Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, who died on December 10th at the age of 77, was a true believer whose dream came true.
For decades he nurtured the idea that he would restore the independence which Croatia lost nearly a thousand years ago. In the past nine years amid the bloody collapse of Yugoslavia he managed to turn that hope into reality.
He leaves an ambiguous legacy, however, with Croatia still isolated from many of the international organisations to which it aspires for membership. The country remains mired in the consequences of the Yugoslav wars and the international community's efforts to bring a lasting peace to neighbouring Bosnia-Hercegovina with its significant, though dwindling, minority ethnic Croat population.
To his supporters, Franjo Tudjman was regarded as the father of the nation. Critics insist, however, that since taking the country to independence his autocratic, nationalist leadership had slowed Croatia's transition to democracy letting the country fall behind its neighbours in central Europe, Slovenia and Hungary.
To the last he refused to give the necessary clear, long-term commitment sought by the international community either to the Dayton peace accords, in which he played a vital role, or to ethnic reconciliation, the resettlement of refugees and displaced persons and the implementation of democratic reforms.
The former second World War partisan and communist general began his political career at an age when many would be considering retirement. Born on May 14th, 1922, in the Zagorje district north of Zagreb, he joined the partisans when war broke out.
In Belgrade he ran up against the elitism of Serb officers and reacted strongly to attempts to impose a collective guilt on the Croatian nation for the actions of the pro-Nazi, Croatian puppet state (the Independent State of Croatia) during the war.
He was jailed for dissident activities in 1972 and again in the period from 1982 to 1984.
He steered his newly formed party, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) founded in 1989, to a convincing victory in the country's first free elections in 1990, and was re-elected president in direct elections in 1992 and again in 1997.
After the trauma of 1991, when Croatia declared independence and rebel Serbs occupied nearly 30 per cent of the country's territory, he gradually consolidated his position.
In 1993 the Bosnian Croats went to war against the Moslems to carve out a Croatian mini-state in Bosnia with support from Zagreb. The move exposed his ambitions in Bosnia-Hercegovina and brought international opprobrium. He had often repeated the idea that Bosnia and Croatia formed an historic and geographic unit, and suspicions about Zagreb's intentions were only fuelled by later accounts of the secretive meeting between him and Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic, in March 1991. Franjo Tudjman's disastrous intervention in Bosnia caused dismay in particular in Germany, the country that had pressed most for recognition of Croatia's independence in late 1991, and in the US.
Washington gave him a simple choice: either stop the war against the Moslems and receive US backing for the recovery of Serb-held lands, or face sanctions and isolation.
He chose to side with Washington. The US link strengthened after the Washington accords of 1994 when he accepted US plans for a Moslem-Croat federation. From then on Washington was on Franjo Tudjman's side, and the strategic balance decisively changed.
A poster common throughout Croatia immediately after the army's re-conquest of western Slavonia and Krajina in the operations "Flash" and "Storm" in the summer of 1995 showed Franjo Tudjman, his arms raised in victory with the slogan: "The man who wins". He took advantage of the military victories to lead his party to another general election victory, part of a clean sweep of eight local, parliamentary and presidential wins since 1990.
From late 1996 when he was treated for stomach cancer, he was dogged by ill health.
He lived, however, to lead the young, independent Croatian state to the milestone of finally gaining full sovereignty over its territory in January 1998, with the peaceful ending of the United Nations mandate in the Danube region of eastern Slavonia that had been occupied seven years earlier by rebel Serbs.
Franjo Tudjman's death takes from the Balkans a leader who has indelibly marked the region's bloody history during the 1990s. He brought Croatia to independence, but he leaves his heirs a difficult legacy.
He is survived by his wife Ankica, two sons and a daughter.
Franjo Tudjman: born 1922; died December, 1999