The
former Yugoslavia was a Socialist state created after German occupation in
World War II and a bitter civil war. A federation of six republics, it brought
together Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Albanians, Slovenes and others under a
comparatively relaxed communist regime. Tensions between these groups were
successfully suppressed under the leadership of President Tito.
After
Tito's death in 1980, tensions re-emerged. Calls for more autonomy within
Yugoslavia by nationalist groups led in 1991 to declarations of independence in
Croatia and Slovenia. The Serb-dominated Yugoslav army lashed out, first in
Slovenia and then in Croatia. Thousands were killed in the latter conflict
which was paused in 1992 under a UN-monitored ceasefire.
Bosnia,
with a complex mix of Serbs, Muslims and Croats, was next to try for
independence. Bosnia's Serbs, backed by Serbs elsewhere in Yugoslavia,
resisted. Under leader Radovan Karadzic, they threatened bloodshed if Bosnia's
Muslims and Croats - who outnumbered Serbs - broke away. Despite European
blessing for the move in a 1992 referendum, war came fast.
Yugoslav
army units, withdrawn from Croatia and renamed the Bosnian Serb Army, carved
out a huge swathe of Serb-dominated territory. Over a million Bosnian Muslims
and Croats were driven from their homes in ethnic cleansing. Serbs suffered
too. The capital Sarajevo was besieged and shelled. UN peacekeepers, brought in
to quell the fighting, were seen as ineffective.
International
peace efforts to stop the war failed, the UN was humiliated and over 100,000
died. The war ended in 1995 after Nato bombed the Bosnian Serbs and Muslim and
Croat armies made gains on the ground. A US-brokered peace divided Bosnia into
two self-governing entities, a Bosnian Serb republic and a Muslim-Croat
federation lightly bound by a central government.
In
August 1995, the Croatian army stormed areas in Croatia under Serb control
prompting thousands to flee. Soon Croatia and Bosnia were fully independent.
Slovenia and Macedonia had already gone. Montenegro left later. In 1999,
Kosovo's ethnic Albanians fought Serbs in another brutal war to gain
independence. Serbia ended the conflict beaten, battered and alone.
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