By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Feb 1 2000 (IPS)

Last month’s slaying of controversial Serb criminal turned war hero, Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan (47), has sparked a debate on the use of well known criminals during the war that disintegrated the former Yugoslavia.

“There were not enough volunteers among priests and nuns, so we had to accept all the people who offered their help,” is the famous response by Ivan Vekic, Croatian Interior Minister in 1991 when asked why so many people with criminal backgrounds took part in the war.

Studies by sociologists in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia on the phenomenon all agree that besides engaging criminals in their war efforts, the regimes also turned a blind eye on looting, smuggling or other operations led by former members of the underworld.

“As long as the carnage lasted, the regime controlled media turned them (criminals) into national heroes. When the facts that compromised those regimes and their links to criminals became evident, the heroic aura was gone. They (the criminals) were soon presented as mere scum of the earth again, and some were depicted as war crime suspects,” says a comment in the Croatian independent weekly, Feral Tribune.

But, the amassed fortune and close contacts with people in power made criminals ready to enter business and political life once the wars ended.

“That is when the regimes got rid of most of those people, killing, arresting or silencing them, as their services were no longer wanted,” says Ivan Colovic, a prominent Belgrade sociologist.

According to Zagreb sociologist Ozren Zunec, the reason for engaging these “gangster guerrillas” in war efforts was simple. They had no scruples and could be easily used in most daring operations.

“They symbolised armed defence against the enemy, combined with Robin Hood-style behaviour towards ordinary people,” Zunec says.

For example, says Zunec, the rise and fall of Sarajevan Musan Topalovic Caco is a classic example. Pre-war criminal, underground boss in some parts of the town, Caco became one of the heroes of Sarajevo defence in the years of brutal Serb siege which began in 1992.

His actions were widely praised in Sarajevo, until 1994, when he died under mysterious circumstances. Political analysts say Musanovic was assassinated at a time when he reportedly attempted to stage a coup against Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic.

Stories on war crimes committed by Caco against civilians of all nationalities emerged in several independent Sarajevo magazines last year.

Musanovic’s archrival in the defence of Sarajevo was also a criminal, Jusuf Prazina, known as Juka. After over a year of defending the capital and looting whatever was left in its empty apartments, collecting money from people who wanted safe passage from Sarajevo, Juka reportedly left Bosnia in 1993.

He was found dead in a ditch on the highway near Liege, Belgium, in December 1993, with a bullet in his head. His assassin is still unknown.

Croatia has also had its share of criminal war heros. In December 1998, The Hague International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) brought charges against Mladen Naletilic Tuta (54) and Vinko Martinovic Stela (37) for crimes against humanity. They were accused of helping to direct a murderous ethnic cleansing drive against Bosnian Muslims in the Herzegovina town of Mostar.

Naletilic and Martinovic who were Bosnian Croat militia commanders during the 1992 to 1995 war, were allegedly backed in their actions by Zagreb.

Both were arrested by Croatian police in 1997, when Zagreb reportedly came under international pressure to remove Croat rightists who were undermining the Dayton Accord on the new Bosnian Muslim-Croat federation. Stela was extradited to ICTY in 1999, while Tuta, due to a heart surgery and generally bad health, still remains in Zagreb prison.

Several thousand people gathered for the funeral of Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan on Jan 20 at Novo Groblje cemetery. Many of those present had the distinctive look of the underworld.

In fact the scene could have been a replica of the funerals of Caco, Juka and other prominent criminals turned patriots. As Sarajevo politician Sejfudin Tokic recently said in Belgrade recently; “They are all brothers, with the same mother, and that is crime.”.

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