The 1991 siege of the Croatian coastal city of Dubrovnik, which lasted nine months and had devastating consequences for the city and the entire region, at the time re-focused the world’s attention on the war in the former Yugoslavia. The events surrounding the earlier destruction of Vukovar by the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) and various Serbian paramilitary groups, coupled with the long-lasting and seemingly absurd attack on Dubrovnik, helped redefine the perception of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.[2]
The varied assessments of the military operations in the region of Dubrovnik still provoke lengthy and passionate debates among historians and politicians, leaving many questions unanswered, while ordinary Montenegrins and Serbs are left to their own devices to cope with their feelings of uneasiness about the recent past. They struggle with questions such as who initiated the process and who is to blame for its catastrophic results? Was there a siege at all, or was the JNA advancing into Croatia in order to liberate its citizens from the “oppressive Ustasha regime” as it was claimed at the time by some of the more radical politicians in Serbia and in Montenegro? Whose soldiers besieged the city, Serbian or Montenegrin? Was there a shelling of Dubrovnik or was it all staged by local pyrotechnicians in order to mislead the international community into believing that the city fell victim to the Greater Serbian military invasion?[3]
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