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By early 1991 it had become clear that Yugoslavia was falling apart. The question was, how was it going to fall apart? How would it be divided? Which countries would become independent, and which would stay under Serbian domination? Most importantly, would there be war and bloodshed? We answer some of these questions in this video as we discuss Slovenia and Croatia's independence and how the first Yugoslav wars unfolded in these countries. START OF THE WAR IN CROATIA Once the Krajina Serbs declared unilateral secession from Croatia, confrontation between the Croats and Serbs became inevitable. After taking Serb-majority territories under its control, the Serb police and paramilitaries
set their sights on the border region of Slavonia with mixed Croat and Serb populations. On March 1, 1991, the Serb paramilitaries captured the town of Pakrac, disarming Croatian policemen in the process. Tuđman immediately ordered an operation to return the town, as he had no intention of suffering another Knin debacle. On the following day, at 4:30 am a police force of 200 Croatians commanded by the Deputy Police Minister, Perica Jurić, covertly entered the town and quickly recaptured Pakrac after a brief gunfight and no casualties. However,
the Serbian press claimed that the Croat operation caused Serbian deaths and a refugee exodus. The Serb president of the Federal Presidency, Borislav Jović, ordered the Yugoslav army into Pokrac to settle the dispute. The talks between the Croat government and the Yugoslav Army resulted in an agreement, whereby both the Croat police and the JNA agreed to withdraw from town. The immediate threat of violence decreased, but the crisis was far from resolved. The next target of the Serb paramilitaries led by Milan Martić was Plitvice National Park, a resort
popular with European tourists. After the Croat police established a police station in the area, Martić sent a group of armed militiamen, who took over the park. On March 31, about 300 men from the Croatian Police Special Forces arrived to restore Croatian control over the park, but this time the Serb paramilitary was better prepared. They had erected barricades and laid an ambush, but in the ensuing short battle, the Croats prevailed. The first casualties of the Yugoslav wars occurred in this battle, one on each side. Once again the JNA arrived to ensure ceasefire,
but this time a political reaction was predictably more heated. Milošević's representatives went to Knin to coordinate support to the rebels. In Bosnia, one of the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs, not yet engaged in genocide, Radovan Karadžić called for the creation of a Serbian army. But it was not just the Serb nationalists, who caused trouble. In mid-April 1991, a group of HDZ members, including Croat-Canadian businessman and extreme nationalist, Gojko Šušak went to a Serb village in Slavonia called Borovo Selo. This group fired three Ambrust missiles into the village in a
completely unprovoked manner. Although this did not cause casualties, it heightened tensions. Thus, when on May 1, four Croat policemen tried to replace the Yugoslav Flag with the Croatian flag in Borovo Selo, the local Serb militia was ready, wounding and capturing two policemen. The next day, 180 Croat policemen went to Borovo Selo. They were ambushed by Serb paramilitaries. Twelve Croats were killed. The event shocked Croatia. The Croatian president Tuđman stated that the Battle of Borovo Selo was "the beginning of open warfare against the Republic of Croatia"
and blamed Serbia's leadership for supporting the Serb paramilitaries. In the subsequent weeks violence spread through Slavonia, with bombings and shootings by both sides occurring regularly. The escalating violence made all the last-ditch attempts to find a new governance format for Yugoslavia meaningless, as the country was clearly falling apart. SLOVENIA AND CROATIA DECLARE INDEPENDENCE. TEN-DAY WAR Slovenia and Croatia had already voted for independence in their respective referendums.
However, Slovenians were far ahead in preparing for independence, and by the summer of 1991 they had finalized plans for customs, the border, the police, legislation, and so on. Unlike the Croats, who had done practically nothing to prepare, as they were overwhelmed by the war they were already embroiled in. Still, Tuđman wanted to declare independence on the same day, not to be left behind. On June 25, 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence. Yugoslavia in its post-World War II form had ceased to exist. Slovenia did not have any significant Serb
population, and for Milošević and Serbia, it was the easiest republic to let go of from the nationalist point of view. In fact, a few months earlier, on January 24, 1991, Milošević met with Slovenian President Kučan. Kučan later said that Milošević was not against Slovenia's secession. But when push came to shove, Serbia decided to at least make a token show of force. Doing otherwise would have sent a wrong message to other republics. Well-prepared Slovenians immediately started taking steps to assert their sovereignty. They
assumed control of the borders, the air traffic, and the port authorities. Slovenian flags and symbols replaced Yugoslav ones. Federal officials were ordered to leave their posts. The Yugoslav army was ordered to invade Slovenia under the pretext of securing Yugoslavia's international border. Elements of the JNA's 13th Corps stationed in Rijeka and the 306th Anti-Aircraft regiment stationed in Karlovac, together with other forces totalling some 2,500 men, entered Slovenia early in June. This began what was later dubbed the Ten-Day War. The Slovenes
learned of the JNA's advance from the Croats and began preparing to resist by erecting barricades. One JNA armoured column crossed the border with Croatia near Metlika and moved toward southeastern Slovenia. Another moved from Varaždin towards the Austrian border. Simultaneously, a column of the 1st Armored Brigade stationed in Vrhnika barracks moved out to capture the Ljubljana airport. The Kučan government ordered the Slovenian army and Territorial Defense Units to resist the invasion. Battles took place around Metlika, Medvedjek, and Ormož, as the Slovenians harassed the Yugoslav
armour with anti-tank guns. In the afternoon, they shot down a helicopter carrying bread over Ljubljana to Yugoslav barracks. However, the JNA had managed to occupy many border crossings on the first day of the war. This is why, on the following day, the Slovenians shifted from primarily blocking actions to attacking captured border crossings and blockading JNA bases in Slovenia. Slovenian forces defeated the JNA unit in the Nova Gorica border area, capturing three of its T-55 tanks. Another heavy battle at the Holmec border crossing
also resulted in the Slovene victory. They also captured the Borovnica weapons depot to improve their supply situation. Many Yugoslav servicemen started to desert or refuse to go into battle, since the JNA was still a multinational force, which included Slovenians too. At the same time, the JNA started using its air superiority, bombing airports, Slovenian military installations, barricades, radio, and television transmitters. However, while having a limited military impact, it turned Slovenia into the victim and Yugoslavia into the villain of this war in the eyes of the international community. A short EU-brokered ceasefire ensued,
which gave the Slovenes time to improve their defences. Once the fighting restarted on June 29, the Slovenian forces managed to isolate Yugoslav forces scattered across Slovenia's border crossings, which worsened their supply situation. At Vrtojba, the JNA unit surrendered, leaving several tanks to the Slovene army. By that point, it had become clear to the Serb leadership that the limited invasion of the JNA was insufficient to break the Slovene resolve. The proposal of the military leadership to launch a full-scale invasion was shot down by the political
leadership. Preserving Yugoslavia was no longer a priority. Ensuring that all Serb-populated areas were under their control was. And the Yugoslav army was going to be used for that instead. One last attempt to turn the tide was made on July 2, when a JNA armoured unit tried to move out of the Kokovski forest, but was stopped by Slovene anti-tank weapons. The same happened to the armoured column, which tried to relieve this unit. The fighting largely stopped after that following another EU-brokered ceasefire. On July 7, 1991, the Ten-Day War was over, as Slovenia, Croatia,
and Yugoslavia signed the Brioni Accord, which stipulated that Slovenia and Croatia would postpone their independence for three months, while the Yugoslav army would withdraw. WAR IN CROATIA But the Ten-Day War was not indicative of other Yugoslav Wars. In Slovenia, the Yugoslav Army tried to suppress the independence with a small force and quickly withdrew, accepting Slovenia's secession. Slovenia, after all, did not have a Serb population, and was not part of the Greater Serbian realm in the eyes of Slobodan Milošević. Unlike Croatia. The Croat president Franjo Tuđman wanted to
avoid the war at all costs. Despite the crisis Yugoslavia had found itself in during the early 1990s, the JNA was still a formidable force and in a conventional sense, incomparably stronger than the nascent Croat army. That is why, when his defence minister Martin Š pegelj suggested taking over the JNA barracks in Croatia, while they were still busy in Slovenia, Tuđman disagreed in order to avoid provoking Serbia. For the Croat president, the way to achieve independence was to gain international sympathy and recognition, rather than by taking on the JNA. However,
this caution was for naught. Throughout July and August, Martić's forces captured Glina, Kostajnica, Okučani, and Dalj, with the Yugoslav Army behind them, ready to interfere to prevent the Croat counter-attacks. Thousands of Croats were displaced. Martić's next target was the Croat village of Kijevo in the middle of Serb-held territory. The JNA, which at the start of the war in Croatia tried to appear neutral, had become openly pro-Serbian. It was admitted, or rather proudly declared, by both Milan Babić and Martić. And the key character in this development is new to our story, who would later become one of the most
notorious war criminals of the Yugoslav Wars. None other than Ratko Mladić. A young Serb lieutenant colonel from Bosnia, he was transferred to Knin in the summer of 1991, where he became the Chief of Staff of the Knin Corps of the JNA. By that point, he had embraced the Serb nationalist perspective on Croatia and immediately established contact with the Krajina Serb paramilitary. On August 26, they practically destroyed Kijevo after a long artillery bombardment. The Croats were forced to flee. Around the same time, the Serbs started besieging the Croatian town of Vukovar in Eastern
Slavonia on the border with Serbia. Vukovar was under intense artillery and mortar fire. At this point, Serb paramilitaries controlled more than a quarter of Croatia, with three separate territories under their occupation-one around Knin, the second around Glina, and the third in Eastern Slavonia-which were connected to each other only through Bosnia and Herzegovina. This allowed the JNA and Serb paramilitaries to regroup and move freely among these three territories. Following a series of defeats, the Croatian government announced a general mobilisation
and a "war of liberation". In mid-September, the Croatian National Guard started laying siege to JNA military bases across Croatia, cutting their electricity, water, telephone lines and supplies. Tank traps and barricades were erected on main highways across the country. The battles occurred broadly along the lines of Serb communities, from Gospić in the south to Karlovac, just south of Zagreb, then around Pakrac and Okučani, and finally in Eastern Slavonia at Vukovar. The first Croat success came at the Battle of Gospić. This town had been under Serb bombardment
since August 29. Once the decision to surround the JNA military facilities was made on September 14, the Croat 118th Infantry Brigade started besieging the JNA garrison in Gospić. It surrendered on September 18, and the JNA commander was executed, which, as Silber and Little put it, "sent a shiver down the spine of every besieged JNA commander in the republic, who wondered whether he, too, would suffer the fate of the unfortunate Gospic general". The capture of Gospić resulted in one of the worst Croatian-committed atrocities in the war - the execution of 120 Serb civilians, who chose to remain loyal to Croatia and stay in their hometown.
The Croat sieges of JNA bases had varied success throughout the country. In Osijek, Vinkovci, and Jastrebarsko, the JNA commanders struck deals with local Croat police chiefs or military commanders, threatening to destroy the cities unless they were allowed to leave for Serb-held areas. But deeper in Croatia, in Varaždin, Yugoslav commander Vlado Trifunović had no hope of relief from Serbia; therefore, he surrendered to save his men's lives. The Croats captured dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles in this operation, enabling them to form their first tank brigade. Tuđman later
claimed that the Croatian army had captured 70 JNA facilities, including garrisons and ammunition depots, which improved their supply situation. The Croat strategy of encircling the JNA military bases gave Serbia a further pretext to send the Yugoslav army against Croatia. On September 19, Belgrade witnessed over a six-mile-long column of at least 100 T-55 and M-84 tanks, along with armoured personnel carriers and heavy artillery moving towards Croatia. Meanwhile, Vukovar remained under heavy Serb bombardment. On September 14, Serb paramilitaries attacked Southwest of Vukovar from the direction of Negoslavci,
forcing thousands of civilians to flee to the centre of the city. Thousands were now trapped in the centre of Vukovar, which was not totally encircled under heavy Serb shelling. Those who tried to escape were targeted by snipers. But the Croatian National Guard put up fierce resistance. Combined with poor organisation of the Yugoslavian military and Serb paramilitary, along with a high rate of desertion in the ranks of the JNA, this prevented them from capturing Vukovar quickly. Only with the appointment of General Panić, did discipline improve, and on November 3, the First
Motorized Guard Brigade went on assault with the support of the Yugoslav Air Force, capturing most of Vukovar. The main body of Croatian defenders surrendered on November 18, though the last pockets held out until November 20, when the town fully fell to the Serbs. Many civilians and Croat soldiers who were captured were executed. Serb forces achieved several victories while the siege of Vukovar was still ongoing. They captured Petrinja, 45 km south of the capital Zagreb, on September 21. There, they committed atrocities against Croat POWs and civilians who did not want
to leave the town, and even against Serb families who opposed these atrocities. In November, they captured Slunj to establish a territorial connection between the Knin and Glina areas of the Serb-controlled territory in Croatia. After the victory in Vukovar, the Serb Army continued its advance in Eastern Slavonia. They immediately captured Ernestinovo and Laslovo and began shelling Osijek, the largest city in the region. Osijek looked like the next target of the Serbian bombardment and assault as thousands of Croatians fled the city. In late November and
early December, they pushed closer to Osijek amidst heavy resistance by the Croatian 106th Brigade. However, on December 17, the Croat 135th Brigade launched Operation Devil's Beam, pushing back the Serbs from the north of Osijek, preventing the complete encirclement of the city. At this point, Tuđman was once again under heavy internal and external pressure. The latter forced him to order the Croat Army to allow the JNA forces in Marshal Tito barracks in Zagreb to leave with hundreds of tanks and other equipment in a bid to secure international support
for the coming fight. Obviously, this was not popular with Croats, but Tuđman calmed things down to a certain extent by arresting several nationalist commanders and politicians. A few weeks earlier, on October 1, the JNA's 2nd Corps also unexpectedly attacked towards the beautiful port city of Dubrovnik from Montenegro, even though it did not have any JNA bases or a sizable Serb population. Since Dubrovnik is right at the edge of Croatia, bringing in reinforcements and reliably supplying them was a huge task. As a result,
in a matter of days, the Croatian National Guard defending Dubrovnik was forced back into the city. Shelling and bombardment of the city from ground, air, and sea started in mid-October. Some of the bombs fell on the historic Old Town, causing a major international outcry, which did not prevent major destruction. Some of the shelling and bombardment served no military purpose whatsoever. In November, all yachts in the harbour of the Old Town were destroyed by wire-guided missiles, which Silber and Little described as "the revenge of the poor boys from the mountains on one of the
richest, most westward-leaning parts of former Yugoslavia". However, the Serbs never launched a decisive assault to capture Dubrovnik, as the fighting transitioned to a low-intensity siege. There are several explanations behind this: from a purely military perspective, it would have been a difficult and costly fight for the Serbs in an urban setting, and they did not want to commit to that. Second, there was a great degree of international condemnation after the bombardment of Dubrovnik. There was a threat of sanctions against Serbia, which may have played a role
in the Serbs' reluctance to assault Dubrovnik considering the destruction and condemnation it would have got. Some commentators argue that by this point in the war in Croatia, the Serb attention started turning towards Bosnia and Herzegovina instead. And some still speculate that Tuđman and Milošević reached a tacit agreement on partitioning Bosnia and Herzegovina in March 1991, when the first shots in Croatia had already been fired. We will talk about the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in our next video, so we won't go too deep on the subject here. In any case,
by late 1991, the intensity in the battle of Dubrovnik had decreased considerably. The extreme nationalists in Serbia, those who were further right than even Milošević, wanted to continue the offensive deep into Croatia and bring the whole country to heel. General Panić, who commanded the Serb forces in the battle of Vukovar, believed that if they decided to continue their march, they would have even captured Zagreb. But they were thwarted by Milošević. This is arguably a very overconfident perspective by the Serb general. According to Silber and Little, by late 1991, the Croat army had vastly improved its capacity. The capture of dozens of JNA facilities had given them significant
equipment and supplies, while the Croat commander in chief Antun Tus had managed to improve the organisation and discipline of the Croat forces, which at this point had 250,000 men. Any further Serb attempts could have succeeded, but it would have been extremely costly against a much better organised enemy. And for Milošević, the job in Croatia had largely been done. He controlled almost all of the Serb-populated territory of Croatia, about a third of the country, which was his initial goal anyway. On January 2, 1992, Croatia and Yugoslavia signed an agreement
in Sarajevo brokered by the former US Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, which established a ceasefire along the existing line of contact and allowed for the deployment of the UN peacekeepers. This ceasefire largely held until 1995, ending the first stage of the war in Croatia. CONCLUSION Now Milošević and Serbia could turn their attention to Bosnia. In our next video we will talk about the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the inter-ethnic conflict, the participation of Croatia in the war, the siege of Sarajevo and some of the worst atrocities, which took place during the Yugoslav Wars. If you don't want to miss it,
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