Design
Croatia's Growing Pains
On its independence day, a look around the country's lingering ethnic tensions.
Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia on October 8, 1991, now a national holiday. Since then, the country shrunk from 4.7 million people down to 4.28 million. The Croatian Bureau of Statistics anticipates the population will hit 3.1 million by 2051.
Much of that can be attributed to the Croatian War of Independence, where Croats loyal to the new government fought off Yugoslavian and Serbian forces. By the war's end in 1995, predominantly Serb areas in the country had seen hundreds of thousands displaced; many never returned. Today, the country is the most ethnically homogenous of the six countries that once formed Yugoslavia. 90.4 percent of the population is classified as Croat, 4.4 percent Serbian.