to drum up international support for itsrnvision of a South Slav, rump Austria-rnHungary, but Western victors would notrnhear of it—until two years ago, whenrnGermany set out, once again, on thernroad to a world war.rnIn 1918, however, Croatia was orderedrnby the “international community”rnof the day to join up with Serbia as wellrnas with Slovenia (another formerrnAustro-Hungarian province) to form arn”Yugoslavia.” What the machine gunner’s,rnor the sergeant’s, great-grandfatherrnthought of this, I do not know. Myrnown grandfather voted for a union ofrnthe Kingdom of Montenegro and thernKingdom of Serbia into a single Serbrnstate. As a deputy to the Great MontenegrinrnNational Assembly of Novemberrn1918, my grandfather, Blagota Selic,rnhad little use for a “Yugoslavia.” Instead,rnhe worked toward a more viablernand historic “Greater” Serbia, made uprnof all the disparate Serb lands in thernBalkans, liberated—after hundreds ofrnyears of bitter fighting—by the SerbianrnArmy. Moreover, the 1915 Treaty ofrnLondon had promised the Serbs asrnmuch as it had promised the Italians: arnline was drawn from the Hungarian borderrndownward to the Adriatic Sea andrnall the lands south of it given to thernSerbs as their ethnic heritage. This projectedrn”Greater” Serbia included thernwhole of Bosnia, which according to thernofficial Austro-Hungarian statistics hadrna 44 percent Serb majority, as opposedrnto some 32 percent Moslems and aboutrn24 percent Bosnian Roman Catholicsrn(called “Croats” by the nationalists inrnZagreb). For the medieval Kingdom ofrnBosnia had been a Serb kingdom, andrnmost of its Muslims’ ancestors had beenrnOrthodox Serbs before being—oftenrnforcibly—converted to Islam by the conqueringrnOttomans.rnAs my Montenegrin Serb grandfatherrnsaw it (in agreement with my Serbianrnmaternal grandfather, who had foughtrnas a guerrilla against both the Bulgariansrnand the Austro-Hungarians) Serbs hadrnbeen, by international trickery—throughrnthe wiles of diplomacy, finance, and unholyrninfluence-peddling—deprived ofrntheir hard-won patrimony. Every secondrnSerbian adult male had died in thernGreat War for the Serbs to end up asrnparts of a state that, among its first measures,rnreinstated former Austro-Hungarianrnofficers into the Yugoslav Army,rnwith an automatic advancement inrnrank!rnThat night, of our aborted assault uponrnthe village of Dragisic (the villagernwas later taken by another Serb attack),rnwe thought different things, but I’ve yetrnto find a Kraina Serb, or a Bosnian Serb,rnor a Herzegovinian Serb, willing to repeatrnthis experience with the “German”rnor “Turkish” Slavs. The sergeant himselfrnhad barely survived the 1991 war, whenrnhis unit was deserted by its commandingrnofficer, a “Yugoslav” who turned outrnto be wholly Croat, whereas my own fatherrnhad seen his army units, in 1941,rnturned over to the Nazis by the Croatrnand Muslim officers of his day.rnThrough the creation of Yugoslavia,rnKraina—ethnically Croatian from thern7th to the 16th century, but entirelyrnSerb after the 16th-century Croat exodusrnunder the Turkish onslaught—wasrngiven to Croatia, despite the record ofrnthe past four centuries and the fact thatrnit was the invited Serbs who had defendedrnit. In 1939, under Croat pressure,rnthe government of the Kingdomrnof Yugoslavia incorporated Kraina intornthe Province of Croatia, which was givenrnthe borders of an imaginary Croatia thatrnhad never existed, in an effort to thwartrnexactly what came about two years later,rnin World War II. (It must be rememberedrnthat Croatia lost its independencernin the 12th century, to the Hungarians,rnand never regained it, until today.) Inrn1941 the whole Croat nation, led by allrnits political factions except the communists,rnlined itself solidly with thernAxis and fought, with commendablerntenacity, together with Mussolini andrnHitler against the Free Wodd.rnThis may help to explain the presentrnGerman, Austrian, and Italian supportrnfor Croatia, so mistakenly glorified byrnthe Western media as a bastion of democracyrnand liberty in the Balkans. Asrnin 1941-1945, today over 300,000 CroatianrnSerbs are refugees in Serbia, afterrnbeing declared a non-nation by the 1991rnCroatian constitution and after seeingrnhundreds of their fellow Serbs slaughteredrnby the sons and the grandsons ofrnthe fascist Croatian Ustashi in the firstrnethnic cleansing of the last 50 years, arnfact rarely noticed by the Western press.rnIt was the Croat police’s military attackrnupon the Serb village of Borovo Selo,rnnear Vukovar, that in May 1991 startedrnthe Serbo-Croatian War. What thernSerbs had declined to do, in the case ofrnthe 1991 Slovene armed uprising againstrnthe Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,rnthe Croats did without compunction,rnshooting at their formerrnfriends and neighbors.rnIn 1941, Croats and Bosnian Muslims,rntogether with Kosovo Albanians,rngave the Nazis more volunteer troopsrnthan the whole of the Soviet Union, andrnmore than any other region on earth.rnThe Croat Army Legion {VerstaerkenrnKroatische Infanterie Regiment 369), thernCroat Air Force Legion, the Croat NavalrnLegion, the 13th Maffen-Gabirgs-Divisionrnder SS Handschar (kroatische Nr.rn1), the 33 rd Maffen-Gabirgs-Division derrnSS Kama (kroatische Nr. 2), the 368thrnGerman-Croatian Volunteer Division,rnthe 373rd German-Croatian VolunteerrnDivision, the 392nd German-CroatianrnVolunteer Division, the German-CroatianrnGendarmerie (SS), the Italian-rnCroat Legion, the Italian-Croat VoluntaryrnAnti-Communist Militia, the 21strnMaffen-Gabirgs-Division der SS Skanderbegrn(albanische Nr. 1), the 1st andrn3rd Italian-Albanian Rifle Regimentsrn(Cacciatori di Albania), and many other,rnlesser units, all fought against the Allies,rnin the Soviet Union, France, andrnYugoslavia. All of these troops alsornfought against the Serbs—RoyalistrnChetniks, Tito’s Partisans, and, especially,rnthe civilian population—as theirrnprimary target.rnDuring the 1941-1945 war m Yugoslavia,rnthe Serbs lost a million peoplern—mostly noncombatants—to therncombined actions of their enemies, whornare today recognized as democratic, pro-rnWestern states by the “internationalrncommunity.” The ethnic cleansing ofrnSerbs in Wodd War II has never beenrnrecognized by the U.N., whose files arernclear of the Jasenovac death camp, nearrnZagreb, where some 30,000 Jews, 50,000rnGypsies, and over 600,000 Serbs werernmurdered. For this, we can thank thernformer Yugoslav communist governmentrnand its wish to promote “Brotherhoodrnand Unity” within Yugoslavia,rnas well as the stalwart efforts of thosernsame forces within the U.N. organizationrnthat elected the former Nazi KurtrnWaldheim as secretary-general. Norrnshould one discount the effects ofrndecades of Croat emigre propaganda.rnEven a cursory glance at any Croat emigrernnewspaper of, say, 20 years ago willrnshow a collective Serb portrait that coincidesrnwith what passes for truth today,rnafter all the alleged Serb misdeedsrnin the current war. What is strangelyrnpuzzling is that all the imputed Serbrnatrocities of the present—and muchrn)UNE 1993/39rnrnrn