ROM 2007
I am reporting again from the ROM 2007 Leadership Development & Peace Gathering in Fuzine, Croatia. Thursday morning of the second week we had the privilege of hearing three modern day heroes tell their stories. In the early ‘90s, as the former Yugoslavia began to unravel and the voices for war and extreme nationalism prevailed, one region in Croatia, Gorsky-Kotar took a different course. Just a few miles away, other communities were torn apart as fighting began breaking out between Serbs and Croats who had lived next door to each other their entire lives. Yet Gorsky-Kotar came to be referred to throughout the Balkans as an Oasis of Peace. Today we would see that appellation as complimentary, but in the 90s it was intended as a phrase of derision.
Josip Horvat, then president of the Gorsky-Kotar regional government, Nada Glad, station manager of Radio Delnice, the regional radio station, and Franjo Starcevic, are ordinary citizens who are quick to reject hero status. They reminded us that in such times, it is warriors who are declared to be heroes. They see themselves as ordinary people who simply chose to do what they felt was right.
To better understand their accomplishments, we must set the local context. Delnice, capital of Gorsky-Kotar, contained a Yugoslavian Army base. As Croatia split itself off from the former Yugoslavia, it had no standing army. The best it could boast was a lightly armed police force. In Gorsky-Kotar, local civilians had only the rifles and pistols used for hunting in the forests. In contrast, the soldiers of the Delnice base were heavily armed. They also controlled and guarded a major munitions depot that contained heavy weapons, ammunition, bombs and artillery shells.
As Croatia declared its independence, the Yugoslavian army soldiers who were not Serbs slipped away from the base and returned to their homes. Eventually, about 150 heavily armed Serb soldiers remained on the base in Delnice. An enemy with superior firepower confronted Horvat and his fellow peacemakers. But this was not the only threat they had to consider.
The munitions warehouses near the center of the town were likely to be targeted for air strikes by the Serb air force to prevent their falling into the hands of the Croats and the army Croatia was likely to form. If they were hit by an air strike, the resulting blast would have the same effect as 20 kilotons of TNT (almost twice the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima). Horvat knew that he had to get the munitions out of the center of Delnice.
Horvat, with the support of his peacemaking confederates initiated talks with the Serb commanders of the army base. Over a period of weeks, Horvat negotiated an agreement by which the soldiers on the base would be given civilian clothes and money for transportation so they could be smuggled out of Croatia. They would be assisted to leave Croatia and smuggled into Serbia to avoid confinement in a POW camp. In return, the soldiers would turn the base and the munitions over to the civilian authority of Gorsky-Kotar led by Horvat. The only alternative for both sides was a fight in which many on both sides were likely to be killed.
Throughout the negotiations, Horvat and his friends had to contend with the acts of extremists on their own side. At one point, a soldier on the base was killed by a Croat sniper. The mayor of the town immediately wrote a letter asking the forgiveness of the soldier’s family. Ms. Glad, manager of Radio Delnice, had the letter read over the radio. The commandant of the base and his soldiers heard the broadcast because they listened everyday to the 4 pm radio show of Radio Delnice to get some idea about what was happening in the community. They later reported that hearing the letter read on air helped to build trust and to lower tensions on the base.
Ultimately, Horvat was successful. The base and the munitions were handed over to the local Croat civilian authority without a shot being fired. The Serb soldiers and their commanders were smuggled out. Upon taking control of the munitions warehouse and military base, Horvat and his peacemakers had to find a way to transport the munitions away from the city. He organized a force of volunteers from the community to load over 100 heavy trucks to transport the munitions to a safer place in the mountains far from Delnice. When the last warehouse was 95% empty the long anticipated air attack came. The resulting blast shattered windows throughout Delnice but no lives were lost and the town was left standing.
Throughout this difficult period Franjo Starcevic played a pivotal role as a peacemaker in the region. Franjo is an elderly gentleman whose gentle spirit and good humor raises the spirits of all who meet him. When I met him, even though we were unable to speak each other’s language, I knew that I had been in the presence of someone close to the heart of God. Franjo, at great personal risk, visited the Serb villages in Gorsky Kotar. Franjo doesn’t drive. In order to visit the villages he had to walk great distances. But maybe that helped. Franjo would walk into a Serb village unarmed and ask to talk to the mayor and anyone else who would listen. His objective was always to open communications, reassure the inhabitants of the village that they had nothing to fear from their Croat neighbors and then formulate plans for maintaining lines of communication. As a result of his visits, the mayors of the Croat and Serb villages communicated regularly throughout the war. If one heard a rumor of an attack on a member of his own ethnic group, rather than believe it and climb the ladder of inference, he would call the mayor of the village purported to be the site of the incident to check out the facts. As a result, many misunderstandings were avoided.
Franjo also made another big contribution during the war. He opened a School of Peace for youth of the region. There, at a time when war fever ruled the Balkans, Franjo and his teachers taught non-violence and conflict resolution skills to their students.
Nada Glad, as station manager of Radio Delnice, the regional radio station, contributed daily to building peace. When other radio stations were playing the kind of martial music that one often hears in time of war, Radio Delnice played music more likely to soothe the soul. Glad refused to give airtime to extremists who would have called for violent expulsion of Serbs whose families had lived in Gorsky-Kotar for generations. One of her tools was humor. When Serb planes were seen flying over, she would report the sighting of some strange silver birds by local bird watchers. At times she had to listen to the rants of extremists who would call the station to complain of the station’s obvious bias for peace.
Eventually Mrs. Glad, who had worked for Radio Delnice for 20 years, was fired as station manager by the nationalist government in retaliation for her peacemaking efforts. But she will quickly tell you that her sacrifice was negligible when compared to the price paid by the Serb commandant and sub-commandant of the army base. Tragically, they were tried before a court martial in Serbia for deserting their post and were sentenced to prison. After four years of imprisonment they were released. Within weeks of his release, the commandment was found dead under very suspicious circumstances.
All of us at ROM 2007 were inspired by the stories of these unsung heroes. As you travel through the Balkans, in village after village, you will find monuments to the heroes of the wars of the 90s. No one has thought to raise a monument to Horvat, Glad, Starcevic or the two Serb commanders who were responsible for saving countless lives in Gorsky-Kotar. But, once again seeking to avoid being placed on pedestals, Horvat, Glad and Starcevic told us that their efforts would have been useless if a critical mass of citizens of Gorsky-Kotar had not also wanted peace. When asked by participants at ROM what led to so many people in Gorsky-Kotar wanting peace, they could only shake their heads and profess not to know. Finally, with a twinkle in his eye, Starcevic said that maybe it is the high altitude of the region. It makes the people a bit closer to the stars or to God.
You know, we spend a lot of time and money researching what went wrong in areas of violent conflict. Seldom do we hear of anyone studying what went right. We intend to have Mr. Horvat’s book, Oasis of Peace, translated into English so the world can hear the story of a community in which a critical mass of leaders and citizens took a stand and worked for peace. We are also seeking funding for a team to conduct a research project in Gorsky-Kotar so we can understand the precursors to peace with the hope that they might be replicated elsewhere.
I had the chance later that morning to tell Mr. Horvat that it was hearing him and his two peacemaking confederates first tell their story in the summer of 2006 that led me to launch the Institute for Sustainable Peace. He was visibly touched upon hearing this. He responded, “That is why we keep telling the story. So others can learn that it is possible to build sustainable peace.”
Josip Horvat, then president of the Gorsky-Kotar regional government, Nada Glad, station manager of Radio Delnice, the regional radio station, and Franjo Starcevic, are ordinary citizens who are quick to reject hero status. They reminded us that in such times, it is warriors who are declared to be heroes. They see themselves as ordinary people who simply chose to do what they felt was right.
To better understand their accomplishments, we must set the local context. Delnice, capital of Gorsky-Kotar, contained a Yugoslavian Army base. As Croatia split itself off from the former Yugoslavia, it had no standing army. The best it could boast was a lightly armed police force. In Gorsky-Kotar, local civilians had only the rifles and pistols used for hunting in the forests. In contrast, the soldiers of the Delnice base were heavily armed. They also controlled and guarded a major munitions depot that contained heavy weapons, ammunition, bombs and artillery shells.
As Croatia declared its independence, the Yugoslavian army soldiers who were not Serbs slipped away from the base and returned to their homes. Eventually, about 150 heavily armed Serb soldiers remained on the base in Delnice. An enemy with superior firepower confronted Horvat and his fellow peacemakers. But this was not the only threat they had to consider.
The munitions warehouses near the center of the town were likely to be targeted for air strikes by the Serb air force to prevent their falling into the hands of the Croats and the army Croatia was likely to form. If they were hit by an air strike, the resulting blast would have the same effect as 20 kilotons of TNT (almost twice the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima). Horvat knew that he had to get the munitions out of the center of Delnice.
Horvat, with the support of his peacemaking confederates initiated talks with the Serb commanders of the army base. Over a period of weeks, Horvat negotiated an agreement by which the soldiers on the base would be given civilian clothes and money for transportation so they could be smuggled out of Croatia. They would be assisted to leave Croatia and smuggled into Serbia to avoid confinement in a POW camp. In return, the soldiers would turn the base and the munitions over to the civilian authority of Gorsky-Kotar led by Horvat. The only alternative for both sides was a fight in which many on both sides were likely to be killed.
Throughout the negotiations, Horvat and his friends had to contend with the acts of extremists on their own side. At one point, a soldier on the base was killed by a Croat sniper. The mayor of the town immediately wrote a letter asking the forgiveness of the soldier’s family. Ms. Glad, manager of Radio Delnice, had the letter read over the radio. The commandant of the base and his soldiers heard the broadcast because they listened everyday to the 4 pm radio show of Radio Delnice to get some idea about what was happening in the community. They later reported that hearing the letter read on air helped to build trust and to lower tensions on the base.
Ultimately, Horvat was successful. The base and the munitions were handed over to the local Croat civilian authority without a shot being fired. The Serb soldiers and their commanders were smuggled out. Upon taking control of the munitions warehouse and military base, Horvat and his peacemakers had to find a way to transport the munitions away from the city. He organized a force of volunteers from the community to load over 100 heavy trucks to transport the munitions to a safer place in the mountains far from Delnice. When the last warehouse was 95% empty the long anticipated air attack came. The resulting blast shattered windows throughout Delnice but no lives were lost and the town was left standing.
Throughout this difficult period Franjo Starcevic played a pivotal role as a peacemaker in the region. Franjo is an elderly gentleman whose gentle spirit and good humor raises the spirits of all who meet him. When I met him, even though we were unable to speak each other’s language, I knew that I had been in the presence of someone close to the heart of God. Franjo, at great personal risk, visited the Serb villages in Gorsky Kotar. Franjo doesn’t drive. In order to visit the villages he had to walk great distances. But maybe that helped. Franjo would walk into a Serb village unarmed and ask to talk to the mayor and anyone else who would listen. His objective was always to open communications, reassure the inhabitants of the village that they had nothing to fear from their Croat neighbors and then formulate plans for maintaining lines of communication. As a result of his visits, the mayors of the Croat and Serb villages communicated regularly throughout the war. If one heard a rumor of an attack on a member of his own ethnic group, rather than believe it and climb the ladder of inference, he would call the mayor of the village purported to be the site of the incident to check out the facts. As a result, many misunderstandings were avoided.
Franjo also made another big contribution during the war. He opened a School of Peace for youth of the region. There, at a time when war fever ruled the Balkans, Franjo and his teachers taught non-violence and conflict resolution skills to their students.
Nada Glad, as station manager of Radio Delnice, the regional radio station, contributed daily to building peace. When other radio stations were playing the kind of martial music that one often hears in time of war, Radio Delnice played music more likely to soothe the soul. Glad refused to give airtime to extremists who would have called for violent expulsion of Serbs whose families had lived in Gorsky-Kotar for generations. One of her tools was humor. When Serb planes were seen flying over, she would report the sighting of some strange silver birds by local bird watchers. At times she had to listen to the rants of extremists who would call the station to complain of the station’s obvious bias for peace.
Eventually Mrs. Glad, who had worked for Radio Delnice for 20 years, was fired as station manager by the nationalist government in retaliation for her peacemaking efforts. But she will quickly tell you that her sacrifice was negligible when compared to the price paid by the Serb commandant and sub-commandant of the army base. Tragically, they were tried before a court martial in Serbia for deserting their post and were sentenced to prison. After four years of imprisonment they were released. Within weeks of his release, the commandment was found dead under very suspicious circumstances.
All of us at ROM 2007 were inspired by the stories of these unsung heroes. As you travel through the Balkans, in village after village, you will find monuments to the heroes of the wars of the 90s. No one has thought to raise a monument to Horvat, Glad, Starcevic or the two Serb commanders who were responsible for saving countless lives in Gorsky-Kotar. But, once again seeking to avoid being placed on pedestals, Horvat, Glad and Starcevic told us that their efforts would have been useless if a critical mass of citizens of Gorsky-Kotar had not also wanted peace. When asked by participants at ROM what led to so many people in Gorsky-Kotar wanting peace, they could only shake their heads and profess not to know. Finally, with a twinkle in his eye, Starcevic said that maybe it is the high altitude of the region. It makes the people a bit closer to the stars or to God.
You know, we spend a lot of time and money researching what went wrong in areas of violent conflict. Seldom do we hear of anyone studying what went right. We intend to have Mr. Horvat’s book, Oasis of Peace, translated into English so the world can hear the story of a community in which a critical mass of leaders and citizens took a stand and worked for peace. We are also seeking funding for a team to conduct a research project in Gorsky-Kotar so we can understand the precursors to peace with the hope that they might be replicated elsewhere.
I had the chance later that morning to tell Mr. Horvat that it was hearing him and his two peacemaking confederates first tell their story in the summer of 2006 that led me to launch the Institute for Sustainable Peace. He was visibly touched upon hearing this. He responded, “That is why we keep telling the story. So others can learn that it is possible to build sustainable peace.”
posted by Randall E. Butler at 3:31 PM
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