Introduction

The battle over Vukovar, the main city in the Eastern Slavonian region of Croatia, was arguably the most brutal and destructive confrontation during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. During the last few months of 1991, out of a prewar Eastern Slavonian population of 135,000, approximately 5,000 were killed, 10,000 wounded, and the city and surrounding region were completely destroyed, mainly by Yugoslav People's Army heavy artillery. Because it was so thoroughly ruined, the city has become known as the “Stalingrad” of the former Yugoslavia.

Five years after the Vukovar battle, in 1996, the UN began a complex, multidimensional peacekeeping mission called the UN Transitional Administration in Eastern Slavonia, Baranja, and Western Sirium (UNTAES). The operation was successful at implementing its basic tasks. Moreover, it allowed Croats and Croatian Serbs time to come to terms with living in the same state, and to engage in a preliminary dialogue about reconciliation. The mission also served as a liaison through which Croatia and Serbia normalized diplomatic relations: “The course and completion of UNTAES neutralized the possibility of a major armed conflict, which could have escalated into a new inter-state (Croatian–Yugoslav) war.”

UNTAES was a military and civilian transitional administration. The mission lasted almost two years, cost approximately $480 million, and fielded 5,000 troops, 455 civilian police, and 800 international civilian personnel. The operation functioned under the umbrella of possible NATO military support, if greater force had been necessary, but the mission did not have to fall back on such contingency plans.