During
WWII, Croatia was occupied by
Nazi Germany. Under the Nazi-supported Ustaša regime, the nation proclaimed independence and was named the
Independent State of Croatia (NDH). During this time, the
Ustaša political party, headed by the
fascist leader
Ante Pavelić, controlled Croatian leadership. The NDH was supported by the
Axis powers and participated in the creation and use of concentration and
extermination camps. While this
puppet state adapted the
anti-semitic policy of the Axis powers, their goal was also to
ethnically cleanse all Serbian and Roma people through acts of
systematic extermination. It is thought that the war crimes and
the Holocaust in Croatia during WWII committed by the Ustaša regime is what spurred some anti-Croat sentiment within some parts of the Serbian populations later on. After WWII, Yugoslavia became a socialist state. This
communist state under
Tito branded the different Croat separatist groups as fascist terrorists with no goal other than to destroy the state. While this view of the Croat diaspora population was largely slanted, it did describe a small number of loosely organized groups which were in line with the Ustaše. Otpor existed for over three decades, and while it never had more than a few thousand members worldwide, it linked a variety of notable Croatian nationalists. Otpor branches on four continents at times splintered, notably the Argentinian one under the leadership of
Dinko Šakić. Šakić had lived in
Argentina between 1947 and 1956, and then between 1959 and 1998. One of the most ambitious international initiatives of Croatian National Resistance in the early 1960s was spearheaded by
Mahmoud K. Muftić, who served as the architect of a diplomatic campaign to gain Arab support for the formal recognition of the exiled Croatian state and to secure
Saudi material assistance in "the fight against communism and for the liberation of Croatia." He led negotiations with Saudi Arabia aimed at securing support for admitting this hypothetical government-in-exile to the Arab League as an “Islamic state,” an effort that came close to succeeding and was carried out through a form of guerrilla diplomacy in coordination with the
Muslim Brotherhood. Separately, Muftić launched a plan to form combat units of Bosnian exiles, to be trained by the Brotherhood for an armed struggle against Yugoslavia, a project that ultimately failed. His growing influence in these efforts led to tensions within Croatian National Resistance, and he eventually fell out with Vjekoslav Luburić after the Saudi government pushed for Luburić's removal and replacement with a Bosnian Muslim, Ibrahim Pirić-Pjanić, as a condition for continued support. Luburić responded by accusing Muftić of having previously worked for British intelligence. The HNO was banned in
Germany in 1976 because of their links to
Zvonko Bušić and others. In 1991, a former leader of Otpor joined the
Croatian Ministry of Defence and used his underground connections to try to obtain weaponry at the time the
Croatian War of Independence was starting. In August 1991, the
U.S. Customs Service arrested four members of Otpor from Chicago for attempting to procure illegal weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles, and ship them to Croatia. The men were Douglas J. Russell, Branko Majstoric, Ivan Beslic, and Andjelko Jurkovic. The trial was delayed for several years. Out on bail, Jurkovic, 52, was killed in a car accident on April 16, 1994. At trial, Russell was acquitted, while Majstoric and Beslic pleaded guilty. After the defense argued that the two were motivated by patriotism, not greed, the judge sentenced them to three years of supervised release each. == Leadership ==