* These data and deductions are based on recent British, American, French, German, Austrian, Italian and Swedish sources. The margin of possible error in this table amounts to +/-2%. The table quotes a scale of expenditure of reserve munitions on the assumption that hostilities occur daily.
** The presence of Russian volunteer pilots allegedly flying MIG-21 and MIG-29 fighter-bombers is deduced from intercepted radio messages in Russian between pilots of attacking aircraft.

War Damage

The attack on Croatia has had the gravest consequences, both in terms of damage to property and installations and in disruption of the lives of the population. No overall estimate of war damage can yet be made, because the destruction still continues daily.

a) Casualties

Losses in human life are irreplaceable. According to figures issued by the Information and Research Department of the Ministry of Health and the Croatian General Medical Staff, on 23 August 1993, since the start of hostilities in Croatia 6,651 persons have lost their lives and 24,028 have been wounded.

These figures refer to casualties of which we have proof, and there are grounds for fearing that the number is significantly higher, since, according to figures issued by the Croatian Red Cross, 13,700 persons are still missing. The most tragic situation is obviously that of Vukovar, where 2,642 persons are still unaccounted for. The largest number of dead and wounded was recorded in the district of eastern Slavonia, where material damage is also greatest. The scale and nature of the war is most clearly indicated by the fact that, in all the areas which fell to the attackers, the number of dead and wounded civilians is significantly greater than the number of casualties among the police and soldiers. In the course of the war a large number of children have been killed or injured: 702 children have been wounded, and 162 killed. In the course of 1993 and the two preceding years thousands of soldiers and civilians from Croatia have been detained in concentration camps in occupied areas of Croatia, but also in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. This detention, involving illtreatment, poor diet and psychological humiliation has left indelible marks on the psychological condition of these people. Many of those who suffered in the concentration camps were frail and elderly individuals, children and women.

b) Damage to property and installations

Material damage is one of the first and most obvious signs of the war in Croatia. It was not caused exclusively by fighting. Much of it was the result of the deliberate wrecking of buildings and facilities by the aggressor on territory he had already occupied. Estimates by the State Institute for Macroeconomic Studies and Forecasts and by the Ministry of Culture state that 590 towns and villages have suffered damage (with 854 communities being subjected to attack): 35 of them have been razed to the ground, and 34, including several major towns and cities, have suffered significant damage. Moreover, 323 historical sites and settlements have been destroyed or damaged. 210,000 houses destroyed or burned down, equivalent to 12% of the housing stock in Croatia.

Croatia is a tourist country, and the destruction of a significant proportion of its tourist facilities will have grave repercussions on the revival of this important branch of the economy. Estimates suggest 10% of tourist facilities having been destroyed or damaged. The economy as a whole has suffered enormous damage. About 30% of the country's industrial capacity has been put out of action by destruction or occupation. Agriculture has also suffered untold damage, ranging from the slaughter or theft of livestock to the destruction or looting of agricultural machinery. Much land has been left to deteriorate and it will require great efforts to get it back into cultivation.

A particularly difficult situation has been created through the destruction of communications, 33 bridges destroyed and 24 damaged, among them the Maslenica bridge, which is of vital importance to Dalmatia. Its destruction meant that one fifth of the total population of Croatia, who live in Dalmatia, together with their whole economy, have become dependent on a single ferry link. Damage and occupation have caused major impairment of communications, many basic links having been cut or disrupted, e.g. the railway lines Zagreb-Vinkovci (via - Okucani) and Zagreb-Split (via Knin). There is no traffic on 37% of the rail network. 92 railway engines were either stolen or put out of action, along with 475 carriages and as many as 1,445 goods wagons. Some thousands of kilometres of arterial, regional or local roads were damaged or occupied together with a number of river ports. An entire navigable reach of Europe's largest river, the Danube, was occupied. Not even the postal services could function as they did before the war. Many arterial routes have been severed. No fewer than 223 telephone exchanges (about one third of the number Croatia had before the war) have been put out of action. About 200,000 subscribers have been cut off on account of the war and the occupation. Not even hospitals, schools or university buildings were spared. 9 major hospitals and countless smaller medical centres were totally destroyed or damaged as were 469 nursery, primary and secondary schools, university departments and student centres. The children of displaced families are forced to continue their education in overcrowded schools in those parts of Croatia that are still free.

The occupiers also seized a number of local water authority facilities and electrical installations. The whole of Dalmatia was cut off from the Croatian power supply system and reduced to purely local sources of electrical energy and uncertain supplies from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Numerous museums, libraries and historical towns were ruthlessly attacked. 479 ecclesiastical buildings were damaged and most of those that survived the actual fighting were later damaged by the insurgents when they occupied parts of Croatia. Many items of cultural value on displays in museums and galleries, where they survived the destruction of the war, were looted and are now in the museums and galleries of Serbia, in private collections in the "Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia", or elsewhere in Europe.

A number of wireless and television relay stations were destroyed and occupied, and at one point it was impossible to transmit or receive radio and TV programmes in Croatia. A considerable number of transmitting studios together with all their equipment, as well as printing presses, were destroyed. Not even cemeteries and churchyards were spared, the attackers shelled them in an attempt to obliterate evidence that they were occupying territory that had been inhabited for centuries by Croats. National parks and nature reserves, part of the world's nature heritage, e.g. the Plitvice Lakes, the River Krka, Kopacki Rit, were deliberately damaged.

c) Refugees and displaced persons. Europe's greatest refugee crisis since the Second World War

The initial damage wreaked by the war and the first homes that were deliberately set alight released a flood of refugees in Croatia. In the middle of 1991 the first displaced persons were forced to leave their homes after constant harassment and ill-treatment by Greater Serbia rebels to seek refuge in other parts of Croatia or else abroad. One of the greatest waves of refugees was set off when Baranja fell (Baranja had, incidentally, a majority of Croats in its population), and tens of thousands of people had to leave their homes. Many took refuge in Hungary, since routes into other parts of Croatia were blockaded. With the fall of Petrinja, Hrvatska Kostajnica and, especially, of Vukovar a further major population exodus took place. To receive them numerous hotels were opened in central Croatia, Slavonia, Zagreb, and on the Adriatic. Apart from hotels, worker's holiday homes, motels and camps were also commandeered. Figures from the Office for Refugees and Displaced Persons show that refugees were billeted in 225 Category B hotels (or in accommodation of equivalent standard) and in 97 buildings of a somewhat lower standard, as well as in 32 refugee and transit centres. The feeding of refugees and displaced persons housed in private accommodation was organised in a further 60 facilities. The homes of Croatian citizens were generously opened to take in relations, friends and acquaintances. Accommodation with families throughout Croatia was a fundamental feature of the care taken of refugees and displaced persons.

Demands for a return home to the occupied areas of Croatia have been made with increasing frequency by the refugees themselves, and also by the institutions caring for them. Up till now return has been possible only for displaced persons (and refugees who sought refuge abroad) whose homes were in areas affected by the war, which were, and which have remained under the control of the Croatian authorities.

It ought to be emphasised in this connection that UNPROFOR to date has been unable to arrange the return of a single refugee to the UN Protected Areas. In fact, their assumption of responsibility for these areas has not in any way reduced the expulsion of the Croatian and other non-Serbian inhabitants. Expulsions have continued to the present day, with the last remaining groups of Croats being driven from their ancestral homes. Old people, the blind, the sick and infirm who would not or could not leave their homes have not been spared: they have suffered ill-treatment, harassment, hunger and even murder. This state of affairs is referred to in many reports and in statements by UN officials.

The basic policy pursued by the aggressor in the occupied areas of Croatia is ethnic cleansing. Not a single non-Serbian ethnic community is able to survive the tyrannical conditions imposed by the Greater Serbia militias. Given this anarchy and the Greater Serbia policy being pursued in the occupied territories, Croatia has been unable so far to solve the problem of the return of its refugees. About 330,000 Croatian refugees and displaced persons are still waiting to return from Croatia and a number of neighbouring countries mainly in Western Europe. These are not only persons of Croatian nationality. In Croatia at present there are large numbers of individuals of other nationalities who have been forced to leave their homes, including even Serbs. There are about 7,000 Serbs with refugee status in Croatia, and even more Hungarians, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Ukrainians and others. At the same time the number of refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina was steadily growing, and also - which is not generally known - from Vojvodina and Kosovo. About 279,000 refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina have taken refuge in Croatia, while many more passed through Croatia on their way to other countries. About 38,000 refugees have entered Croatia from the other republics of former Yugoslavia. Among the refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina Moslems predominate, and about 150,000 of them are at present being cared for in Croatia. All this constitutes an enormous burden on the Croatian economy: the cost of caring for refugees comes to about 62 million US dollars each month, and a great deal of this is met from the Croatian budget.

It is estimated that the total cost of war damage in Croatia exceeds 21,000 million US dollars, equivalent to 4,500 US dollars per head of the country's population. Since the destruction of homes and other facilities is still going on, especially in the Zadar and Sibenik, area, war damage costs continue to rise daily. A special problem may arise through the forceful imposition of town planning ideas that are totally out of keeping with the period and the environment to which they are to be applied: Serbian architects, for instance, are planning to rebuild the ruins of Vukovar with its baroque town-centre in a "Byzantine style".

Any prolongation of the status of refugees and displaced persons in the case of many families from occupied areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina is bound to give rise to fresh problems and tensions and adversely affect, not only the social and psychological state of these people, but also the social stability of the entire population of Croatia. Croatia is obliged to cope with the problems of refugees until they are able to return to their homes, and the task will become increasingly difficult and complex as the people concerned become more and more restive. The chances of a more effective solution to the problems caused by the war will depend on the speed and efficacy of the UN peace-keeping operation, of which an essential feature must be the voluntary return of refugees to their homes. It is the rapidity of this return and the comprehensiveness of its organisation that will determine how soon the consequences of the war can be eliminated throughout Croatia and particularly in the areas under United Nations protection. In the absence of rapid action to return refugees to their homes there will be at least three major consequences: first, growing unrest among Croatian refugees (and refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina); secondly, the economic exhaustion of Croatia on account of the need to set aside funds to care for the refugee population; and thirdly, the acknowledgement of the Greater Serbian annexations and agreement to a change of European frontiers by the use of force.

d) The occupied areas

The occupied areas of Croatia - calculated according to the situation on the battle-fronts on the day the armistice was signed in Sarajevo (2 January 1992) - amount to almost 15,000 square kilometres, or 26.5% of the state territory.