After a slow beginning, the number of refugees returning to Croatia is expected to increase this year

The first indications of war were small telltale signs. Vera Kruljac remembers her Serb neighbors stopped socializing and wishing her good morning en route to work. Then the Serbs sent their children away. All too soon, artillery and mortar shells began raining down on their neighborhood. Vera Kruljac and her two sons were lucky. Helped by the Red Cross, they fled their home and reached the Croatian coast. Ivica Kruljac, her husband, was taken prisoner by advancing Serb forces and even today will only talk reluctantly about what happened next.

Vera and Ivica Kruljac were both born and raised in Vukovar, the major town sitting on the rich alluvial plains of the Danube River. The region is no stranger to war and down the centuries armies and empires, Hungarian, German, Austrian and Ottoman, fought for control of the strategic area.

When Croatia declared independence from Federal Yugoslavia in 1991 and war ensued, Vukovar became one of the first targets of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav People’s Army. In three months of round-the-clock shelling, the city was literally flattened. The bulk of its 40,000 majority Croat population cowered in cellars for weeks. Some were killed. Many were wounded. Most of the survivors were subsequently forced to leave at gunpoint. The term ethnic cleansing became firmly anchored in the vocabulary of war.

“At first I was forced to replace tiles on the roofs of buildings at the height of the shelling,” Ivica Kruljac said, recalling his days as a prisoner. “Then I collected dead bodies from the streets.” He was locked in a cellar at night and repeatedly beaten. “Some people were taken outside, tortured and killed. We could hear screams and the shots,” he said. Prisoners who were detailed to get rid of the ‘evidence’ were themselves then ‘eliminated’ according to Kruljac.

A surreal world

The Croat eventually joined his wife and family. They returned to Vukovar in June, 1998, and entered a bizarre and surreal world which many displaced persons, not only in Croatia, but throughout the former Yugoslavia have faced since the end of hostilities.

Most of the houses abandoned by fleeing Croats which survived the bombardment were subsequently occupied by Serbs, many of them also victims of war from Bosnia and other parts of Croatia where they were not welcome. The Kruljacs discovered their home had been occupied by a local Serb family from Vukovar who refused to move out. The Kruljacs eventually established a ‘bridgehead’ moving into one bedroom of their own home, along with the Serbs. “There was an agreement that people could not simply be thrown out of a property, even when an owner returned, unless they had somewhere else to go,” Vera Kruljac said. She remembers U.N. observers in the region visiting regularly “to see that the Serbs were okay and not being victimized. They never asked about us.”

Vera Kruljac began to “expand my empire, from the bedroom into the kitchen where I cooked and took up residency on the kitchen stool.” The Serbs were eventually evicted on a technicality because they had not officially registered as displaced persons, but the Kruljacs suffered one final indignity. On the day their ‘visitors’ left, the Serbs took most of the house’s furniture with them. The Kruljacs stood and watched from the garden but refused to try to stop their neighbors looting for fear the eviction itself might be halted.

“It was almost funny,” Ivica Kruljac says now. “We got our house back but this Serb could have had me shot during the early days of the war. We were lucky.”

Many people have been far less fortunate. Nearly 80,000 refugees and internally displaced went home since 1995, including some 35,000 who returned from Bosnia and Yugoslavia. But there are still an estimated 40,000 refugees in Bosnia and 300,000 in Yugoslavia. Many of those mostly Croatian Serbs had been ruthlessly driven from Croatia’s Krajina region during the army’s 1995 blitzkrieg known as Operation Storm and until now have been blocked by Zagreb from going home in any significant numbers.

Vukovar itself, despite widespread international attention, is still on a life support system. Only 1,600 of the city’s former Croat population has returned. Serb residents fearing reprisals from hard-line Croats, have continued to desert the region. A few buildings have been symbolically restored, but Vukovar remains a monument to the folly of war. Factories, homes and shops remain gutted. Unemployment stands at around 90 percent. Traffic signals have been re-connected, but they almost mock the empty streets and buildings.

Throughout the entire Danube or East Slavonia region which returned to full Croatian sovereignty in 1998 following a period under United Nations administration, less than half the pre-war population has returned.

As in neighboring Bosnia, 1999 may become a decisive year in efforts to resettle Croatia’s refugees and internally displaced. Under intense international pressure to end years of deliberate foot-dragging and speed up refugee return, Zagreb in June 1998 approved a National Return Program which, in principle at least, should make it easier for everyone, whatever their ethnicity, to return to Croatia with a minimum of formalities. This move was reinforced when the government also rescinded two harsh pieces of wartime legislation which made it difficult, and at times impossible, for returnees to reclaim their old properties.

Coming home

In the half year since the plan was adopted returns have picked up only slightly, though UNHCR protection officer Arvind Gupta said he anticipated the flow will increase in spring. But daunting problems face the returnees. Croatian politics are in a state of flux and a forthcoming general election will only add to a mood of national uncertainty. Many senior officials simply do not want the Serbs to return and those who have gone home thus far are mainly elderly people with no real future ahead of them.

Economic conditions in Croatia are better than in Yugoslavia, but not by much, and younger Serbs remain fearful of returning because of perceived ongoing discrimination, not only politically but also in such areas as jobs and schooling. The government allocated the equivalent of nearly $2.5 billion for reconstruction in the next five years, but some estimates suggest $25 billion is a more realistic figure for what is needed.

International donors are wary of pumping large amounts of aid into Croatia given what they feel is the government’s disappointing record in promoting meaningful return. A December 1998 international conference on reconstruction and development in Zagreb, for instance, was only partially successful; it was useful in promoting a greater awareness of Croatia’s needs but generated little of the assistance the government was looking for. “Our nightmare scenario is that large numbers of people will come home,but then they will decide to go back to Yugoslavia because there are still too many problems here,” one UNHCR field officer said.

During an era of reduced spending in most regions, UNHCR maintained its 1999 budget in Croatia at $13 million, the same as the previous year. Program officer Iain Hall said in the coming months UNHCR programs would focus on “following the returnees home and helping them on the spot in such areas as minor home repairs. We will reduce the amount given to each individual, but we will also try to help more people.” The overall strategy will be a community based approach with the aim of rapid reintegration.

But whatever happens, it will be a difficult end of the millenium in Croatia. In a best case scenario, officials estimate 30,000 people will return this year. Even if that target is met, it will still mean that less than 10 percent of the country’s refugee population will go home in 1999.

Source: Refugees Magazine issue 114 (1999)