Kosta Nikolić’s Book Krajina (1991–1995). An Extended Review

Serbs and Croats between War and Peace

In part one, “Serbs and Croats between war and peace”, Nikolić covers the initial stages of the Krajina Serb rebellion against the separatist government in Zagreb. Between the second half of 1990 and the end of 1991, throughout Croatia, intercommunal tensions resulted in violent clashes, expulsion, and widespread war crimes. On 2 January 1992, the Implementation Agreement, also known as the Sarajevo Agreement, between the Yugoslav People’s Army and the Croatian authorities enabled the deployment of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR). This Implementation Agreement is the starting point of the author’s narrative on the tragic fate of the Serb Krajina. He describes the subsequent limited efforts by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) to support the Krajina with soldiers and higher-ranking military staff born in Croatia, while attempting to plausibly deny the same vis-à-vis the international community (166-73). This support was inadequate throughout and eventually dried up completely. In his book, Nikolić applies a technique of putting sources and primary evidence in order and basing his narration on descriptions of this evidence. Here he refers to the Krajina’s general staff report to the Yugoslav People’s Army of 17 December 1993, which underlines shortages of basic necessities such as clothes, food, heating, and petrol. The report estimates that, in 1994, 307,629,000 USD would be needed for the Krajina army, while at the same time expressing the hope of receiving 25.82 % of that sum in the best-case scenario (172-3).

Turning to internal politics in the Krajina, Nikolić describes the chaotic nature of political life there. Efforts to organise elections were obstructed by basic challenges such as the lack of proper voters’ registers, which in turn was used by local politicians to postpone any elections (183). The extent to which some proposals and decisions about Krajina Serb institutions were out of touch with reality is clear, for example, from Nikolić’s description of the Krajina Assembly session in Okučani on 20 April 1993. A proposal made by one of the leading Krajina politicians, Milan Martić, and accepted by the Assembly, included the rejection of not just some but all UN resolutions that were deemed anti-Serb as well as the decision to write a letter addressed to no less than all the people of Russia, inviting them to “overthrow the traitor of Serbian–Russian relations, Boris Yeltsin” (107). Deputy foreign minister under Yeltsin and special representative to the talks on former Yugoslavia Vitaly Churkin warned the Krajina’s leadership on 13 May 1993 that the Croatian president was becoming impatient. He insinuated that a political resolution based on the Krajina’s autonomy should be reached soon (116-7). Nikolić adds to this the similar conclusions drawn in a US intelligence report from July of the same year, which describes Croatian frustration over the largely formal international support for its territorial integrity (130-1). Soon after this, there was a new major escalation of hostilities in the form of the Croatian offensive Operation Medak Pocket in early September 1993. The operation, while militarily successful, resulted in serious human rights violations and war crimes against Serb civilians which became a diplomatic nightmare (163). The human rights violations included the systematic post-battle demolition of Serb settlements and property as well as torture and murder, which triggered international political pressure, eventually leading to the withdrawal of the Croatian forces to their pre-battle positions (164). Unfortunately, however, this was to be only the prelude to much more widespread violence.

Soon after the beginning of the Yugoslav crisis, the international community, often in the form of high-ranking diplomats, got involved. Again, Nikolić maps the various initiatives in detail. For example, on 14 August 1992, the UN Commission on Human Rights appointed the first postcommunist prime minister of Poland Tadeusz Mazowiecki as its special rapporteur on human rights in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. During his visit to Croatia, Mazowiecki recorded significant ethnic discrimination against Serbs (27). Nikolić describes the fears of the Croatian authorities that the presence of United Nations’ envoys could lead to a so-called Cyprus scenario, in which the UN would effectively consolidate Serb territorial control by dividing territories between the parties in the conflict (65). This motivated them to launch Operation Maslenica, aimed at retaking the strategically important Maslenica bridge in the hinterland of the city of Zadar, between Dalmatia and the rest of Croatia. This early military action sparked strong and unanimous condemnation in United Nations Security Council Resolution 802 (73).

Over time, there was an increased awareness of Serb crimes during the preliminary stages of the war, in 1991. On 6 January 1994, US ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright, together with the first US ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, visited the site of the Ovčara massacre in Eastern Slavonia, where Serb paramilitaries had killed more than 250 Croatian prisoners of war and civilians after the Battle of Vukovar. The latter was one of the first major battles of the war and took place between September and November 1991 (180). Nikolić notes that security for the trip of the two American politicians was provided both by UNPROFOR and the local Serb police in Eastern Slavonia, with the American security team agreeing that the journey would have been practically impossible without the cooperation of the Serb authorities in the region (180). This is just one of many cases in which Nikolić provides specific details of events in the Serbian Autonomous Oblast of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja, and Western Syrmia, an exclave detached from the rest of the Krajina and the only part of its territory directly bordering with Serbia. Nikolić describes how the local authorities in Eastern Slavonia increasingly lost interest in the developments in the Krajina, and especially its capital city Knin, and became more and more reliant on Belgrade when it came to quarrels between Serbian president Slobodan Milošević and the Bosnian Serb leadership. The regional official responsible for justice, and subsequently Krajina Minister of Justice Vojin Šuša explicitly advocated for exclusively confederal links between Eastern Slavonia and Knin in the future (184-5).

From the Zagreb Agreement until the Fall of Western Slavonia

In part two, “From the Zagreb Agreement until the fall of western Slavonia”, Nikolić deals with the diplomatic efforts to resolve the situation in Croatia as well as with Croatia’s changed international position after the signing of the Washington and Zagreb Agreement in 1994 (236). Nikolić explains how the signing of the Washington Agreement on 18 March 1994 led to the creation of the Bosniak–Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and was a cornerstone of the new relations between the US and Croatia, in which Croatia hoped to become America’s main partner in the region, while the US hoped that Croatia would turn out to be an asset in resolving the Bosnian crisis (233-6).

The second ceasefire agreement in Croatia was reached at the Embassy of Russia in Zagreb and ratified by the Krajina Assembly on 8 April 1994 (242). The agreement concluded in Zagreb was part of a series of agreements envisioned within the framework of the Zagreb Four talks initiated by US Ambassador Galbraith and involving the United States, Russia, the EU, and UN representatives (260). This initiative was complicated by proposals from the Bosnian Serb leadership about a unification of the Krajina and the Bosnian Republika Srpska (262). A second agreement reached in Zagreb several months later, on 2 December 1994, was focused on the normalisation of economic relations between the Krajina and Croatia (252). By that time, the Croatian authorities were becoming increasingly impatient with the Serb strategy of stalling, and contemplated employing military means to resolve the stalemate. Nikolić describes talks involving Ambassador Galbraith, Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Granić and President Franjo Tuđman, where the latter was confident that a Croat offensive on the Krajina would not provoke a reaction by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (that is, Serbia), with the probable exception of the exclave in Eastern Slavonia (275).

It is in this context that the final proposal for the political settlement in Croatia was presented to all sides, known today as the Z-4 Plan or Zagreb Four Plan. The plan envisioned the reintegration of the Krajina under nominal Croatian sovereignty, based on a particularly high level of territorial autonomy, direct international participation in Zagreb–Knin shared powers, cultural autonomy of the Serb minority in the rest of Croatia, and the immediate reintegration of the remaining areas beyond the Krajina’s boundaries, while in the case of Eastern Slavonia a two-year reintegration period was envisaged. Although the Croatian side was unhappy with the proposal, they accepted it as a basis for negotiations, whereas the Krajina authorities, in what seems to have been a clearly irrational dogmatic move, refused even to receive and consider the proposal, demanding full international recognition instead (278).

Nikolić describes how the entire Zagreb Four talks were conducted in the context of increased American fears over the future of the relatively large Bosniak enclave in Bihać in northwestern Bosnia. In fact, in late 1994, Serb forces in Bosnia and Croatia had initiated Operation Breza ‘94, aimed at taking control of Bihać as the main railway intersection between Knin and the capital of the Bosnian Republika Srpska, Banja Luka (286). The attack on Bihać included the use of cluster bombs, which led to fears of another humanitarian catastrophe and the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 958, authorising the use of air force (311). This opened the space for a NATO airstrike on the Udbina Air Base, the largest air combat operation in Europe since World War II and the largest combat operation in NATO’s history up to that time, as well as other targets in the Krajina (311).

Operation Breza ‘94 thus had lasting negative consequences for the Krajina Serbs, exhausting their resources, focusing international attention on the humanitarian crisis in Bihać, leading to NATO strikes, and legitimating future Croatian operations, which could now claim to be aimed at protecting Bihać (317). The first large-scale escalation, which led to the Krajina’s defeat, was at the beginning of May 1995, when Croatia initiated Operation Flash in western Slavonia. The Croatian operation did not provoke a reaction, neither from Serbia nor even from the Republika Srpska forces, which were located just across the Sava River in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This absence of reaction convinced the Croatian leadership that there would be no direct interstate confrontation in the rest of the Krajina either, except in the case of the exclave of Eastern Slavonia (357).

United Nations Security Council Resolution 994 urged the Croatian authorities to do more to ensure that the human rights of the Serb population were respected, but contrary to the earlier Operation Medak Pocket, no calls for the Croat forces to retreat were issued. At a meeting in London with US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, Croatian President Tuđman emphasised that a prolonged UN deployment in Croatia was unacceptable. In his view, Croatia had the military capacity to take control of most of the Krajina within eight days (357). Tuđman’s correct evaluation of the situation is confirmed by a meeting of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s Supreme Defence Council on 12 May 1995, at which the decision was taken to halt any further military aid for all areas in Croatia, except Eastern Slavonia (359).

The Krajina’s Collapse

In part three, “The Krajina’s collapse”, the author describes the series of events initiated by Operation Flash in early May 1995 which led to the ultimate collapse of the Republic of Serbian Krajina during the summer of the same year. The Croatian side decided that further negotiations were futile and that a final military solution to the Krajina crisis was needed. On 2 August 1995, French president Jacques Chirac sent a letter to Tuđman. The Serbs should be stopped in order to stabilise the situation on the ground, Chirac wrote, but at the same time France would not permit itself to be caught up in any imposition of peace by military force, because this could only lead to further escalation (410). On the same day, President Tuđman informed both US President Bill Clinton and the German chancellor Helmut Kohl about his intention to save the inhabitants, among them around 150,000 Bosniak refugees, in the Bihać enclave (410). With regard to the Serb communities in Croatia, Tuđman’s guarantees were very quickly proven to be empty promises. Kohl replied on the same day that Germany did not recommend military intervention against the Krajina Serbs (411). Nevertheless, after the rejection of the Z-4 Agreement and in the light of the first information coming through on the massacre committed by Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica in mid-July of that year, the US ambassador stated that America’s position was now to defend one UN-protected zone – Bihać – by sacrificing another – the Krajina (411).

Croatia’s Operation Storm was initiated on 4 August 1995 with massive shelling of civilian and military targets and little or no resistance offered by Serb units. Very quickly the UN base in Knin was overwhelmed by hundreds of traumatised locals requesting to be taken under the protection of the United Nations (437-8). Nikolić aptly describes the collective panic among the local Serb population (438). This panic was fuelled by the fact that many residents associated contemporary Croatia with the Ustasha regime of World War II, and by the deliberate strategy of psychological warfare employed by the Croatian side to break the morale within the rebel Serb lines. United Nations units witnessed at least 2,500 projectiles hitting the relatively small and at that point undefended town of Knin in two days of shelling – with barely any response from Serb forces (440).

Witnessing the extent of the humanitarian crisis, Ambassador Galbraith personally joined the line of Serb refugees leaving the country to draw attention to the issues of inadequate protection and widespread human rights violations (548). William Curtis Hayden of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights stressed that the post-operation arson and looting were not just isolated incidents that had got out of control but were part of a systematic and sustained strategy (464). In a report on the week of 6–12 August 1995, Danish officer Lennart Leschly, head of the European Community Monitoring Mission Regional Center in Zagreb, underlines that Operation Storm had resulted in the expulsion of 200,000 Serbs from the Krajina and that the intervention gave the Croatian state what it wanted – land without people (466).

Nikolić notes that the United States Department of Defense provided a similar assessment of the situation when it concluded that the humanitarian guarantees issued by the Croatian authorities and nominally addressed to the Serb community primarily served propaganda efforts towards the international community (466-7). The German Minister of Foreign Affairs Klaus Kinkel concluded that the destruction in the Krajina would have severe consequences for bilateral relations between Germany and Croatia (472). In his statement to the ICTY, Søren Liborius, a Danish member of the European Community Monitoring Mission, recalled frank statements by Croat soldiers who told him how the widespread and protracted post-battle looting comprised an explicitly permitted part of their pay, while the killing of animals, burning of houses, and poisoning of springs was part of their effort to prevent the return of the Serb refugees (510). The Croatian authorities also introduced new discriminatory measures to hinder and complicate any potential organised refugee return (489-506).

Winners and Losers

In the final part of the book, titled “Winners and losers”, Nikolić returns to the Krajina’s exclave in Eastern Slavonia, the lowland borderland region along the Danube River which was the last part of Croatia under Serb control. President Tuđman saw this area as strategically more challenging than western Slavonia, both diplomatically and militarily. He feared that Slobodan Milošević would be unable to resist should the Yugoslav People’s Army urge him to become involved in any military escalation in that area, something that had been avoided elsewhere. In Tuđman’s opinion, such involvement from Serbia would have led to Croatia’s defeat with heavy losses (525).

Nikolić describes Germany’s diplomatic role in the attempt to work out a solution for this area, which is mostly overlooked due to subsequent decisive American involvement. Germany urged for military action to be avoided in Eastern Slavonia; Chancellor Kohl personally made an effort to co-opt Boris Yeltsin, ensuring him that in return the US and Germany would turn a blind eye towards Russia’s policies in Georgia (525). At the time, Croatia strongly rejected the initial American proposals for any type of territorial autonomy for the Serbs in Eastern Slavonia, fearing that this could open a back door for Serb refugees to return (532). Indeed, Croatia went further by formally abolishing the already existing constitutionally guaranteed rights of territorial autonomy in those areas that the Croatian Constitutional Act on National and Ethnic Communities or Minorities had previously recognised as the autonomous districts (kotars) of Knin and Glina. These had been formally established, but due to the Krajina’s existence never implemented in practice, when the aforementioned act itself was introduced as a formal precondition for the international recognition of Croatia in 1992 (see Rich 1993; Caplan 2002). In November 1996, UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali insisted on their immediate reintroduction, which however never happened (563).

Finally, Nikolić extensively discusses the war crimes trial held from March 2008 to November 2012 before the ICTY. It indicted several Croatian Army generals, the best known being Ante Gotovina, along with several Croatian politicians, including Franjo Tuđman, for their roles in Operation Storm, citing their participation in what it called a joint criminal enterprise (JCE) that aimed at the permanent removal of Serbs from the regions of Croatia that had encompassed the Republic of Serbian Krajina. The trial was surrounded by fierce controversy (608-12). Nikolić particularly emphasises the contention related to the appeals stage of the trial, in which the Croatian generals were freed by a split 3-2 vote. This has been described as a precedent for the law of war, a component of international law (608).

Echoes of the War in Croatia

Kosta Nikolić’s book on the Krajina, the short-lived and unrecognised war-era Serb proto-state in newly independent Croatia, goes well beyond its narrow regional importance. It is a welcome and very substantial addition to the literature on the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. But it is also of relevance for other, more recent conflicts that have escalated with devastating humanitarian consequences. For example, the conflicts of 2020–2023 between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Nagorno-Karabakh brought up similar dilemmas between Baku’s legitimate wish to re-establish effective governance over its territory, on the one hand, and the inalienable human and political rights of the local Armenian community on the other. Similarly to Croatia, the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh ended with devastating humanitarian consequences and bleak prospects for any return and co-existence.

The human and political rights of oft-radicalised communities that are exposed to strategic misinformation and manipulation can easily be compromised to an unacceptable extent, as was the case with the Serb population in Croatia. If entire communities can become a target of revanchist violence, the crucial question is how far a state will go to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Nikolić does not provide an answer to this question. Nor does he draw any wider conclusions from the Krajina case, even though his book undoubtedly leaves readers with the more general question: What are the inalienable human and civil rights of a defeated group and its individual members, even if that group has previously engaged in violent and criminal acts aimed at achieving uncompromising, unrealistic, and fundamentalist goals?

Nikolić does indeed implicitly argue that certain human and civil rights are undeniable and that by seriously, systematically, and intentionally violating them Croatia has compromised its own position as well as any exclusivist, simplistic, and ultimately incorrect interpretations about who was (mainly) good or bad during that war. He wrote his book as part of a project titled “The Multiethnic State and National Identities: The Serbian Experience in the 20th Century”, funded by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia. In Croatia, where the book was published, it sparked numerous reactions, among them quite lively ones such as the media conference held by Stipo Mlinarić, member of the right-wing populist Homeland Movement (Domovinski pokret) and the Croatian parliament, who declared the book to be a Serb pamphlet.^[2] Serb nationalists in the region of the former Yugoslavia largely ignored the book because it does not serve their denialist mythologisation of the lost cause of the Krajina’s secession. Both reactions show how the book touched on the raw nerve of the prevailing nationalist ideologies on both sides.

Voluminous as it is, the book inadequately deals with events before 1992, thus omitting detailed descriptions of war crimes and human rights violations committed by Serb paramilitaries and the Yugoslav Army in Croat-inhabited towns, mostly in Eastern Slavonia, before the Krajina was established. Nevertheless, anyone who wishes to understand contemporary anti-Serb sentiment in Croatian politics and society should read this book. Since the end of the war, the remaining Serb community in Croatia has been continuously declining, both in absolute and relative terms. The community continues to face severe socio-economic exclusion and discrimination. A 2009 analysis by sociologist Zoran Šućur showed that 47 % of Serbs in Croatia at the time lived in low-income households, compared to 25 % of ethnic Croats and 29 % of Croatia’s other minorities, with the exception of the Roma (Šućur 2009, 121).

Certain progress has been made since late 2016 in the provision of basic municipal services, such as electrification and access to water, as well as in the cultural sphere thanks to the coalition of convenience between the strongly pro-European conservative prime minister Andrej Plenković of the Croatian Democratic Union party (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica, HDZ) and the Independent Democratic Serb Party (Samostalna demokratska srpska stranka, SDSS), which represents Croatia’s Serb minority and is considered progressive, pro-European, and centre-left. The SDSS takes great care to distance itself from any disruptive scheme of Aleksandar Vučić’s populist government in Belgrade. But obstacles and discrimination remain an issue, and rollbacks are a permanent risk, as can be observed in the context of renewed nationalist pressure since the Homeland Movement party (Domovinski pokret, DP) became a part of the Croatian governing coalition. Many of the challenges ahead are rooted in the legacy of the war. Nikolić makes clear just how important the 1995 Operation Storm is in Croatia’s postwar ideology of victory and state creationism. The war of the 1990s is treated as one of the most glorious eras in Croatian history. Yet, the final stage of that war undeniably included a list of war crimes, robberies, and petty criminal acts from which numerous Croatian citizens personally profited, something they prefer not to be reminded of.

The preservation of the nationalist myth in Croatia is motivated by multiple factors, including the simple fact that a large number of Croatian citizens directly profited from the mass looting and misappropriation of Serb property in the Krajina and the rest of the country. The denial of these crimes has become interlinked in sinister ways with the denial of the World War II era genocidal crimes against Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia, sometimes even by the official state institutions. The most recent example is the troubling cancellation, in November 2023, of a joint exhibition organised by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and several other institutions under the management of the Croatian Ministry of Culture, including the Croatian History Museum, during the Croatian chairmanship of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). The US partners ultimately refused to participate after repeated efforts from the Croatian ministry to remove references to the genocide of Serbs from the exhibition.^[3]

To this day, Serb minority institutions and media in Croatia are still targeted by right-wing populists, including those of the Homeland Movement, currently the junior partner in the ruling coalition, sparking domestic and international concern. In many ways this seems to be like a long tail of the war of the 1990s, when some members of the Croatian leadership saw military victory as a means to abolish most, if not all, minority and human rights of the defeated. Nikolić’s book challenges the right-wing and military veteran associations’ monopoly of the interpretation of the omnipresent topic of the Croatian War of Independence and in doing so invites deep introspection – on both sides. Nikolić rejects delusional Serb nationalist myths and interpretations by clearly presenting the futility, irrationality, incompetence, and criminality that coloured the entire Krajina project from start to finish. Ultimately, this project was particularly costly for the Serb community in Croatia, which had populated their territory for centuries, and is now faced with demographic collapse. The book is highly relevant for anyone interested in understanding this particular secessionist regime and its failure, but also ethnic secessionism more generally, and not just in former socialist states.