A (Very Brief) History of the Conflict in the former Yugoslavia

Though the bulk of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia took place from 1992-1995, the foundation for the war had been building for over 600 years—to say the hatred between ethnic factions in the Balkans is deep-seated is a vast understatement. In the interest of brevity, however, I will stick to giving you a quick run-down of the conflict itself.



Years of being the (self-perceived) under-dog left Serbians, comprising 66% of the population in the FY, filled with a nationalistic hunger for control. Seizing the opportunity to gain Serb loyalty through such strong nationalism and exercising his power through party control and control of the media, Slobodan Milosevic sought to first void the autonomy of Kosovo. Doing so not only created a conflict that began the repression of Albanian Kosovars; it stirred fear in other ethnic factions, specifically the Croatians and the Bosnian Muslims.



In 1991, Croatia voted to secede from Yugoslavia to fight the plan being hatched by Milosevic to create a “Greater Serbia.” This caused the Serbs to send a military response, which launched into an all out battle and began the capture and “cleansing” of at least a third of Croatia. Meanwhile, in Bosnia, 1992 brought on a referendum for Bosnia’s independence put forth by the Croats and Muslims in response to fear of the Greater Serbia. Milosevic responded by calling for an ethnic cleansing of Bosnia that was supported by the nation’s Serbs due to a chilling propaganda campaign:



“Throughout Bosnia, Bosnian Serb nationalists and the JNA began a systematic policy of 'ethnic cleansing' (a polite term for genocide) to establish a 'pure' Serb republic. They drove out all other ethnic groups by terrorizing and forcibly displacing non-Serbs through direct shelling and sniper attacks. Entire villages were destroyed. Thousands were expelled from their homes, held in detention camps, raped, tortured, deported, or summarily executed. Rape was a military tactic to destroy the bonds of families and communities” (CBD 1996).



To say that the Serbs are solely at fault, however, is a gross mistake. All three ethnic factions ensnared in this war committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, though the Serbs were the only ones who committed genocide and the only group that perpetuated rape as a form of genocide.



In May of 1993, the United Nations Security Council passed resolution 827, calling for an ad hoc tribunal to deal with the situation and with that resolution came the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. In 2002, the Foca case broke major ground in rape prosecution on an international scale, finding the proprietors of the infamous Bosnian rape camps guilty of their accused crimes.



For more information see:
http://www.friendsofbosnia.org/edu_bos.html
http://www.un.org/icty