Croatian War of Independence 1991-1995

Yugoslavia was envisioned as the political union of the major South Slavic peoples. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later to be renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) was formed in the aftermath of World War I, based mainly on the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Ethnic divisions emerged during the interwar period. Germany occupied Yugoslavia during World War II and resistance factions fought each other (notably Serbs and Croats) as often as they fought the Germans. Yugoslavia was partitioned during the occupation with a nominally independent state of Croatia created roughly inclusive of modern Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina while most of present-day Serbia remained under German occupation. As German defeat loomed and the Soviet armed forces approached, the partisan army led by Josip Broz Tito managed to liberate Yugoslavia without the intervention of the Red Army. Tito is credited with creating the united country that became a model of socialism for the nonaligned world during the nineteen sixties and seventies. His death in 1980 marked the beginning of the disintegration of Yugoslavia as political and economic crises created centrifugal pressure in the federal republics over the next decade.

Under its nationalist president Franjo Tudjman (1922-), Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia on June 25, 1991, provoking an immediate response from the federal military. Unlike the brief fighting in Slovenia, the other breakaway republic, the clashes between federal troops and republic defense forces in Croatia erupted into full-scale war. Federal ships off the coast fired on targets in Croatia, while Croatian forces blockaded federal barracks, cutting off utilities and food; besieged soldiers then shelled nearby civilian areas. In 1991 Serbs constituted one-eigth of the Croatian population; encouraged and armed by the federal military, Serb guerrillas took control of about one-third of the republic, driving out members of other ethnic groups. Some federal leaders in Belgrade (the Yugoslav capital) disagreed with the aggressive tactics of the army, which they saw as acting in the interests of its Serb officers and not of the country as a whole. In January 1992, after at least 10,000 people had died in Croatia and after 14 cease-fires had been broken, a United Nations-sponsored truce took hold. For nearly three years 14,000 UN peacekeeps maintained an uneasy standoff between the Croation defense forces and the rebel Serbs, who eventually declared their own republic of Krajina, consisting of the territory captured in 1991. As the July 1992 shelling of Dubrovnik by rebel Serbs shows, however, fighting never entirely stopped during those three years. At the same, neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina was also engulfed in war, and the Croats feared that Bosnian Serb advances in late 1994 would further embolden the Krajina Serbs. In May 1995 the Croatian army swept through one of the Krajina Serb enclaves, expelling the residents; the Serbs then sent missiles into the Croatian capital, Zagreb, killing a handful of people and injuring more than 150. The Serb retaliation did not halt the Croat offensive; by August Croation troops had retaken most of the Serb-held land and had sent more than 100,000 Serbs fleeing. The war in Croatian (along with the war in Bosnia) officially ended on December 14, 1995, when leaders of Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia signed the Dayton peace accords.

References

Kohn, 133-4; Yugoslavia - A Country Study.

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