CORRESPONDENCErnLetter From Serbiarnby Momcilo SelicrnNotes From the Front,rnPart IIrnBasically, the Yugoslav problem is simple:rnit is a war of vanities, of various ethnicrnand religious groups vying forrnsupremacy. If this sounds familiar tornAmerican and other Western readers,rnthe parallel is intentional: after all, it wasrnTito, the archcommunist, who first implementedrnthe New World Order of formerrnPresident George Bush, of HenryrnKissinger and the Trilateral Commission,rnand of the vintage Council on ForeignrnRelations. All the necessary componentsrnwere there, in the Yugoslavia of 1945 torn1991; socialism (communism), obligatoryrninternationalism (the “Salad Bowl”rnconcept), a bureaucratic structure tornkeep the balance between the warringrnfactions (a huge federal, state, and municipalrnadministration), phony humanismrnand fake “democracy” (Hp servicernto the various liberal holy causes, such asrn”sharing and caring,” “compassion,” “ecumenism,”rnetc.), with—to top it allrnoff—an actual if informal aristocracy tornoversee the whole works.rnSerbs are being crucified today becausernthey will not submit themselves tornthe New World Order, which they barelyrnsurvived the first time around, hirn1914, there were over eight million Serbsrnin the Balkans—they were, by far, thernlargest and the most important nation inrnthe region. Todav, after two successfulrngenocides—the Austro-Hungarian inrnWorld War I and the Croat and Muslimrnin World War 11—the current one isrnproving too much for the remaining tenrnmillion Serbs: their archenemies, the Albanians,rnthe Muslims, the Croats, thernBulgars, the Magyars, have, in somerncases, doubled or tripled their populationsrnand are being egged on by the several-rntimcs-defeated Germans, Austrians,rnand Turks.rnOn July 22, 1941, before a cheeringrnCroat crowd, Mile Budak, a novelist andrnthe Croat Minister of Cults and Faiths,rnpublicly said that the hidependent Staternof Croatia was, as a matter of state policy,rngoing to “kill one third of [its] Serbs,rnconvert a third to Roman Catholicism,rnand expel the remaining third intornSerbia.” Dobroslav Paraga—once anrnAmnesty International prisoner of conscience,rntoday the head of HOS, a militantrnCroat organization—is calling for arnCroat invasion of Belgrade, of the kindrnthat made some German cities in thernThirty Years War beg for deliverancernfrom “the Croats, the fire, and the pest.”rnApparently, the Croats, still only arnthird as numerous as the Serbs, are willingrnto ignite a worid war in order to proverntheir eminence to themselves. For a nationrnthat was, for almost a thousandrnyears, the subject of Hungary, which inrnturn became the subject of Austria, thernCroats’ claims to fame are curious. Accordingrnto their own centuries-old propaganda,rnthey are one of the foremostrnnations of the world and have contributedrnmightily to the pool of the world’srnknowledge and artistic accomplishment.rnInstrumentalized by pan-German imperialismrn(during World War II, somernCroat historians sought their nationalrnorigins among the Goths), as well as byrnexpansionist Roman Catholicism, thernCroats have so far committed unpardonablerncrimes against their neighbors,rnthe Serbs. During the last 150 years,rnunder Austro-Hungarian aegis, theyrnhave converted over a million Serbs tornRoman Catholicism, renaming themrn”Croats” in the process. (Croat nationalrndoctrine does not recognize the existencernof Roman Catholic Serbs, as, forrninstance, the inhabitants of Dubrovnikrnand some other coastal cities, until quiternrecently, used to call themselves.)rnTo facilitate the transmutation of theirrnSlavic neighbors into “Croats,” they alsorntook a Herzegovinian Serb dialect forrntheir literary language, though very fewrnCroats spoke it as their own. (NativernCroat dialects are the Slovene-like Kajkavski,rnspoken around Zagreb, and Ikavskirnand Cakavski, spoken on the AdriaticrnCoast, while Stekavski—today’s officialrnCroatian—is an eminently Serb language,rnspoken by at least three-quartersrnof all Serbs.) Worst of all, from the Serbrnpoint of view, the Croats have transferredrntheir sins upon us, blaming us for whatrnthey did—and are still doing—to us,rnmaking use of an opportune crack in thernfabric of this planet’s sanity and misperceivedrnself-interest.rnThe Serbs were the first—and the onlyrn—Balkan people to free themselvesrnfrom the Ottomans through their ownrnefforts (the Greeks and the Bulgariansrnachieved their liberation with British andrnRussian aid). In fact, the Serbs threw offrnthe Turkish yoke despite long-standingrnBritish, French, and Austrian support ofrntheir Asiatic occupiers. Such historicalrntenacity should, in the case of normalrnreasoning, give pause to those who havernwritten the Serbs off so easily because ofrntheir recent stumbling through the bogrnof communist insanity, foisted uponrnthem—at Teheran and Yalta—by JosephrnStalin and a compliant West. Therernwould have been no World War I had legitimaternSerb claims to Serb Bosnia beenrntaken into account. Gavrilo Princip,rnthen, would not have felt forced to firernhis bullet into Franz Ferdinand, andrnthere would have been no Russian Revolution,rnno Worid War II, no Cold War,rnnone of all this that’s killing us today.rnWhen in 1991, exactly 50 years afterrnthe first Jasenovac death caiirp, thernCroats began brandishing their WoridrnWar II checkerboard flags and singingrnsongs like “Who needs the dark red winern/ When Serb blood is just as fine!” thernSerbs of Croatia and Bosnia—a quarterrnof all the existing Serbs—had littlernchoice but to prepare for flie worst. Thernwar itself, however, was started by CroatrnPresident Franjo Tudjman, who in a recentrnpublic speech stated that “Croatiarncould have accepted the reordering ofrnthe Yugoslav Federation, but, withoutrnwar, we would not have got our independence.”rnAs for the Jasenovac Memorial Museumrnitself, it has been sacked by the CroatrnArmy, and all its exhibits of the Serb, thernJewish, and the Gypsy holocausts havernbeen obliterated. Unfortunately for thernUstashi, a substantial Jasenovac archivernstill exists in Banja Luka, a Bosnian cityrnunder Serb control. Franjo Tudjman hadrnplans to remake the museum into arn”memorial for all the dead in Worid Warrn42/CHRONICLESrnrnrn