In Ruins of Vukovar, Serbs Make Plans for New Regime

Moaning farm animals, abandoned and starving, and camouflage-clad looters are the only signs of life amid square miles of rubble, all that remains of the city of Vukovar.

Three months of shelling by Serbian guerrillas and punishing air strikes by the Yugoslav federal forces hacked every tree into splinters, perforated every vehicle, tore off every roof and killed an estimated 5,000 people, many of them civilians.

Not a single home is habitable. No shop, no church, no public building survived. The rubber factory that provided jobs for the former city of 60,000 is a mass of twisted metal, crumbled brick and cratered earth.

Yet Vukovar has been designated by its conquerors as the government seat of a new Serbian autonomous province, and prominent businessmen from the Serbian capital of Belgrade toured the ruins Wednesday to assess the prospects of salvaging something from the shattered spoils.

Yugoslavia’s Serbs say that through its destruction, Vukovar has been “saved.” The victors explain their bloody assault on the Croatian majority and seizure of their rivals’ property as a justified defense of the region’s minority Serbs.

“The only way to battle Croatian fascism is with military means,” Serbian guerrilla leader Zeljko Raznjatovic told visitors to the conquered eastern Croatian lands. “We have to destroy the fascists in order to protect our people from genocide.”

Until last summer, Vukovar was a trim enclave of Hapsburg villas and two-story brick homes, with video rentals and pizza parlors and the usual comforts of a large provincial town.

Today, the city is a wasteland, devastated beyond repair.

The only hope for a new Vukovar is bulldozing the ruins and rebuilding from scratch.

This spot was the scene of a defiant standoff by Croatian national guardsmen trying to stave off what they saw as a blatant Serbian land grab. It was Croatia’s last stand in an area of the republic along the Danube River that is now completely in Serbian hands.

The official Yugoslav news agency Tanjug reported earlier this week that about 5,000 people, including Croats, Serbs, Hungarians and federal soldiers, were killed during the bloody battle that both sides saw as a milestone in their war.

Most of the corpses have been collected and buried in the week since Vukovar was finally conquered. But dead dogs and cats still litter the roadways and unharvested corn fields, sharing the vista of destruction with flattened cars and crumpled bicycles.

Along Vukovar’s main street, a stench of rotting flesh emanates from under the piles of rubble. The last defenders of Vukovar, a predominantly Croatian city, holed up with their families in cellars to weather the rain of shells. Those who refused to surrender when the army took the city’s center last week were blasted into submission when guerrillas lobbed grenades to flush out each basement.

A 14th cease-fire in the Yugoslav war was declared over the past weekend, yet explosions could be heard west of Vukovar, and fighting has continued around nearby Osijek, Croatia’s fourth-largest city and the next target in the Serbian march west.

Vukovar, despite being uninhabitable, has been named the capital of the Serbian Autonomous Region of Slavonija, Baranja and West Srem--an ethnically mixed stretch of eastern Croatia where only a handful of villages were predominantly Serbian. Those communities, like Borovo Selo, just north of Vukovar, bear not so much as a scratch from the protracted fighting that the army contends was instigated by Croatian aggression against the Serbs.

Until Vukovar can be rebuilt, a temporary regional seat has been established at an abandoned winery in the village of Erdut, about 12 miles north. It was to the winery-cum-bunker that the Serbian businessmen traveled Wednesday to confer with the new regional leaders who have seized control of eastern Croatia.

After surveying the ruins of Vukovar, Belgrade Mayor Milorad Unkovic vowed to rebuild the city as a monument to Serbian determination and “a symbol of the continuity of life.”

“Vukovar has been destroyed to a much greater degree than ever imaginable,” Unkovic declared from amid the rubble. Then he asserted: “It is clear that the Ustashe had a huge force here.”

Serbian fighters and their political leaders blame the leveling of Vukovar on the Croats, many of whom were forced to flee from the unrelenting federal bombardment or held out only to be killed by exploding shells or captured. Women, children and the elderly were numerous among the victims, yet all have been branded Ustashe, the name of Croatia’s World War II-era fascists.

The Ustashe are estimated to have slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies after taking control of Croatia in 1941. They later were defeated by Communist partisans. Because the last independent Croatian state was headed by the Ustashe regime, Serbian nationalists accuse any secessionist-minded Croats of harboring similar fascist intentions, including committing atrocities against Serbs.

Blame for the brutality of Vukovar’s conquest is deflected to the Croats, as a Serbian justification for seizing property. Captured areas of eastern Croatia are being prepared for repopulation with Serbs who were made homeless by the war or fled peaceful areas of Croatia in fear of reprisals for the deeds of their fellow Serbs.

The Yugoslav war that broke out after Croatia and Slovenia declared independence June 25 has killed at least 7,000 people and driven half a million from their homes.

Now that Vukovar has fallen quiet, Serbian guerrillas comb through the ruins of each Croatian house, carting away in wheelbarrows any unbroken furniture, salvageable motorbikesand warm coats.

Wednesday’s visit by the Belgrade businessmen was staged primarily for its propaganda value; neither the Serbian republic nor the defunct federal government, their own economies on the brink of bankruptcy, can afford to invest in the seized territories they are unsure of holding.

“To rebuild this town is the humane thing to do. It’s something that has to be done for the people who lived here and wish to remain,” Unkovic told a handful of unshaven, middle-aged guerrillas wearing Serbian nationalist insignia. They had broken off from their looting to join the Belgrade delegation’s walk through the destruction.

“We certainly hope for help from the international community, especially the United Nations,” Unkovic continued. “Serbia is required by its constitution to help Serbs everywhere, and we will do so, but I don’t believe Serbia can do it alone.”

Among the assistance Serbia expects from the United Nations is recognition of its claim to the seized land, where ethnic Serbs never made up more than 40% of the population.

Caslav Ocic, the self-styled foreign minister of the new Serbian region in what was eastern Croatia, says his government will never again submit to rule from Zagreb and has rejected any need for deployment of U.N. peacekeeping forces in the new province.

At the United Nations meanwhile, the Security Council on Wednesday unanimously adopted a resolution that paves the way for a U.N. peacekeeping operation.

Some U.N. members believe that intervention could constitute interference in a nation’s internal affairs, which is barred by the U.N. Charter.

However, the resolution supports Cyrus R. Vance’s efforts as the United Nations’ peace envoy to Yugoslavia in language that opens the way to a separate vote actually authorizing peacekeeping.

Vance helped forge a U.N.-sponsored truce between Croatia and the Serb-dominated federal army last Saturday. It has been generally respected despite sporadic clashes. Vance is expected to return to Yugoslavia on Saturday for continuing discussions about a U.N. peacekeeping operation.

Both Croatian and Serbian leaders have appealed for foreign intervention. Croatia wants the peacekeepers stationed along its prewar border and the federal troops ordered out. Serbia hopes the troops will form a buffer to prevent Croatian efforts to retake the area Serbs have occupied.

“This is a territory that we control. There’s no need for anyone to protect us,” Ocic told reporters in Vukovar. “The purpose of peacekeepers is to separate those fighting, and there is no conflict here. It is peaceful now.”