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Further Reading

Croatia / Hrvatska

The Croats are believed to be a Slavic people who migrated from Ukraine and settled in present-day Croatia during the 6th century. Croatia is situated between central and eastern Europe. Its terrain is diverse, containing rocky coastlines, densely wooded mountains, plains, lakes, and rolling hills. Croatia serves as a gateway to eastern Europe. It lies along the east coast of the Adriatic Sea and shares a border with Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, and Slovenia. The republic has a distinct boomerang shape, arching from the Pannonian Plains of Slavonia between the Sava, Drava, and Danube Rivers, across hilly, central Croatia to the Istrian Peninsula, then south through Dalmatia along the rugged Adriatic coast. Croatia is made up of 20 counties plus the city of Zagreb and controls 1,185 islands in the Adriatic Sea, 67 of which are inhabited.

Croatia was one of the six republics constituting Yugoslavia until 1991 when the country declared independence. The parliamentary elections in May 1990 became a cornerstone of Croatia’s future status in Yugoslavia. The Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) led by Franjo Tudjman gained a clear majority in the legislature. The party had grown into a broad-based political movement whose main plank was the achievement of national sovereignty. Tudjman was elected Croatian President and he appointed Stipe Mesic as the first non-communist Prime Minister. Croatia held a referendum for independence on 18 May 1990, which showed that 93 percent of the population favored Croatia’s statehood.

The separation of Croatia proved problematic for Belgrade, which supported political and military insurrection of Serbs in Krajina. Gradually, Croatia was dragged into a Serbian-Croatian conflict at the republican level, which escalated after the Serbian National Council in Knin declared the independence of Krajina from Croatia. At the end of June 1991, Croatia declared its independence and “disassociation” from Yugoslavia.

Initially, the Yugoslav People’s Army (YPA) focused its attention on crushing the Slovenian rebellion, but it also moved troops and equipment to saturate Croatia. The YPA aimed either to ensure that Zagreb remained in a centralized Yugoslavia controlled by Belgrade, or to carve away about a third of Croatia’s territory and establish a “Greater Serbia” stretching to the Adriatic coast. Failing this, Serbia would be dependent on Montenegro for access to the Adriatic.

Croatia found itself in a full-scale war, which ended in 1995 with the exodus of 250,000 Serbs from Krajina after the Croatian army retook the area from the Serbian paramilitary forces. The war left a legacy of war crimes committed by both sides, thousands of displaced Muslims, Croats and Serbs, and 20,000 dead.

In December 1995, President Tudjman joined President Milosevic and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic in the signing of the Dayton peace accord, which ended the war in Bosnia. President Tudjman came out from the war a victor and a national hero, despite his alleged complicity in the war crimes committed by Croatian paramilitaries in Bosnia. Tudjman exploited Croatia’s post-war insecurities, and his image as the savior of the nation, to establish a quasi-authoritarian regime. He was repeatedly criticized by theinternational community for refusing to cooperate with the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, support for Bosnian Croatian nationalists in Bosnia, and violations of human rights and press freedom at home.

By the close of 1999, Croatia’sprogress toward democratic rule and membership in international institutions was stalled. The forces of political change were gathering strength and momentum, however. Opinion polls consistently showed that a majority of Croats were growing resentful of the regime’s abuses and the corruption that permeated it.

When opposition politicalparties succeeded in establishing stable electoral coalitions in 1999, the HDZ’s grip on power could finally be challenged. Croatia’s Democratic Progress Elections to the House of Representatives, the lower house of the Croatian National Sabor or Parliament, were held on January 3, 2000. In a sweeping victory the coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Croatian Social Liberal Party (HSLS) brought an end to the decade long rule of the nationalist Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ).

Prior to the 2000 parliamentary elections, there were strong indications that a majority of Croatian citizens wanted a change of political leadership. HDZ’s political opposition, however, was badly divided. The formation of two opposition electoral coalitions in the months preceding the election, and the rapidly deteriorating health of President Tudjman, who would die shortly before the election, created the opportunity for electoral success and political change.

The government conducted a steady policy of cooperation with international institutions and achieved two significant foreign policy goals. In May 2000, Croatia became a member of NATO’s Partnership for Peace, and in May 2001, the country signed a Stabilization and Association Agreement with the European Union. This government also demonstrated a consistent and constructive policy toward Bosnia and Herzegovina by condemning the illegal activities of Bosnian Croats, who wanted tocreate a separate state. The government’s determination to cut off political and financial links to Croatian nationalists in BiH provided credible evidence of Zagreb’s intention to play a more constructive role in the region. Croatia also remained adamant in its support for the International War Crimes Tribunal’s investigations and arrests of suspected war criminals in the former Yugoslavia.

On November 23, 2003, national elections were held for Parliament, and the Croatian Democratic Union party (HDZ), which had governed Croatia from independence until 2000, came back into power. The new government, headed by Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, took office in December 2003. PM Sanader and his Croatian Democratic Union were elected in 2003 on a platform promising to bring Croatia into the EU and NATO. The HDZ proved it was no longer cut from the same cloth as the nationalist HDZ of late president Franjo Tudjman. The HDZ essentially co-opted the ruling coalition's Euro-Atlantic agenda.

The state is functioning well, but the people are not prospering. Many factors contribute to this including an obsolete education system, the lack of a defined political culture, and little entrepreneurial spirit. These are all legacies of a communist state.

Croatia's ambitious military reform program was designed to make the armed forces "NATO-ready" by 2007, a difficult task under the best circumstances thanks to a defense budget burdened by excess personnel and obligatory pension payments to war veterans. The government had minimal resources for much-needed equipment procurement.

Taking into consideration present structure and the age of vessels, the Croatian navy is inadequate for future tasks of successful deterrence, participation in international operations as well as protection of national interests in peacetime. Using the experience of countries like Finland and Israel as the starting point, along with world tendencies in development of fleets of small countries, there are being studied possible types of medium-term development of the Croatian navy along with the development of traditionally structured or modular fleet and their advantages and disadvantages, taking into account Croatian needs and capacity as well as possible participation in transnational defence organizations.

Janes reports that as of late 2011 a Croatian Marine Infantry Battalion of 200 troops was reported to be grouped into three Independent infantry companies garrisoned at Pula, Sibenik and Ploce, each of which can call upon a number of MBTs (reportedly 300, assuming an "unlikely" level of operational capability) and as well as 15 attack helicopters (including Mi-8s) for support. The Battalion was headquartered at Split, though at that time a move to Dubrovnik had been under consideration. The 4th Guards Brigade (based at Split) was transferred to the Croatian Navy as a naval infantry unit in January 2002. Much of the littoral and the many islands are unsuitable for tank warfare and more suited for small-scale, amphibious operations.