Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, America.gov, as part of its feature “The Evolving Work of Democracy,” is asking academics and journalists from the United States and elsewhere to comment on the challenges to democracy that still lay ahead for countries of the former Eastern Bloc. What follows are their responses – and yours are welcomed as well.

What is the greatest challenge facing democracy in Croatia?

Two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Croatia declared its independence in 1991. However, for Croatia, the twin legacies of communist rule and the Balkan wars created an underground power base comprised of organized crime, corrupt government officials and their private partners in crime. The work of dismantling communist structures to establish democratic institutions was severely hampered by President Franjo Tudjman’s authoritarian rule in the 1990s.

Just a year ago, Ivana Hodak, the 26-year-old daughter of a lawyer defending former assistant defense minister Vladimir Zagorec, was executed in front of her apartment. Two weeks later, Ivo Pukanic, publisher of Nacional, and his associate, Niko Franic, were assassinated in a car bomb explosion in the capital, Zagreb. The alarming trends in Croatia reveal assassinations of prominent individuals, murder attempts and the rise of physical beatings of independent journalists investigating political corruption and organized crime.

The Reporters without Borders’ 2009 annual press freedom report reveals Croatia’s drastic drop — some 33 places lower in the world rankings, and far behind Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The European Union’s 2009 Progress Report states, “The potential for undue political influence over the judiciary remains.”

Through the Balkan Route drugs, weapons and illegally trafficked humans are brought to the EU Interpol says the central path of this organized-crime trail runs through Turkey, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia and into either Italy or Austria. The turmoil in Afghanistan and Pakistan and resurgent terrorist networks have converged with the Balkan Route’s operators into a profitable alliance that brings Southwest Asian heroin to Europe.

Conflicts of interest, money laundry schemes, fixed public tenders and embezzlement of public funds have become the most common means of amassing wealth and have led to the vast unexplained wealth of high-ranking politicians and their partners in Croatia. Organized crime and criminal capitalism thrives in today’s Croatia.

Croatia’s subverted rule of law, a politically influenced judiciary, weak protection of property rights and rampant political corruption represent a vicious cycle which has been impossible to break from within.

Over the past decade, over one billion dollars were sent by U.S. and EU member states’ taxpayers to Croatia’s government. However, there are no real reform results. Instead, funds should be used to send visiting judges and prosecutors (from nations with a strong rule of law tradition) to support Croatia’s judicial experts in seizing assets of illicit enrichment and establishing an independent judiciary.

For Croatia’s people, nearly 20 years have passed without economic and political freedom. Croatia’s citizens seek justice, freedom and functioning democratic institutions.

Learn more about Natasha Srdoc.