konjic and the HVO forces there. A document signed by ARBIH commander Sefer Halilovic dated 28 January 1993 warns Arif Pasalic, the commander of the ARBiH’s Mostar-based 4^th Corps, of “cadres” in Konjic, including Hadzihuseinovic, who had put themselves in the service of “Greater Croatia.” Croats also point to the activities of Nezim Halilovic, a cleric from the eastern Bosnian town of Zepa, who became commander of the 4th Muslims Light Brigade, part of the 4th Corps, and to the activities of the “Black Swans” and foreign Arab-Afghan guerrillas who were integrated into Bosnian government forces from February 1993.

Fighting died down in Konjic after these March clashes but resumed ahead of a new 15 April deadline for Muslim forces in Croat-majority provinces defined by the VOPP to put themselves under HVO command or withdraw.

As is confirmed by an ARBiH journal, it attacked the HVO on 14 April, driving them into Kostajnici, Vrci and Ljesovina. The Croats fought back, but were forced out of the town and by June were confined to a small enclave to the west of Konjic.

Why did the Muslims attack Croats in Konjic? The Muslim answer to this question appears to be that the Croats had claimed Konjic as part of the “Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna” in 1991 and then ordered the Muslims to submit to Croat command in January and again in April, in line with the VOPP proposals. But while Konjic’s inclusion in Herceg-Bosna and then the putative Croat majority canton is not in doubt, actual evidence of Croat attempts to bring the municipality fully under their control is elusive. Accounting for just 26% of Konjic’s pre-war population (against the Muslims’ 55%) and with just a single unit in the area, against three ARBiH brigades, it was highly unlikely that they would be able to achieve this. It seems much more probable that they sought to stay onside with the local Muslim leadership who, before the arrival of Safet Cibo, presented no obstacle to wider Croat aims in the region.

Questioned about Croat actions in Konjic during his trial at the ICTY for war crimes against Bosnian Muslims, the former HVO commander Milivoj Petkovic said that the Croats did not seek to incorporate the entire municipality into Herceg-Bosna. According to Petkovic: “The HVO existed in Konjic and participated in power, and then Mr Cibo comes along and blows everything apart.”

Divisions between Muslims and Croats in Konjic go back to earlystages of the war. As in other parts of Bosnia, tensions arose from the Muslims’ desire to reconquer land that had been overrun and ethnically cleansed by the Serbs and the Croats’ reluctance to be drawn into what they saw as a battle for Muslim objectives.

According to an HVO soldier who appeared as an anonymous witness in the ICTY trial of Jadranko Prlic, the former prime minister of Herceg Bosna who is accused of war crimes against Bosnian Muslims, the Croats and Muslims in Konjic began to separate after a joint attack against the Serbs in Bradina in May 1992, an operation that “was not in the interests of the Croatian people.”

In his expert report for another trial at the ICTY, ARBiH Brigadier Muhammed Vejzagic said that the HVO was willing to participate in operations at Bradina and another village near Konjic, Donje Selo, “because these areas were significant for the rounding up of territory considered to be ‘the Croat national territory’.” However, the HVO later “no longer had the intention of engaging in combat activity to liberate the territories still occupied by the Serbs” and refused to help “liberate” Borci, south of Konjic, in June 1992.

As elsewhere in Bosnia, Croats and Muslims in Konjic were happy to maintain an alliance when their aims appeared to converge, demonstrating that divisions were not due to atavistic hatreds that precluded co-existence. It was primarily military issues related to the wider region, rather than questions over political power in Konjic itself that led to divisions.

The Croats wanted to control the road from Mostar to their stronghold of Kiseljak in central Bosnia, while the Muslims wanted to link up Sarajevo and Mostar. Both roads run through Konjic. To the West of Konjic, the road from Gornji Vakuf to Mostar, which runs through Croat-majority Prozor and Muslim majority Jablanica (the third Muslim majority municipality included in a Croat canton), was coveted by both sides.

Wider regional considerations are the most likely reason for the overthrow of Hadzihuseinovic as Konjic mayor and the installation of Cibo as the strongman in the region. In this sense, events in the area appear to mirror the breakdown in relations that was to occur between Croats and Muslims in the municipality of Fojnica later in the year. With no group enjoying a majority, Croats and Muslims co-existed in Fojnica under Croat leadership until June 1993, when the leadership was deposed by Herceg Bosna authorities for not joining an attack against ARBiH forces that were in conflict with Croats in neighbouring parts of central Bosnia. Similarly, the Bosnian Muslim leadership in Konjic was usurped for co-operating too closely with the Croats. The ARBiH captured Fojnica in July, whereas Konjic never changed hands.

Kiseljak, Kresevo, Vares, Zepce

The VOPP left two Croat majority municipalities, Kiseljak and Kresevo, outside the Croat majority cantons, in “special status” Sarajevo. It also left two municipalities with large Croat populations but where no group had a majority, Zepce and Vares, in a Muslim majority canton. The Croats have been accused of abandoning Vares to the Muslims (it was captured in November 1993) because it was not in a Croat majority province. Asked about this at the ICTY, the HVO commander Petkovic responded that it could not be correct because Kiseljak and Kresevo were not assigned to the Croats under the VOPP, yet remained under Croat control.

Zepce also remained under Croat control. Not only was Zepce not assigned to a Croat-majority canton, but it was not originally claimed by the Croats as part of “Herceg-Bosna.” A report by United Nations Military Observers (UNMOs) describes the HVO aim in Zepce as “to retain and expand Zepce to the (south) and remain free of both Moslem and Serb control and to join a Greater Herceg-Bosna state.”

In fact, certainly in the later stages of the war, the Croats in Zepce had no realistic chance of linking with Croat controlled territories to the south because they were separated by the Muslim-controlled municipalities of Zenica and Kakanj, a fact that further undermines the idea that the Croats’ aim was a territorially cohesive ethnically pure state that would join with Croatia.

The Croats were engaged in a much more subtle struggle for hegemony in the parts of Bosnia that were of interest to them, one that, if one looks beyond the commonly-held view that Croat expansionism, facilitated by the VOPP, started the Croat-Muslim war, bears a remarkable similarity to the aims of the Muslims.