**Reprinted without permission, for "fair use" only.**
"Fresh war clouds threaten ceasefire"
Secret US military advice helps 'cocky' Croats in push towards Eastern
Slavonia
By: Robert Fox
AS THE ceasefire in Bosnia was in danger of collapsing outside Prijedor
and Banja Luka last night, the storm clouds of a fresh war have been
gathering in Croatia. Military analysts serving with the UN now believe
that President Tudjman will order his army to retake Eastern Slavonia,
the last part of Croatia held by breakaway Serbs, within days.
"Croatia will pay any price to retake Eastern Slavonia," he told a
meeting of his party, the HDZ, yesterday.
If they do attack and then crush the Serbs' ragged forces, as they have
done twice already this year, their victory will be the crowning triumph
for the Croatian leader - and for Washington, which has looked on as
retired American generals are alleged to have turned the Croatian army
into a formidable war machine.
The danger signals are there for all to see. Talks between the Croats
and the Serbs of Eastern Slavonia collapsed last week. In London a
senior Foreign Office official reflected the disquiet, describing the
Croats as "unbelievably cocky" about their military prowess during
Malcolm Rifkind's recent visit to Zagreb.
It is now thought that the Croats will attempt a strike in the week
before their parliamentary elections on October 29 or, the betting is in
UN Headquarters in Zagreb, sometime between November 2 and 7.
For President Tudjman and his most fervent nationalist supporters the
campaign will crown the string of Croatian military gains in Croatia and
Bosnia since the late spring.
The elections to the Sabor, the Croatian Assembly, will confirm him as
founder and father of the new Croatia. His Croatian Democratic Union
(HDZ) seems set for a landslide. More fanatical Tudjman supporters
speak of their hero being declared Ban (a medieval word for Leader) for
life.
Nevertheless, the battle for Eastern Slavonia will call for all the
military skills the Croatian forces can muster. Its outcome will also
depend on the President of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, and the amount of
military support he is prepared to give the local Serb forces.
The enormous improvement in performance and strength of the Croatian
armed forces in the past 18 months is undeniable. It has been a vital
element in the shift of political balance between the warring parties of
Croatia and Bosnia, on which the new US peace initiative is based.
Some see the Croats' new prowess on the battlefield as the result of
American advice and assistance. In his forthcoming book, Balkan
Odyssey, Lord Owen, the former EU special envoy and negotiator to the
region, states bluntly that this is the work of American expertise and
German finance, although he provides little documented proof for his
assertion.
Back in the war of the winter of 1991, in which the Croats lost a third
of their territory to insurgent Serbs, the performance of the Croatian
Army (HV or Hrvatska Vojska) was little short of disastrous.
Yet this year the successful three-day offensive to seize Serb-occupied
Western Slavonia astonished the outside world as much as the Serbs on
the receiving end.
Suddenly the Croat forces could manoeuvre forces of infantry, armour and
artillery, switching lines of attacks, splitting the enemy forces and
throwing them into confusion. This was a dress rehearsal for the attack
on Krajina in August.
Officially the Croats say it was all their own work. But several
well-placed experts think otherwise. One of the UN's senior political
officials said he could detect the hand of American policy, and the
skills of American military advisers behind the Croat successes.
He dates the turnround to a request for military assistance to the US
government by the Croatian Defence Minister, Gojko Susak, in March 1994.
He asked for help in training the Croat forces into a westernised army,
that could eventually be a candidate for full Nato membership.
The Croats were directed by the Pentagon, according to one account, to a
consultancy called Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI) based at
Alexandria, Virginia, because "it has more four-star generals than the
Pentagon itself".
Founded in 1987, MPRI is run by a small board of retired generals and
calls on the services of other retired officers for its individual
contracts. It is believed that the Croatian deal is one of its biggest
international contracts to date; most of its work is done for the US
forces.
Lt General Ed Soyster of MPRI said last week: "The Croatians came to us
because they wanted to change their army from being an Eastern-style
communist Army, into one based on democratic principles that can work in
the western security area." The international arms embargo on former
Yugoslavia prevented dealing in "military goods and services," he added.
In September last year the MPRI contract was signed by the Croatian
government, and licensed by the Pentagon.
A team of retired officers was dispatched to Croatia to set up courses
in leadership for the Croatian army, principally an NCO school and a
staff college.
Advice was also sought on personnel management and public and press
relations. None of the above would qualify as sanctions-busting.
General Soyster denies any direct involvement of MPRI on the ground at
any time this year in Croatia. "We were not in the field with the
Croatian forces, nor involved in strategic planning, nor asked to be."
But UN civil and military officers believe that some form of American
advice was involved.
A senior UN analyst said he believed that, between August 6 and 8 of
last year, the Clinton administration decided that the international
negotiators in former Yugoslavia were getting nowhere. The American
administration then deliberately decided to back the Croats to resolve
the conflict in Bosnia and Croatia.
The UN source believes that the influence of the tactical thinking of
two retired American generals, Carl Vuono and Crosbie "Butch" Saint,
proved decisive. Both are associated with MPRI, and General Vuono is
currently head of its international division.
Carl Vuono had been Chief of the US Army Staff and "Butch" Saint
Commander of the US Army in Europe. Saint is credited with much of the
thinking behind the LandAir 2000 doctrine, which the allies used in the
Gulf in 1991. He was in Croatia before the operation to retake Krajina
in August, several sources say.
At the time a huge call-up of reserves was organised, but the balance of
forces was still hardly in the Croats' favour. They needed a
superiority of at least three to one against the Serb defenders; at best
they had an advantage of 1.2 to one.
According to a senior UN analyst, the Croats adopted the daring tactics
of the Israelis when they overwhelmed a superior Syrian force to seize
the Golan Heights. (In the pivotal move of that attack, 2,000 Israeli
armoured troops turned the flank of a Syrian force of more than 10,000.)
The analyst said he detected the ideas of General Vuono, an artillery
expert, behind this.
The Croats opened two main axes of advance in the north and southern
part of the Serb-held Krajina, using armour and artillery to cut
corridors for infantry in armoured personnel carriers. Heavily defended
positions were bypassed, high ground ignored if it did not directly
affect the path of attack.
Even the American military personnel ostensibly attached to the UN
peacekeeping forces in Zagreb contributed with a simple, but effective,
deception plan.
They briefed journalists that the main line of attack would be on the
north of Serb-held Krajina, where the Serbs had Orkan rocket batteries.
They said the assault on Knin, the Krajina Serb "capital" and heart of
their defences, would take much longer. "We were really suckered,"
recalls Eric Ackerman of ABC Radio News. "In fact they managed to get
into Knin within 36 hours."
The concept of rapid attack by armour and artillery has paid off once
again in the continuing battle in northern Bosnia. This weekend the
Bosnian Muslim 5th Corps, now wholly armed and supported with heavy
weapons from Croat forces, is poised to take the town of Prijedor.
Croat and 5th Corps artillery now threatens the provincial capital of
Banja Luka, the heart of the largest concentration of Serbs in Bosnia.
Last week all Croat forces were mobilising throughout the eastern part
of the country. An attack on Serb-held Eastern Slavonia will be the
toughest battle yet fought in the past four years of war in Bosnia and
Croatia.