Chapter 3 Croatia: Victims of Transition? The Role of Homeland War Veterans in Public Discourse in Croatia Aleksandar Jakir AU2 A decade ago, even in serious scholarly works dealing with “Challenges facing Croatia since Independence,” military veterans were not mentioned at all (see Ramet and Soberg 2008). This has changed. Newly published research is addressing important questions about the role of veterans in Croatian society. Meanwhile, the position of veterans “between the Regime and the State” (Dolenec and Širinić 2017) has been critically examined, and veteran organizations have been portrayed with sound reasons as “pivotal” actors in Croatian politics, capable of forging alliances with conservative political parties and influencing election outcomes. It has been argued, with respect to the status of veterans in Croatia, that the country is best understood as a Southern variant of a clientelist, conservative welfare regime, though many dimensions of this phenomenon are still under-researched (Dolenec 2018, pp.61–62, 72). However, it seems safe to say that the existence of several hundred thousand military veterans, and the role of their numerous organizations in public discourse and in Croatian society, is not negligible at all. This chapter aims to explore the role of veterans from the Homeland War of the 1990s1 in Croatia by presenting some data and recent debates on military veterans and their associations. This can only be a rough overview of some aspects of “veteranality” (Murray 2016a, b). The story of veterans and of the governance of military veterans in Croatian society is a complex one, and it is a contradictory one, as can be seen from the ways it is portrayed in public, and concerning the very different forms of the lived realities of veteran transition. As a matter of fact, it is a challenging task to describe the struggle of veterans for their place in society, as well as some of the debates concerning veteran identity and questions of the health and welfare of this social group. This is due to an evident lack of studies so far on these wide range of aspects. For example, the topic of women’s war experiences in Croatia, and hence of female veterans, is absolutely under-researched. A. Jakir (*) University of Split, Split, Croatia e-mail: ajakir@ffst.hr © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. Taylor et al. (eds.), Military Past, Civilian Present, International Perspectives on Social Policy, Administration, and Practice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30829-2_3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 A. Jakir 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 This is in spite of the fact that it is estimated that 14,443 women actively participated in the military in the Croatian War of Independence (other data even indicate that 23,080 women fought in the war, about 5% of the Croatian forces), of whom 766 were killed and 1973 wounded (Stanić and Mravak 2012; Dukić 2002). Veterans are a heterogeneous group in many ways. Surely the media “has and does play a central role in constructions of and responses to veterans,” especially when it comes to visual representation and the phenomenon of “victimization” (Corteen 2016a, b). Sometimes, it seems hard to separate facts from opinions in the debates on the topic of military veterans in Croatia. We could speak of a frequently heated debate with ideological undertones, at least in some of the Croatian media, in which one side often tends to glorify the “homeland defenders,” seeing them as the bravest and most patriotic part of Croatian society, whose sacrifice gained both liberty and independence and made a free democratic Croatian state possible. On the other hand, the other side is often quick with a harsh and polemical critique of a privileged “warrior caste” that apparently has emerged in Croatia, pursuing an overall right-wing political attitude. In the latter perspective, veterans and their organizations are often mainly seen as recipients of care who struggle to hijack the state to fulfil their material interests, reinforcing rifts in society and promoting a militarized and patriarchal political culture. At the same time, as the “veteran question” is fiercely debated in the media, the available “official” figures show that between 1998 and 2000, 24,249 veterans, with an average age of 50 (fifty), died. These deaths mainly occurred because of cancer, heart attacks, and similar diseases. Additionally, “unofficial” figures circulate of even 50,000 former Croatian soldiers who have died up to now “because of consequences of the War,” all relatively young, between 45 and 55 years old (Šetka 2017). Who are the Croatian veterans, and how many of them are there? Back in 1996, after the military phase of the war had ended, Croatia’s first president Franjo Tudjman expressed the gratitude of the nation to the brave military in a speech to the Sabor (Croatian Parliament), and he mentioned that Croatia had 336,000 veterans. It was made clear not only in this speech, which was delivered in a victorious atmosphere,2 that Croatia was on its way to fully achieve the goals it had declared at the beginning of the war: full independence and the preservation of its borders. When 16 years later, in 2012, the official Registry of War Veterans of Croatia was presented by three ministers of the government (of Defence, the Interior, and Veterans, all three former soldiers), not less than 502,678 former fighters were listed. There were 440,397 names of people listed who participated in combat and 18,166 names of people who took part in the war in other ways (Pavelic 2012). Alas, 4 years after that, and 20 years after Tudjman’s speech, in April 2016, the official Register of War Veterans of Croatia included an even higher number of veterans of the Homeland War. Now the Registry listed altogether 505,221 “Croatian defenders” (Puljiz 2016; Pavlic 2016). Visibly, this is a massive share of the population of Croatia that consists of barely 4.3 million people.3 Not surprisingly, the status of an officially registered “defender” became a much sought-after good, to put it in the words of Danijela Dolenec, since getting listed in the official Registry “is the prime instance for claiming a host of welfare entitlement” (Dolenec 2018, p.63). Data from 2015 was outlined during the workshop “Representations 3 Croatia: Victims of Transition? The Role of Homeland War Veterans in Public… of branitelji (defenders) in public discourse and popular culture,” organized at the Faculty of Humanities in Zagreb in 2015. This data indicates the impressive number of 556 war veterans associations and 1276 NGOs in Croatia which deal in one way or another with the legacy of the Homeland War (Pavlic 2016). In Croatia, the four best-known and largest veterans’ organizations together4 comprise a vast number of member organizations at the county level and an even greater number of chapters on the local level, as well as numerous social clubs. These associations claim to have tens of thousands of members and that they represent the interests of the several hundreds of thousands of veterans and their family members (Dolenec 2018, pp.66–69; Dolenec and Širinić 2017; Mihalec et al. 2012). As already mentioned, the debate about status, position, and benefits of the socalled Croatian defenders in society is surely a steady topic in public discourse in Croatia and beyond (Filipović 2018). This can also be seen in this year’s Country Report for Croatia of the European Union which provides an annual analysis by Commission staff on the economic and social situation in Member States. As every year, the Country Reports of the European Commission assess Member States’ progress in tackling their main economic and social challenges and in implementing past country-specific recommendations. Albeit commissioner Marianne Thyssen, in charge of Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, said for the press, “With the proclamation of the European Pillar of Social Rights, we have put investing in skills, reducing inequalities, social fairness and inclusive growth on top of the agenda. We now need to keep track of the performance of the Member States on the principles and rights included in the Pillar, to make them a reality on the ground,”5 the summary of the in-depth reviews of the outcome of the economic and social situation in Croatia sounded somewhat differently. In fact, the European Commission stated in March 2018 that Croatia is experiencing excessive imbalances, with so-called vulnerabilities linked to high levels of public, private, and external debt. Moreover, the Report pointed to the fact that Croatia’s ranking was below the EU average, while its spending levels were high with respect to its peers. In the eyes of the Commission, this confirmed the view that the effectiveness of social benefits is hindered not only by the poor targeting of those most in need but because of the existence of privileged categories such as war veterans. In addition, it criticized that the authorities in Croatia have proposed to further extend the benefits granted to war veterans and their family members (author emphasis). Concerning the data of the Statistical Information of the Croatian Pension Insurance Institute, the Report stated that general pensions for war veterans tend to be more than twice as high compared to the general scheme, resulting in further increases of pension ceilings. At the same time, the Report claimed, little progress has been made to support war veterans’ reintegration into the labour market (Pavlic 2018). Generally, these remarks in the Report point to a law adopted in December 2017 that was designed to be the legal basis for resolving the majority of health, social, and economic problems of veterans. The law also reopened the possibility to register as a war veteran. After January and February 2018, when nearly 4000 new veterans were officially registered, it was estimated that the new law could cost the Croatian taxpayer, by 2025, an additional 5.5 billion kunas. This increase in cost can 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 A. Jakir 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 be seen from material from the Parliamentary Committee on Veterans, while the total annual material compensation to veterans has been estimated to amount already to 5% of the state budget and around 1.8% of Croatia’s GDP. Most of the money from the Croatian state for the veterans goes to pensions, which is used by more than 70,000 people. The new law now reduces the retirement age of veterans and extends the rights of family members to inherit veterans’ pensions, and also it introduces a number of additional social benefits for veterans and the mandatory financing of veterans’ associations (in the range of 0.3–1.0% of local government budgets). The previous rights of the Homeland War veterans and their family members (Dobrotić 2006, 2008) already defined a wide range of 37 different material entitlements and rights that were spread over almost all social security systems (and beyond, such as pensions, disability compensation and allowances, paid health and care services, expenses for housing allocation, child allowance, unemployment benefits, tax cuts, scholarships, guaranteed university entry, etc.). In comparison, this law could rightly be understood as one more improvement of the material status of veterans. However, in part of the public and media in Croatia, the law was received critically. It was considered an outrage that the “Law on Croatian Defenders from the Homeland War” now makes it possible for the Ministry of Veterans’ Affairs to legally hide information from the public about new veterans who acquire their status even “23 years after the war” (Matijanić 2018). At the same time, it should not be forgotten that the “transition from military life to civic life entails individual and collective human suffering” (Corteen 2016a). In addition, Zoran Šućur, who has done research on the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of Croatian veterans (Šućur et al. 2016; Matković et al. 2007), argues that it cannot be explicitly stated that veterans in Croatia are “privileged” because they are just as active as the total population. In addition, he argues that the veterans even make up a slightly higher share of the employed and a smaller share of the unemployed than the total population. Generally, Croatia has a low employment rate of the economically active population, compared to other EU countries. “When we take into account that we had a bloody five year war,” as the words of Petar Lovrić were reported, who is the former head of the Association of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises at the Croatian Association of Employers and also a Volunteer of the Homeland War (Ex-Commander of the 83rd Independent Zagreb Battalion), “then we do not have too many users of rights. I spent 4 years in the war and have no rights. More than 400,000 registered veterans have no rights. Brussels says the total volume of budget is too much for veterans, but we did not want that war. It is not true that too little is done to include the veterans’ population in the labour market. You have a set of programmes. Our general problem is that because of war and transition we have a bad entrepreneurial climate. When you have a low income base, you cannot reimburse the pension system, health system, income tax. At the annual level, we are short 30 billion kunas. So we can put an end to all the defenders’ privileges and then we will be in trouble again” (Filipović 2018). The current Ministry of Veterans’ Affairs, Tomo Medved of the conservative Croatian Democratic Union, also rejected the EC Report and publicly stated that 82,889 veterans were unemployed, which provoked some questions 3 AU3 Croatia: Victims of Transition? The Role of Homeland War Veterans in Public… in the public because it was not clear how this figure was obtained, for the statistical data used up to this moment was 18,152 unemployed veterans (Vlašić 2017). Very often, when veterans’ issues are addressed in the Croatian public, material benefits are discussed. Statements that veterans in Croatia “now enjoy generous pensions, benefits, social approval and a measure of political influence,” along with expressions of the opinion that Croatia “has honoured its former soldiers,” often go handin-hand with the assessment that the welfare of the veterans “exacts a heavy toll” on the weak economy. Comparing the situation of Croatian veterans with the status of Serbia’s former soldiers, which “are in legal limbo,” the author of an article in The Guardian concludes that “their Croatian counterparts have been assured a place in their country’s history” and that “Croatian veterans are entitled to preferential treatment if they apply for public housing or for education and employment, and those who were disabled in the wars can expect to receive a monthly allowance worth €800 (£677) as well as a minimum monthly pension of €260 on retirement that the state also gives its former fighters” (Rudic 2013). Probably one of the reasons why material benefits for veterans are such a debated topic in Croatia is the state of the troubled economy. Namely, it is not only the abovementioned Report of the European Commission which indicates that the economic situation in Croatia is far from good, with high unemployment rates, high debt, and deep structural problems, all of which seem to be a constant challenge since the time Croatia became a sovereign state. It can hardly be overlooked that what is left of Croatia’s industrial potential from socialist times is mostly outdated, vast spaces of agricultural land remain unused, etc., and in general, we can speak of an unhealthy mixture of the legacy of socialist times and the legacy of war. Some analysts even suggest that Croatia’s post-war prosperity has entirely been built on high levels of state borrowing, with consequences being felt in public spending cuts, while corruption became endemic in all spheres of society (Tanner 2010). Additionally to the immense decline in GDP in Croatia between 1987 and 1996, estimated to have been 47%, a high level of inequality in society in general (Dolenec 2018, p.59), and the overall poor performance of its economy, it is a commonly accepted assessment that Croatia is also troubled with an inefficient public administration system in general and above all with an ineffective judicial system (Ramet et al. 2008). It is a striking fact that due to war, the manufacturing industry functioned with about a third of its capacity damaged and that GDP in Croatia in 1993 was lower than the 1990 level by not less than 39%. So it really has to be emphasized that the beginning of the so-called process of transition, economically and politically, in Croatia, was very much influenced and overshadowed by the War of Independence in the first half of the 1990s. When trying to understand Croatian society today, and the place of veterans in it, it seems useful to go back to the problems caused by an only partly successful transition and bear them in mind. Some scholars of the transition stress the importance of inherited values stemming from communist societies. Obviously those values did not vanish immediately with the collapse of the regime. Among the “mindsets” identified by sociologists were authoritarian egalitarianism, hostility towards minority cultures, lack of individual initiative, inclination towards state paternalism, 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 A. Jakir 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 widespread opportunism, and a low level of social capital. It would be hard to claim that none of these can be found in contemporary Croatian society. The treatment of the veterans by the state is sometimes understood as a form of political clientelism. Veterans indeed have a higher level of benefits than other social groups. Increases in these benefits tend to be dependent on political endorsement. In addition, a lack of procedures of monitoring can be observed. For all these reasons, social programmes for veterans have subsequently been interpreted as a form of clientelist relation (Stubbs and Zrinščak 2015). There is no doubt that clientelism generally has negative consequences not only on the economy but also on Croatia’s democratic system as a whole. It is commonly linked with corruption. Both involve political actors using public and private resources and the distribution of benefits targeted for individuals or groups in exchange for electoral support (Larreguy 2014). Some findings indeed suggest that “a specific clientelist variant of a conservative welfare regime” has been developed in Croatia, along with a political dynamic between the conservative nationalist political parties (HDZ first) and veteran organizations (Dolenec 2018, p.60). On the other hand, it is historically commonplace that military veterans receive compensation from the state via material benefits. However, taking the overall state of the economy into account, an economy that obviously cannot provide social spending for all groups in society who are in demand, the evolution of welfare programmes for veterans raises questions. The links between war, state-building, and the development of the welfare state is a new and vibrant field of research for Croatia (Dolenec 2018, pp.60–72). However, first and foremost, it seems that military veterans in Croatia can be seen as a group in society that is directly associated with the war and therefore as part of its legacy. Before we can address the role of veterans in Croatian society more specifically, we have to take a brief look at some aspects of Croatia’s path of transition to democracy and today’s liberal economic system. The transition process has been slow and difficult for Croatia. Twenty years after Sabrina Ramet rightly formulated and described the path to transition in South-Eastern Europe as “painful” and posed the fundamental question “Whose Democracy?” (Ramet 1997), “building democracy” in the Croatian case (Melčić 2017) is still an intricate topic of research. However, the problem of political transformation has been recognized as merely part of the transition process. Obviously, starting with its first multiparty election in April 1990, the democratic transition in Croatia has involved problems associated not only with regime change and economic transformation but also with the creation of an independent state. As if these tasks were not difficult enough, they proceeded under conditions of a rebellion of part of the Serbian minority and among profound disagreements between this minority and the Croat majority about who constitutes the demos and where to set the borders of the newly created state. These disagreements gradually evolved into a full-scale war between Serb rebels and Croatian forces in which Serb-dominated Yugoslav forces backed the Serb rebels in the summer of 1991.6 The resulting occupation of one-third of Croatia’s territory in late 1991 led to the loss of many civilian lives7 and the displacement of hundreds of 3 Croatia: Victims of Transition? The Role of Homeland War Veterans in Public… thousands of refugees through brutal warfare with despicable so-called ethnical cleansing, large-scale destruction of property, etc. This caused the issues of democratic reforms and human rights and liberties to be superseded by a war many claimed to be unavoidable in order to secure the survival of the state and the nation. So, one of the main preconditions for democracy – the existence of a sovereign state whose legitimacy to exercise control over the whole of its territory is accepted by all of its significant groups – was not present at the time Croatia entered into transition. Under the conditions of war, ethnic polarization and general existential insecurity prevailed, and it became challenging to attend to the demands of democratization. Moreover, as it has been argued, the legacy of the constitutive stage of Croatian statehood has produced a number of “contentious categories of Croatian citizens.” Some scholars count the Serb minority and Croatian defenders of the Homeland War to this category (Koska and Matan 2017). Can we, in this case, perhaps also speak of the formation of a “mindset” that still can be traced in some parts of society? The political foundations of the war as the constitutive story of modern Croatian statehood did attribute a different symbolic role to different categories of the population in the construction of the Croatian national narrative. Also, the fundamental features of the contemporary Croatian nation-state, as it has been shown (Koska 2013), include the transnational conception of the ethnic Croat community as a main holder of ownership of the state. Secondly, considering that from such a conception the bonds between the individual and the state transgress formal citizenship status and residence, citizenship policies are impacted by forces internal and external to the Croatian state (Štiks 2015; Štiks and Shaw 2013). These fundamental features of Croatian society have implications for different groups in society, among them veterans. The vast literature on the transition and democratic consolidation makes clear that a country can cease to be authoritarian but fail to achieve a firmly established, consolidated democracy. Nonetheless, it can be stated that in the Croatian case, since 1990, fundamental democratic political institutions, as a basis for further democratization, have been introduced and institutionalized, such as political pluralism, multiparty elections, the division of power, and liberal-democratic principles, all guaranteed by the Constitution and operating through the Parliament. One conclusion that seems justified is that after the first phase of instability and uncertainty regarding the outcome of democratic transition, Croatia now can be described as politically stable but is still bearing the heavy burden of a troublesome historical legacy. Also, an autonomous democratic political society has been formed, and already a decade ago, it was noticed that a robust and vibrant civil society has emerged since the 1990s in Croatia (Ramet and Matic 2007; Matić 2010). But it still seems difficult to agree on what constitutes a civil society. The challenging topic and “conceptual puzzle” of civil society in post-communist Europe, when new significant forces of the post-communist civil society entered the stage, have innovatively been analysed also as contentious politics and as a form of political participation (Kopecky and Mudde 2003). Here we come to the specific point that the existence of veterans can, at the same time, be understood as one of the legacies 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 A. Jakir 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 of the war and as an important actor of civil society. Today it is commonly accepted that Croatia’s civil society plays a significant role in public life. In addition, “two blocs within the sector” have developed: “one considered socially liberal and focused on human rights, environmental issues, and other such topics, and the other considered more conservative and associated with the Roman Catholic Church, veterans’ groups, and ethnically focused cultural organizations—struggle for influence over the government and the population” (Dorić 2016, pp.5–6). The veterans’ group is large enough in Croatia that it definitely can be seen as a strong “interest group” playing a “pivotal” role as a political player with influence on political agendas, parties, and elections (Dolenec and Širinić 2017). Given that the Croatian armed forces, “formed during the Homeland War through mass participation, represent one of the fundamental formative institutions of contemporary Croatian state” (Smerić 2009; Dolenec and Širinić 2017), the large group of veterans is not surprising. Notwithstanding the dynamic of the political mobilization of veterans, we should also be aware of the fact that the broad category of war veterans consists of different groups, although some of the Croatian veterans’ leaders try to portray veterans as a homogenous group. However, claims such as the one that “only veterans can gather more than 50,000 people in a public square” in Croatia, often found in newspaper reports, point to the fact that veterans’ organizations indeed play an essential role in the political life of the country. It is undoubtedly not a coincidence that currently hundreds of active NGOs exist in Croatia that list veterans’ issues as their primary objective. The highest density can be found in the parts of the Croatian territory that were occupied during the war (Dolenec 2018, p.67; Dolenec and Širinić 2017). To understand the role of veterans today in Croatia, it has to be taken into account, as Sharon Fisher (Fisher 2003) had shown in her analysis of the War Veterans’ Movement in Croatia, that war veterans under the Tudjman regime indeed enjoyed special privileges when their organizations were very close to the state. As the research suggests, whenever the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) is not in power, the main veterans’ organizations see their status jeopardized and increasingly threatened. This has led to a strategy of confrontation with every centre-left government up to now. When some of the most influential Croatian veterans’ associations ended their 18-month-long sit-in protest in a tent in front of the war veterans’ ministry in Zagreb in 2015 (Ljubojević 2015; Milekic 2016), they stressed that they fought to gain “a place in society, and the Homeland War its [place] in history.” In addition, they said they would continue campaigning for legislation to enshrine their rights in the constitution. This was understood by at least part of society as a struggle for privileges and as a political fight against the centre-left government, which then held power. In fact, throughout their protest, the veterans enjoyed support from right-wing politicians. So it is not surprising that some even mention the concept of a “Soldier’s State” (Dolenec 2018; Dolenec and Širinić 2017) and ask if this could be applicable in the Croatian case. In fact, always in periods when conservatives did not lead the government in Croatia, veterans mobilized with the objective of restoring a HDZ-led government to reinstitute the regime they consider legitimate and beneficial to their material interests. 3 Croatia: Victims of Transition? The Role of Homeland War Veterans in Public… But it should not be entirely forgotten that when thinking of veterans, the experience of conflict, especially when we take into account the nature of the war fought in the 1990s, also always means “that the transition from military life to civic life is ontologically difficult” (Corteen 2016a). Additionally, this social group in Croatian society has its manifest problems. Though substantial data is still missing on the effect of active military service on Croatian veterans, it can be assumed that, as in other countries, it also in the Croatian case is profound and lasting, and obviously some veterans have found it difficult to adjust to normal life again. It is often stated that the process of reintegration of veterans into society in Croatia “is facing considerable difficulties” (Ljubojević 2015). In Croatian media it has been criticized that the “authorities…intentionally or accidentally, missed, after the war, integrating veterans into society and returning them to normal life” (Duhaček 2018). However, political strife can be read between the lines of assessments such as the one that veterans are not integrated into society “because people who are dependent on the budget are the most likely voting machines, and votes are easy to buy with the money of taxpayers” (Duhaček 2018). On the other hand, veterans often complain that they do not know “where they belong to” (dm, portal direktno 2018). News reports carry many disheartening statistics about veterans, and posttraumatic stress disorder is often mentioned along with the rising suicide rates among veterans. Data which is often provided by the Croatian media indicates that Croatian veterans fall ill six times more often than citizens who did not have direct contact with the war events and that their life expectancy is approximately more than 10 years shorter than the average life expectancy in Croatia. Despite this alarming information, serious research on the influence of war trauma on health is just starting (Karacic et al. 2011). There are activities on different levels to improve the lives of veterans treated for PTSD, including self-help programmes for Croatian war veterans suffering from PTSD, but obviously, they are not enough. Also, there do not seem to be enough studies addressing questions connected with veterans’ suicides (Kušević et al. 2015), focusing on different aspects concerning the development of chronic posttraumatic stress disorder among Croatian veterans. Dissociative reactions and low family support were found to be statistically significant direct effects on the development of PTSD (VukšícMihaljevíc et al. 2000). There is also research on the relationship between factors of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and particular domains of emotional competence and emotional regulation and control among Croatian Homeland War veterans (Knežević et al. 2017), but admittedly not as much as there should be for such a large group in society. It has convincingly been shown that our social character determines violence and war in human societies and that without a comprehensive sociological analysis there cannot be a proper explanation of violence and war (Malešević 2010). It is assumed that it could be a valid assumption that the character of one specific society is socially constructed as well and that the driving force in shaping the role and status of veterans is society. Right now it seems that Croatian society is still struggling to find the right way to address the issues that it has created for itself. 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 A. Jakir 390 References 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430 431 432 433 434 435 436 437 438 439 Audergon, A., & Arye, L. (2005). Transforming conflict into community: Post-war reconciliation in Croatia. Psychotherapy and Politics International, 3(2), 112–121. https://doi.org/10.1002/ ppi.24. Baker, C. (2015). The Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Census of Population. (2012, December). Households and dwellings 2011. Zagreb: Croatian Bureau of Statistics. Corteen, K. (2016a). 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Please provide in text citation or delete the reference from the reference list. AU5 Please provide publisher name and publisher location for Ref. Matijanić (2018). AU6 Please provide publisher location for Refs. Melčić (2017), Ramet (1997), Ramet and Soberg (2008), Šetka (2017). Author’s Response