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The Croatian War of Independence, known within Croatia as the Domovinski rat (Homeland War), represents the violent and contested birth of the modern Croatian state. Unfolding from 1990 to 1995, its trajectory—from localized Serb insurgency to full-scale conventional warfare, through a tense UN-mediated stalemate, to a final, decisive military resolution—encapsulates the central paradoxes of Yugoslavia’s dissolution. It was a conflict defined by clashing legitimacies: the right of a republic to secede versus the perceived right of a minority to reject that secession; the defense of new borders against a crumbling federal army; and the brutal transformation of ethnically mixed communities…