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Yugoslav Civil war. By Joseph Eguche. Yugoslav Conflicts.
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Yugoslav Civil war By Joseph Eguche
Yugoslav Conflicts The Yugoslav Wars were ethnic conflicts fought from 1991 to 1999 on the territory of former Yugoslavia. The wars followed the breakup of countries, where its constituent republics declared independence, but the issues of ethnic minorities in the new countries, chiefly Serbs in central parts and Albanians in the southeast, were left unsolved. The wars are generally considered to be a series of largely separate but related military conflicts occurring and affecting most of the former Yugoslav republics. War in Slovenia(1991) Croatian War of Independence (1991–1995) Bosnian War (1992–1995) Kosovo War (1998–1999), including the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
Those wars mostly resulted in peace accords, involving full international recognition of new states, but with massive economic damage in the region. Initially the Yugoslav Peoples Army (JNA) sought to preserve the unity of the whole of Yugoslavia by crushing the secessionist governments; however the JNA increasingly came under the influence of the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic that evoked Serbian Nationalist rhetoric and was willing to support the Yugoslav state insofar as using it to preserve the unity of Serbs in one state; as a result the JNA began to lose Slovenes, Croats, Kosovar Albanians, Bosniaks, and ethnic Macedonians, and effectively became a Serb army. According to the 1994 United Nations report, the Serb side did not aim to restore Yugoslavia, but to create a “Greater Serbia" from parts of Croatia and Bosnia.
Nationalist forces -In Yugoslavia, the result of 1989 was not the creation of progressive, Western-oriented reform regimes but instead the revival of regimes (often led by former Communists) that were old-fashioned in the sense that they pursued traditional nationalist agendas, often at the cost of suppressing democratic practices and human rights. -Yugoslavia's awkward constitutional arrangements were one factor leading to trouble. As a concession to critics of the Serbian centralism of the 1930s, post-1945 Yugoslavia had six republics (Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro) in a federal relationship, plus two autonomous regions within Serbia (each of them intended to safeguard minority rights, for Albanians in Kosovo and Hungarians in Vojvodina).
Croatian dissent -In Croatia, the period after 1966 saw revived discussion of Croatian nationalism. This movement began among students, but by 1971 figures inside the Communist Party were circulating proposals for the secession of Croatia. At this point Tito stepped in: offending organizations were suppressed and several people went to jail. One of them was Franjo Tudjman, the future President of Croatia: aged 49 in 1971, he was a Partisan veteran, a Communist and a general, who had left the Party in the 1960s to become an academic and a Croatian nationalist. Among his publications were indictments of human rights violations by the party and the state, but his writings also included defenses of the wartime Ustashe fascist regime. Serbian dissent -Not only did Croatian separatism flourish, but Great Serb nationalism reemerged. Although the other nationalities believed that they were hobbled by too much Serb influence, Serbs often asserted that the Yugoslav system placed them at a disadvantage. Laws preserving the rights of ethnic minorities -- such as Albanians and Magyars -- tended to apply primarily to areas within Serbia, while Serbs who lived as minorities outside the Serbian republic proper enjoyed no special rights. Serbs also tended to believe that the losses sustained by Serbs in the Balkan Wars and two World Wars entitled them to assistance from their wealthier neighbors.
Seven periods of the Yugoslav crisis Much reporting of events in Yugoslavia and Bosnia falls into the "senseless violence" school of journalism. In fact, most of the events during the fighting represented logical (if violent and brutal) steps toward coherent goals. The war can be divided into seven periods, each of which followed its own characteristic pattern.
Period One (January to July, 1990) -In this period, all the ethnic elements in the country began to explore new possibilities, often contradictory. After the revolutions of 1989 swept Eastern Europe, a sense of new possibility entered Yugoslav political life. All elements felt confident that they could throw off unwanted features of Communism, but the definition of what was to be lost varied from place to place. -In January 1990 the League of Communists (the Yugoslav Communist Party) split along ethnic lines, and ceased to be a unifying national force. In that same month, violent riots in Kosovo reached new levels, with several dozen people killed. The JNA (the Yugoslav National Army, in which the officer corps was heavily Serbian) intervened to restore order. Because this episode led to fears that the JNA would become a tool of Serbian interests, the effect was to move the other nationalities farther toward secession.
Period Two (August 1990 to May 1991) In August 1990, minority Serbs in the Serb-majority ‘Krajina’ district of Croatia (adjacent to the border with Bosnia) began to agitate for autonomy. They argued that if Croatia could leave Yugoslavia, they in turn could leave Croatia. To prevent Croatian interference in a planned referendum, local Serb militias made up of trained army reservists set up roadblocks to isolate the ‘Krajina’ region. In Serbia, Milosevic announced that if Yugoslavia broke apart, there would have to be border changes that would unite all ethnic Serbs in a single political entity. Serbia also cracked down on Albanian agitation.
Period Three (May 1991 to February 1992) In May 1991, a Croatian was due to become the new Yugoslav president under the scheme of rotation, but Serbia refused to accept the change. This action set aside the last chance for a solution through constitutional means. In June, both Slovenia and Croatia proclaimed their independence. Debates over the "legality" of such moves played out against a background in which all sides chose to ignore inconvenient parts of the old constitution.
Period Four (March 1992 to December 1992) In this period the arena of open war shifted from Croatia to Bosnia, where the province split along ethnic lines. In early March 1992, a majority of Bosnians voted for independence in a plebiscite, but the voters split along ethnic lines with many Serbs opposing such a step. Immediately after the voting, Serbian local militia set up roadblocks that isolated Bosnia's major cities from surrounding, Serbian-dominated rural areas. Many Serbs left cities like Sarajevo, and a separate Bosnian Serb parliament was set up.
Period Five (January 1993 to January 1994) Peace talks began in Geneva, Switzerland, based on the Anglo-American Vance-Owen plan to partition Bosnia, separate the ethnic factions, and so end the fighting. Because it pragmatically accepted the results of Serbian aggression, the Vance-Owen plan was widely criticized and was unacceptable to the Bosnian Muslim government. After assuming office in January 1993, new U.S. President Bill Clinton distanced his administration from the plan.
Period Six (February 1994 to June 1995) In March 1994, the Croatian and Muslim Bosnian governments agreed on guidelines for a federated Bosnia. This freed both groups to face the Serbs: the Muslims in Bosnia, the Croatians in Bosnia and in Krajina, which remained in revolt against the Zagreb government. Later in the year, allied Muslim and Croat forces began small but significant joint operations against Bosnian Serb areas.
Period Seven (July to November 1995) In July 1995, Serbian forces defied the UN and suddenly overran two of the "safe areas" in eastern Bosnia: Srebrenica and Zepa. Some of the worst "ethnic cleansing" of the war took place at this time: up to 8,000 Muslims were massacred under the direct supervision of Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commanding general.
