BY

JOSEPH EGUCHE
Yugoslav Civil war
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 (19911995)
Bosnian War (19921995)
Kosovo War (19981999), 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.
- I N YUGOSLAVI A, THE RESULT OF 1 989 WAS NOT THE
CREATI ON OF PROGRESSI VE, WESTERN- ORI ENTED
REFORM REGI MES BUT I NSTEAD THE REVI VAL OF
REGI MES ( OFTEN LED BY FORMER COMMUNI STS) THAT
WERE OLD- FASHI ONED I N THE SENSE THAT THEY
PURSUED TRADI TI ONAL NATI ONALI ST AGENDAS, OFTEN
AT THE COST OF SUPPRESSI NG DEMOCRATI C PRACTI CES
AND HUMAN RI GHTS.
- YUGOSLAVI A' S AWKWARD CONSTI TUTI ONAL
ARRANGEMENTS WERE ONE FACTOR LEADI NG TO
TROUBLE. AS A CONCESSI ON TO CRI TI CS OF THE SERBI AN
CENTRALI SM OF THE 1 930S, POST- 1 945 YUGOSLAVI A HAD
SI X REPUBLI CS ( SERBI A, CROATI A, SLOVENI A, BOSNI A-
HERCEGOVI NA, MACEDONI A, MONTENEGRO) I N A
FEDERAL RELATI ONSHI P, PLUS TWO AUTONOMOUS
REGI ONS WI THI N SERBI A ( EACH OF THEM I NTENDED TO
SAFEGUARD MI NORI TY RI GHTS, FOR ALBANI ANS I N
KOSOVO AND HUNGARI ANS I N VOJVODI NA) .

Nationalist forces

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.
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.
Seven periods of the Yugoslav
crisis

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.
War in former Yugoslavia(1991-
1999)