Forging the Yugosphere in Haiti

OUT on the mean streets of Port-au-Prince, the earthquake-devastated capital of Haiti, the Yugospherethe ties that still bind the people of the former Yugoslaviaappears to be alive and well. Marin Mikulec (pictured left), a Croat, trains UN and Haitian policemen. Vojkan Ivanovic from Serbia (pictured right) spends his day protecting the UN police chief here. But when the day is done, they hang out together as friends.

Lt Col Ivanovic and Senior Police Inspector Captain Mikulec are part of the UNs deployment of 3,243 policemen in Haiti. Today there are five Serbs in the stabilisation mission, which is known as MINUSTAH, and three Croats. They do a variety of jobs but all live on the same floor of the same building. If they were attacked, says Capt Mikulec, we would defend ourselves together.

Capt Mikulecs first experience of action was in 1991, when as a teenager he manned the barricades in his home town of Zadar against Serbs, whose short-lived breakaway Republic of Serbian Krajina, in Croatian territory, extended to the edges of the town.

After Croatia attained independence he became part of the police drugs squad, worked on de-mining operations and in other special police unit jobs. But then he got bored. In 2006 he went to train Iraqi policemen in Jordan. Today he is on his second tour in Haiti.

Lt Col Ivanovic is from Nis in central Serbia. Aged 31, he is too young to have fought in Croatia, but from 1997 he was deployed by the police in Kosovo. He fought there during the war, and then saw action in the Presevo region of south Serbia in 2001. Today he is a senior officer in Serbias paramilitary gendarmerie. When he ar! rived in Port-au-Prince last July, he slept in Capt Mikulecs room for two months. We took care of them when they arrived, and when my guys arrived earlier, the Serbs took care of them, says Capt Mikulec.

Policemen have a reputation among journalists of being sparing with information, and Capt Mikulec and Lt Col Ivanovic dont disappoint. Capt Mikulec took part in the major campaigns of 1995 that crushed rebel Serbs in Croatia. Lt Col Ivanovic came under NATO bombardment in Kosovo in 1999. But ask them to recall the most dramatic moment of their wars, and they become coy. It was war, they say: it was tough but it's behind us.

The two policemen have more to say on the question of money, pointing out that that one of the perks of working in places like Haiti is that they can save in one year what would take ten back home. They also agree that although Haitis palm-fringed beaches are nice, the sea is too warm; not like the refreshing Adriatic.

Among those who think about security issues in the western Balkans it has long been a mantra that former security consumerscountries where UN missions and so on operatedshould become contributors, providing troops and police for international missions. Sending a few policemen, who the UN finds it much more difficult to procure than soldiers, does wonders for a country's reputation.

But there is another element at play here: the forging of personal bonds. Of course that could be useful, says Lt Col Ivanovic. One area of potential co-operation is in tackling drugs smuggling. Lt Col Ivanovic's home town lies along the infamous Balkan smuggling route. Capt Mikulecs home town, Zadar, has a serious drugs problem.

Serbia and Croatia are planning to open a joint police cooperation centre, later perhaps to be joined by other former Yugoslav states. Joining the dots to catch the criminals wil! l be tha t much easier if intelligence can travel directly from one former room-mate to the other. The new centre is scheduled to open in Belgrade but, initially, to be headed by a Croat. In future Balkan criminals may well do to be wary of the Haitian connection.