October 7, 1991 – Croatian War of Independence: Yugoslav planes attack Zagreb
On October 7, 1991, Yugoslav Air Force planes attacked anumber of targets in the Croatian capital Zagreb,the most significant being the Banski dvori, the official residence of thePresident of Croatia. Inside the building at the time of the raid were CroatianPresident Franjo Tudman, Yugoslavian President Stjepan Mesic, and YugoslavianPrime minister Ante Markovic, all of whom were not injured in the attack.President Tudman laid the blame for the attacks on the Yugoslav military, butthe latter denied any involvement, instead accusing the Croatians of stagingthe attacks as a ruse. The following day, October 8, the three-month moratoriumon Croatian independence (Croatia had declared independence on June 7, 1991)lapsed, and Croatia cut allties with Yugoslavia.During the interim period, increasing tensions had broken out into fighting inthe Croatian War of Independence.
(Taken from Croatian War of Independence – Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 2)
Background By thelate 1980s, Yugoslavia wasfaced with a major political crisis, as separatist aspirations among its ethnicpopulations threatened to undermine the country’s integrity (see “Yugoslavia”,separate article). Nationalism particularlywas strong in Croatia and Slovenia,the two westernmost and wealthiest Yugoslav republics. In January 1990, delegates from Slovenia and Croatia walked out from an assemblyof the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the country’s communist party, overdisagreements with their Serbian counterparts regarding proposed reforms to theparty and the central government. Thenin the first multi-party elections in Croatiaheld in April and May 1990, Franjo Tudjman became president after running acampaign that promised greater autonomy for Croatiaand a reduced political union with Yugoslavia.
Ethnic Croatians, who comprised 78% of Croatia’s population, overwhelmingly supportedTudjman, because they were concerned that Yugoslavia’snational government gradually had fallen under the control of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s largest and mostpowerful republic, and led by hard-line President Slobodan Milosevic. In May 1990, a new Croatian Parliament wasformed and subsequently prepared a new constitution. The constitution was subsequently passed inDecember 1990. Then in a referendum heldin May 1991 with Croatian Serbs refusing to participate, Croatians votedoverwhelmingly in support of independence. On June 25, 1991, Croatia,together with Slovenia,declared independence.
Croatian Serbs (ethnic Serbs who are native to Croatia) numbered nearly 600,000, or 12% of Croatia’stotal population, and formed the second largest ethnic group in therepublic. As Croatiaincreasingly drifted toward political separation from Yugoslavia, the Croatian Serbsbecame alarmed at the thought that the new Croatian government would carry outpersecutions, even a genocidal pogrom against Serbs, just as the pro-Naziultra-nationalist Croatian Ustashe government had done to the Serbs, Jews, andGypsies during World War II. As aresult, Croatian Serbs began to militarize, with the formation of militias aswell as the arrival of armed groups from Serbia.
Croatian Serbs formed a population majority in south-west Croatia(northern Dalmatian and Lika). There, inFebruary 1990, they formed the Serb Democratic Party, which aimed for thepolitical and territorial integration of Serb-dominated lands in Croatia with Serbiaand Yugoslavia. They declared that if Croatia wanted to secede from Yugoslavia, they, in turn, should be allowed toseparate from Croatia. Serbs also interpreted the change in theirstatus in the new Croatian constitution as diminishing their civil rights. In turn, the Croatian government opposed theCroatian Serb secession and was determined to keep the republic’s territorialintegrity.
In July 1990, a Croatian Serb Assembly was formed thatcalled for Serbian sovereignty and autonomy. In December, Croatian Serbs established the SAO Krajina (SAO is theacronym for Serbian Autonomous Oblast) as a separate government from Croatia in the regions of northern Dalmatia and Lika. Croatian Serbs formed a majority population in two other regions in Croatia, which they also transformed intoseparate political administrations called SAO Western Slavonia, and SAO EasternSlavonia (officially SAO Eastern Slavonia, Baranja, and Western Syrmia). (Map 17 showslocations in Croatiawhere ethnic Serbs formed a majority population.) In a referendum held inAugust 1990 in SAO Krajina, Croatian Serbs voted overwhelmingly (99.7%) forSerbian “sovereignty and autonomy”. Thenafter a second referendum held in March 1991 where Croatian Serbs votedunanimously (99.8%) to merge SAO Krajina with Serbia, the Krajina governmentdeclared that “… SAO Krajina is a constitutive part of the unified stateterritory of the Republic of Serbia”.
