I was sitting on the top of our river boat, in great comfort, probably with a drink in hand, when I saw this on the Danube River and it made me think of Krajina and the battle for Vukovar. I was very lucky. Others were not.
Michael Ignatieff described a battle he witnessed near Krajina, where he said, “Everywhere in Krajina, the democracy of violence rules.” The Serbs who lived there wanted Vukovar to be part of their country. The Croats resists.
The war was everywhere and everyone was involved. This was an inclusive war. DEI not necessary. It was a village war, where people who lived together fought a brutal war against their former neighbours with whom they not so long ago shared drinks. Now they shared blows, bullets, and brutality instead. The front line sometimes ran right through two backyard gardens. As he said, “This is a war where enemies went to school together, worked in the same haulage company, and now talk on the CB every night laughing, taunting, telling jokes. Then they hang up and try to line each other up in their gunsights.”
The battle for Vukovar was battle for Yugoslavia. It was battle of an idea. What would happen after fall of Tito? Serbians were the largest group. Could they rule the country? Somehow, pluralist options like living together were not available. Why?
Yugoslavia was a complex society. A complex of several states or societies. What was at issue in Yugoslavia was the fairness of the deal that everyone got within the federation. Unfair states will not hold. After 1945 Yugoslavia would probably not have been re-constituted were it not for the Communist Party. They were the only ones who developed significance during war and seized power after the war.
Later, the greatest discovery of Milošević was that Tito had died. It opened the door for a top predator like him. By 1991 a large Serbian army gathered at Vukovar and serious shelling began. Many people fled Vukovar. Patriots stayed behind to defend the city in a hopeless cause.
The war for Vukovar has been called “a holocaust of betrayal”. People turned against neighbours. War fronts divided neighbourhoods. A new word entered the English language “Srebrenica.” And a new expression, “ethnic cleansing.”
After the war it was very hard to live in town. Someone pointed out, “Every day one meets people who were butchers.” I remember listening to a CBC radio program about how the women faced men who had raped them and there were no consequences for those men. The men continued to be respected. The women not so much. Of course, the consequences for the women were permanent. How can people live there? They forget, that’s how. Or at least they try. As best they can.
After the war, Serbia declared the city of Vukovar part of the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina and in fact its eastern headquarters. This until then was part of the newly formed country of Croatia, which it defied, and where many Serbians in Croatia lived. The Republic was an unrecognized geopolitical entity but rather a self-proclaimed state that created many problems for Croatia. It was active during the Croatian War of Independence fought between Croatia and Serbia, from 1991 to 1995 when Serbs tried to get their independence from the Croats as the Croats had tried to get their independence from Serbia. A Serbian state in Croatia was never recognized internationally and eventually was part of Croatia, but only after many soldiers died in fruitless war. In the end, after all the incredible destruction and desolation, this little piece of land was given back to Croatia. There was only one question left: what was it all about?
After the war for Vukovar was over, and Serbia had “won,” again, if it can be called that, the Serbians placed a banner over one of the streets in the crushed city. Almost every building was ruined. Ignatieff described the scene this way,
In the town square, a banner had been stretched over the road from one pulverized house to another. It reads: “Welcome to Vukovar, Year One.” But eighteen months after entering the town, the Serbs have done nothing to rebuild it. It should be left as it is. UNESCO could fence it off and declare it a European heritage site. What could be more European, after all, than our tradition of senseless nationalist warfare?
Is this different than the current war between Ukraine and Russia. We think Russia is clearly the aggressor.
In the evening back on the boat, we had a great happy hour with old friends and new friends. We forgot about war. We could do that. Ukrainians find that difficult now. They are not so lucky. Neither were the people of Vukovar.