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The original Krajina was carved out of parts of the crownlands of Croatia and Slavonia by Austria in 1553/ 1578 in order to form the Military Frontier with the Ottoman Empire. Many Serbs immigrated in the region and participated in the fight against the Ottomans. The Austrians controlled the Frontier from military headquarters in Vienna and did not make it a crown land, though it had some special rights in order to encourage settlement in an otherwise deserted, war-ravaged territory. The abolition of the military rule took place between 1869 and 1871Events January January 18 The member-states of the North German Confederation unite into a single nation-state known as the German Empire. The King of Prussia is declared the first German Emperor as Wilhelm I of Germany. January 28 France surrenders to en. After that, the areas were returned to their previous crownlands.
Following World War IWorld War I (also known as the First World War , the Great War the War of the Nations and the "War to End All Wars") was a world conflict occurring from 1914 to 1918. No previous conflict had mobilized so many soldiers, or involved so many in the field of, it became part of YugoslaviaYugoslavia Jugoslavija in all south Slavic languages) is a term used for three separate political entities that existed during most of the 20th century. Translated, the name means Land of the South Slavs jug in Jugoslavija means south). The first was a ki where it was in the PosavskaSava also Save ( German Save Hungarian Szava is a river in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, a right side tributary of Danube at Belgrade. It is 940 km long and drains 95,720 km2 of surface area. In Roman times the river was named Savu banovina with most of old Croatia-Slavonia. Following World War IIWorld War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the world's nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. The war was fough, the PartisanThe Yugoslav partisans were the main anti-fascist resistance movement which fought against the occupation of Yugoslavia by Axis forces during World War II. The uniting force of the anti-fascist partisans on the territory was People's Liberation Army and P leaders made it part of the SFRY's Socialist Republic of Croatia. The political self-organization along national lines existed since the early 20th century, and the Serbs of Croatian Krajina as well as Bosnian Krajina and other territories west of Serbia had a notable political party in the Independent Democratic Party under Svetozar Pribicevic between the two world wars.
Croatia's moves towards independence in the early 1990s following the election of the nationalist President Franjo Tudman were strongly opposed by the country's Serbian minority, who were supported both politically and militarily by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and Serbia under President Slobodan Miloševic. At the time, Serbs comprised about 11% of Croatia's population. Nationalist Serbs in the Krajina established a Serbian National Council in July 1990 to coordinate opposition to Tudman's policies. Milan Babic, a dentist from the southern town of Knin, was elected its President.
The Krajina Serbs established a paramilitary militia under the leadership of Milan Martic , the police chief in Knin. It erected barricades of logs across roads through the Krajina, effectively severing the Croatian coastal region of Dalmatia from the rest of the country, in an incident which became commonly known as the "log revolution." In August 1990, a referendum was held in the Krajina (but was confined to Serb voters) on the question of Serb "sovereignty and autonomy" in Croatia. The resolution was passed by a majority of 99.7% but was declared illegal and invalid by the Croatian government.
The Krajina Serbs did not initially seek independence for their area. Instead, on September 30, 1990, the Krajina Serbian National Council declared "the autonomy of the Serbian people on ethnic and historic territories on which they live and which are within the current boundaries of the Republic of Croatia as a federal unit of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." Croatia was at this time still part of the SFRY and it was theoretically possible that the Serbian Krajina could have seceded from Croatia to remain part of a Yugoslavia minus Croatia and Slovenia. Indeed, this was a source of significant tension within Krajina Serb politics, which was dominated by a conflict between supporters of a unified Yugoslavia and ultranationalist supporters of a " Greater Serbia".
Babic's administration announced the creation of a Serbian Autonomous District (Srpska autonomna oblast or SAO) of Krajina on December 21, 1990 and on April 1, 1991 declared that it would secede from Croatia to join (or, rather, not leave) Yugoslavia. Other Serb-dominated communities in eastern Croatia announced that they would also join the SAO and ceased paying taxes to Zagreb.
Croatia held a referendum on independence on May 19, 1991 in which the electorate - minus many Serbs, who chose to boycott it - voted overwhelmingly for independence with the option of confederate union with other Yugoslav states. On June 25, 1991, Croatia and Slovenia both declared their independence from Yugoslavia. As the JNA attempted unsuccessfully to crush Slovenia's independence, clashes between Krajina Serbs and Croatian security forces broke out almost immediately, leaving dozens dead on both sides. The fighting generally took the form of Serbian attacks on Croatian police posts and state buildings, with the Croatian police fighting back where they could. Both sides engaged in tit-for-tat attacks on civilian targets, blowing up and burning houses belonging to people of the "wrong" ethnic group. The Serbs were initially armed with little more than small arms but the JNA soon remedied this by allowing them free access to army equipment, up to and including armoured vehicles and artillery.
The European Union and United Nations attempted to broker a ceasefire and peace settlement, but the truces were repeatedly broken by both sides (often within only a few hours) and hardline nationalists on both sides rejected any moves to settle the conflict. Around August 1991, the leadership of the Serbian Krajina (and allegedly that of Serbia) agreed to embark on what war crimes prosecutors would later describe as a "joint criminal enterprise" to permanently forcibly remove the non-Serb population of the Croatian Krajina in order to make them part of a new Serb-dominated state. The participants included Milan Babic, Slobodan Miloševic, other Krajina Serb figures such as Milan Martic, the Serbian militia leader Vojislav Šešelj and Yugoslav Army commanders including General Ratko Mladic, who was at the time the commander of JNA forces in Croatia.
According to testimony given by Babic in his subsequent war crimes trial, during the summer of 1991 the Serbian secret police - under Miloševic's command - set up "a parallel structure of state security and the police of Krajina and units commanded by the state security of Serbia". Shadowy groups of paramilitaries with names such as the "Vukovi sa Vucjaka" ("Wolves from Wolftown") and the "Beli Orlovi" ("White Eagles"), funded by the Serbian secret police, were also a key component of this structure. A full-scale war was launched in which a large area of territory, amounting to a third of Croatia, was seized and the non-Serbian population was either massacred or ethnically cleansed. The bulk of the fighting occurred between August and December 1991, during which time approximately 80,000 Croats and Muslims were expelled or killed. Thousands more died and were deported in fighting in eastern Slavonia, but the JNA was the principal actor in that part of the conflict.
Although it was less violent and so attracted much less attention from the international media, a parallel process of ethnic cleansing took place in the Croatian-held parts of the Krajina and in other parts of Croatia. Thousands of Serbs were forced to leave their homes through fear of reprisals, pressure from Croatian nationalists and paramilitary actions. Many took refuge in the Serbian Krajina, occupying homes vacated by Croats. Similarly, exiled Krajina Croats moved into homes vacated by Serbs elsewhere in Croatia.
On December 19, 1991, the SAO Krajina proclaimed itself the Republic of Serbian Krajina. On February 26, 1992, the SAO Western Slavonia and SAO Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srem joined the RSK, which initially had only encompassed the territories within the SAO Krajina. The RSK occupied an area of some 17,028 km˛ at its greatest extent. It was located entirely inland, although its southern portion came close to Adriatic Sea access because they controlled the Novigradsko more, a small, protected bay located to the east of Zadar. The acquisition of coastline near Zadar and Šibenik (and a smaller town between these two, Biograd na Moru ) was a key strategic goal for the Krajina Serb authorities, as this would have given the republic a vital outlet; however, this objective was never realised.
A ceasefire agreement was signed by Presidents Tudman and Miloševic in January 1992, paving the way for the implementation of a United Nations peace plan put forward by Cyrus Vance. Under the Vance Plan , four United Nations Protected Areas (UNPAs) were established in the territory of the RSK. The Vance Plan called for the withdrawal of the JNA from Croatia and for the return of refugees to their homes in the UNPAs. The JNA officially withdrew from Croatia in May 1992 but much of its weaponry and many of its personnel remained in the Serb-held areas and were turned over to the RSK's security forces. Refugees were not allowed to return to their homes and the few Croats and other non-Serbs who had remained in the RSK were expelled in the following months. On February 21, 1992, the creation of the United Nations Protection Force ( UNPROFOR) was authorised by the UN Security Council for an initial period of a year, to provide security to the UNPAs.
The agreement effectively froze the front lines for the next three years. Croatia and the RSK had effectively fought each other to a standstill, each side unable - for the moment - to defeat the other militarily. The ceasefire had little effect on the RSK's international standing. It was not recognized in the sense that it exchanged diplomatic credentials with other countries, but the republic's de facto independence had to be acknowledged by the countries of the region as a fact of life. It gained support from Serbia's traditional allies - Greece, Russia, and several other countries with Orthodox Christian majorities.
With the creation of new Croatian counties on December 30, 1992, the Croatian government also set aside two autonomous regions (kotar) for ethnic Serbs in the areas of Krajina. UNPROFOR deployed throughout the region in order to maintain the ceasefire, although in practice its light armament and restricted rules of engagement meant that it was little more than an observer force. It proved wholly unable to ensure that refugees returned to the RSK. Indeed, the Krajina Serb authorities continued to make efforts to ensure that they could never return, destroying villages and cultural and religious monuments to erase the previous existence of the non-Serb inhabitants of the Krajina. Milan Babic later testified that this policy was driven from Belgrade through the Serbian secret police - and ultimately Miloševic - who he claimed were in control of all the administrative institutions and armed forces in the Krajina. (It should be noted that Miloševic has denied this, claiming that Babic had made it up "out of fear".)
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