Quote:
Originally Posted by Gnist
Knin was never overbombed as far as I know, and it seems that the generals were simply defending Croatia. What is it about anyway?
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From what I'm reading, Knin was a Serbian enclave at the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to which they had been annexed. But the Serbians had always refused to recognize any authority from Zagreb.
Before that it had been the capital of the Kingdom of Croatia (XIth century). But when the Ottomans conquered it the Croats left the town en masse, and later Serbian refugees settled in.
At the time of the bombing the population makeup was 80% Serbian. When Croatia declared its independence from the Republic of Yugoslavia, the Serbs of Knin declared the independence of the Serbian Republic of Krajina from Croatia, with their capital in Knin.
The area was under UN protection but the bombings and the fear of reprisals made the Serbian population (about 250,000) flee the town. Later, Bosnian Croats and Croatian militias moved to live in there, replacing the Serbian population.
So, if the story is as I've read it, it looks to me not as a defense of Croatia but as a full-escaled ethnic cleansing.
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