384 The Presidential Years
left.^659 The emphasis was on the right, since some of those Croats who had
migrated were increasingly convinced that the time was ripe for a blow against
Tito’s regime. In West Germany the movement was so strong that the Jelić
group was even able to organize subversive training sessions.^660 The end of
January 1972 saw an attack against a Yugoslav plane shortly after takeoff in
Prague. The explosion of a bomb on a train near Zagreb followed.^661 But this
was only the start: at the end of June, nineteen young Ustaše, coming mostly
from Australia, illegally crossed the Austro-Yugoslav border near Maribor,
where they hijacked a truck and drove themselves to Bosnia, near Bugojno, in
hopes of sparking an insurgency among the local Croat population. A struggle
of some weeks with the Yugoslav armed forces followed, which ended with
thirteen dead and fifteen wounded. Contrary to the terrorists’ expectations, the
people did not offer them any help and they quickly ran out of food and water
and, in the end, were forced to eat wild herbs and fruits. The peasants informed
security forces about their movements, actively contributing to the elimination
of the group. Although the police and the army killed or captured the ill-
advised and inexperienced Ustaša, the event had a traumatic effect on those in
power, all the more so as it was part of a larger offensive unleashed against the
regime by Croat émigrés.^662 As Tito confided to party activists in Croatia in the
spring of 1972, they had even tried to use biological weapons: an extremist com-
ing from Australia allegedly contaminated water and food in Kosovo and in
Vojvodina with a deadly bacteria. “The biological, chemical and psychological
war has begun,” said the marshal. “The enemy action will increase, especially
during tourist season.”^663 He was right: the Croat émigrés had determined that
Yugoslavia was being saved from bankruptcy mostly by the influx of nearly
$2 billion a year in tourism. It was therefore necessary to frighten the foreign
visitors away. How? Planting mines on the popular Adriatic beaches, in order
to detonate them at the most crowded times, was the grim answer. Fortunately,
these plans were frustrated by the security services.^664
The tension created by these events came to a head when the news spread
that the Italians had discovered a helicopter near Udine (northeast Italy) that
the Ustaša planned to use to kidnap Tito while he was on holiday at Brioni.
In spite of being advised to return to Belgrade, the marshal remained on the
archipelago where security was extremely tight. Koča Popović, who liked
spearfishing at night, almost lost his life from having failed to hear the “halt”
of a sentinel.^665 As for Tito, his working routine stalled: officially he was on
leave and nearly all his external communication was interrupted.^666 In this
emergency situation, the Yugoslav authorities contacted some Western govern-
ments, first Australia, in order to get their support against the Ustaša.^667 They
feared that after Tito’s death the two superpowers—the Soviet Union and the