August 1st

Leaving Split, we prepared for another bus day that would take us away from the Adriatic coast north, towards Zagreb.  On our way we entered the Krajina region of Croatia, the "military frontier" of Serbia in which, before the war, a large number of Serb diaspora lived.  When Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia, the Serbs in Croatia in turn declared their own independence from Croatia, forming the internationally-unrecognized Republika Srpska Krajina, or the Republic of Serbian Krajina.  These separatists occupied Croatian enclaves in the region, beginning the violence of the wars that would engulf the region (besides the short struggle in Slovenia).  These Serbs were backed by the Yugoslav Army, the JNA, which was predominantly Serb at the time.  At the beginning of the wars, they made significant gains against Croatia.  However, support from Belgrade slowly withdrew due to international sanctions, and the overstretched lines of the Krajina Serbs were pushed back in August of 1995.  The government fled the capital of Knin, and the displacement of the Serbs of the region- numbering in the tens of thousands- was the largest single forced mobilization in Europe since World War II.  Of the original Serb population, numbering at 35-40 thousand, only about 500 to 600 remained in August (these were mainly old people who couldn't make the trip, and would become the victims of war crimes).  Our bus driver, Dragan, a Serb, had served on this front during the war (we didn't get lost anymore!).  Since the war, Serbs have slowly started to move back to the region, but nowhere near their former numbers.  We stopped for lunch in Knin, the formal capital of the failed separatist republic.  I would have liked to stay longer to explore the place where the recent wars of the Balkans essentially began, but we had to move on.

Before heading to Zagreb, our group stopped for an overnight stay in Plitvice National Park, one of the most popular tourist attractions in the region.  This is also the place where, in March 1991, the first casualties of the Croatian war for independence from Yugoslavia occured, when Krajina Serb paramilitaries seized the park and Croat forces attacked to retake it.  Only a handful of us went to experience the park when we arrived, taking a small hike and viewing a few waterfalls.