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Chapter 5 The Death of a City: The Yugoslav Peoples Army Siege of Vukovar, 1991, Refugee Crisis, and Its Aftermath James Horncastle The causes for the fragmentation of Yugoslavia are numerous, and an exten- sive literature on the topic has developed in the past twenty-five years.1 A fac- tor that has not been adequately accounted for, however, was the Yugoslav People’s Army’s (JNA) urbicide of the city of Vukovar. The JNA, considered both within Yugoslavia and outside the country as the preserver of the Yugoslav vision, looked on with apathy while its soldiers devastated the picturesque city.2 Before Vukovar, the general consensus among outside observers was that Yugoslavia’s statehood would be maintained. Once the JNA’s assault against Vukovar, a fixed, static location largely open to the press, was revealed to the outside world, however, international opinion rapidly turned against the JNA and their primary backer, the Serbian President Slobodan Milosević. Though the 25 August to 18 November 1991 Siege of Vukovar, and resulting destruction of the city, was a seminal event of the Yugoslav wars, it receives only passing mention in the literature.3 This oversight is likely due to the fact that the Siege of Dubrovnik, the internationally renowned tourist destination and UNESCO World Heritage Site, occurred concurrently with the Siege of Vukovar.4 While the Siege of Dubrovnik received much of the international 1 See Sabrina P. Ramet, Thinking About Yugoslavia: Scholarly Debates About the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005), Passim. 2 Warren Zimmermann, Origins of a Catastrophe (New York: Random House, 1999), 156. 3 For example, Mile Bjelajac and Ozren Žunec recognize Vukovar’s importance for shifting in- ternational opinion, but do not examine the issue in any detail, leaving the point open to challenge. See Mile Bjelajac and Ozren Žunec, “The War in Croatia, 1991–1995,” in Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: A Scholars’ Initiative (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 2010), 250. 4 For examples from the literature see: Mihailo Crnobrnja, The Yugoslav Drama (I.B. Tauris: London, 1996) 173; David Bruce Macdonald, Balkan Holocausts?: Serbian and Croatian Victim Centred Propaganda and the War in Yugoslavia (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2003), 104-105; Sabrina P. Ramet, The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918–2005 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2006), 409. News articles from the period also show how the international community’s first focus was upon Dubrovnik, then Vukovar. See: Reuter, “Truce Holds in Beseiged Croatian Town,” Toronto Star, 14 November 1991, A3; “16 Killed in Croatia © Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2020 | doi:10.30965/9783657702787_006 86 James Horncastle press’ focus in 1991, and in fact lasted much longer than that of Vukovar, its role as a site of international importance meant that the amount of damage that the JNA forces inflicted upon Dubrovnik was significantly less than that of Vukovar.5 Instead Vukovar’s status as a strategically important city to both the Croatian and Yugoslav/Serb forces, yet lacking the international recogni- tion of Dubrovnik, meant that it and its population were subjected to the full horrors of war. In order to chart how the destruction of Vukovar became the focal point for changing international opinion, this paper will examine American, Canadian, and International newspapers and agencies from the start of the siege until its conclusion for references to Vukovar, and how the depiction and tone changes over time. Given that North America was geographically remote from Vukovar, and therefore more likely to focus on other matters, the change in perception is demonstrative of what occurred in Europe, but on a greater scale. Prior to the Siege of Vukovar, international opinion was divided on what to do with the crisis in Yugoslavia. Most international actors preferred to keep Yugoslavia in- tact, whether because of obligations elsewhere, a realpolitik outlook, or simply a romanticization of Yugoslavism. The JNA’s destruction of Vukovar, however, dramatically altered international opinion. The JNA and Slobodan Milosević, henceforth, were identified as the primary aggressors during the Yugoslav Wars. Background Vukovar, a city positioned along the confluence of the Vuka and Danube Rivers, was a significant, but by no means crucial, municipality in the region of Eastern Slavonia in Croatia. A multiethnic and confessional city, Vukovar represented, in many ways, the Yugoslav ideal of different peoples working and living in harmony. Furthermore, the city possessed significance to the Yugoslav state, as Vukovar was the city where the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) was officially founded in 1920. For these reasons, Vukovar was held up as an ideal, if slightly small, Yugoslav socialist city. The country’s policies during the Cold War, however, would sow the destruction of Vukovar, and transform the by Army Assaults,” Toronto Star, 30 October 1991, AP, “Army Halts Shelling of Dubrovnik Trapped Croatians Hope to Flee,” ibid., 13 November 1991, Marcus Tanner, “Croatians Launch Attacks against Army,” ibid., 16 September, 1991. 5 Central Intelligence Agency Office of Russian and European Analysis, Balkan Battlegrounds: A Military History of the Yugoslav Conflict, 1990–1995, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 2000), 102..

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