The Ending of One Story

However the outcome of the elections in what is now called the Srem-Baranja region one thing is certain: in a few months that region will be an integral part of Croatia with everything that goes with that. And that includes the Croatian chequered flag on the town hall, Croatian license plates on cars and trips to Osijek, not Sid and Sombor, for documents and paperwork.

Those simple changes mark the end of a story about a town that became the symbol and source of tales of crime and victims for both the Serbs and Croats, tales of patriotism and betrayal, of destruction as a form of liberation. Primarily that story is the direct result of a policy whose rules and scope were defined by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. That story should be told again to recall the causes and consequences.

In the summer of 1991, people threw flowers and sang songs for the columns of armored vehicles, artillery and trucks heading west and recruitment was in full swing for the various armies. Others, who spent their nights in fear listening to the sounds of tanks, couldn’t be heard or seen and still others hid away in their friends’ apartments to avoid being sent to the front. In parliament, Budimir Kosutic called for a final settling of accounts with Croatia and army chief of staff General Veljko Kadijevic explained that "Germany has attacked us for the third time this century". Meanwhile, the Serbian president wisely kept quiet while his confidential associates drew up plans to create a purely Serb army if the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) fails. A large part of the opposition took part in those plans while the rest stayed away. The voices of resistance, weak and few, were pushed aside in the name of the great job of creating statehood.

Villages burned for three months in Slavonia while Vukovar, that Baroque city with the largest number of nationalities and mixed marriages in the former Yugoslavia, was shelled constantly. On Friday, November 21, 1991, three busloads of reporters from Belgrade were driven into the corpse covered streets to the ruins of the Dunav hotel for a briefing by Major (now Colonel) Veselin Sljivancanin. "The important thing is that Vukovar is in our hands and now we can raise a nice new town," Goran Hadzic, prime minister of the Serb Autonomous Region of Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srem told them. The liberators seemed to be somewhat ashamed of what they had done; the first authentic pictures of the devastation caused by millions of pieces of shrapnel were seen on Serbian state TV weeks later. By then, reports had been prepared about the "intentional devastation by the Ustashi" along with reports of slaughtered children. Vuk Draskovic was the only serious politician to join the calls for peace, calling for a moment of silence and shame over the crime. He won no new supporters; quite the contrary.

During that time, everything that could be sold including cars, equipment, appliances and wood work, was systematically taken out of Vukovar and the surrounding villages. The ruins of the town became the site of fighting for power between gangs in police uniforms. In Belgrade, a second hand video recorder cost about 100 DEM and a hand grenade about 10. The region filled with refugees from other parts of Croatia and Hadzic was instructed from Belgrade to appoint and dismiss ministers. The efforts of police services in the entire region made it a gray zone for the laundering of oil, wine, cigarettes and cars.

When Milan Babic proclaimed the Republic of Serb Krajina later that year, Eastern Slavonia became its integral part but little changed in Vukovar. There were more refugees and more new model German cars and Japanese four wheel drives. UNPROFOR came in and pretended to oversee the situation. Later, Hadzic ousted Babic at Belgrade’s demand and still later Milan Martic became Krajina president. Then the Croatian army launched operation Storm which was followed by pitiful attempts to recruit Krajina Serb men in Arkan’s military center in Erdut. The Erdut agreement was signed late in 1995 in the shadow of Dayton and it was the first sign that Serbia is giving up on the whole thing. Croatia made serious and less serious threats to end the mess by force but there was no need for a military intervention in the end. To make the transition painless and increase the gap, Milosevic’s media swapped the autonomous region and the Krajina for the name Srem-Baranja Region which will probably remain in use until the elections end and Tudjman goes to Vukovar.

Once that is over, Vukovar will no longer be important to anyone but the people who had the misfortune to be there and had nowhere else to go. For Tudjman, this will be just another well-played out election trump card. For Milosevic, another well hidden defeat. The original inhabitants of Vukovar, the refugees who took their place and the people who perhaps returned to the ruins have given up long ago on trying to understand why their peaceful lives had to be destroyed.

"Vukovar had weak foundations and the justified artillery actions against Ustashi snipers was devastating," Borisav Jovic said in the BBC’s The Death of Yugoslavia, offering the only somewhat official explanation for their fates. The poor people didn't know that they were so weakly founded.