When the Austria-Hungary empire fell after World War II, a new country was born. Yugoslavia was created by the victors after World War II. The country was not united and certainly not one or two ethnic groups. The country was made up of different ethnic groups, languages, religions, and beliefs. After almost 50 years of being a moderately peaceful country, conflict erupted. In 1991, war broke out in Yugoslavia, leading to Yugoslavia breaking apart into what now results in 7 new countries. These countries are: Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Bosnia. There are many factors that led to the war and the eventual downfall of Yugoslavia. The main reason that the war happened was ethnic tension between each of the different groups that resided in Yugoslavia. There are many underlying factors that created the ethnic tension as well. The main reasons for the various provinces within Yugoslavia to secede, and the eventual cause of the war, were the actions of Serbia. Serbians were the aggressors in trying to take over the governments of the other provinces which led them to secede before they would fall to Serbian rule.
The modern Yugoslavia was created after World War II after the various provinces in Yugoslavia united and fought to remove military forces from occupancy. They formed a socialist government that tried to imitate the government of Russia. The capital of the new country was Belgrade which was located in Serbia. Yugoslavia existed fairly well as a country of very diverse ethnic groups. However, Yugoslavia began it’s downfall in the late 1980’s when the economy plummeted and Serbia began it’s rise to rule the country.
Serbia was founded in 1140 A.D. Since it was born, Serbia has been under the rule of many different countries and empires. In 1945, after World War II, Serbia became a part of a newly founded country, Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia, under the rule of Josip Broz Tito, became a well industrialized and wealthy country. In fact, Yugoslavia was one of richest countries in Europe until the 1980’s when Tito died. The Serbian people began a nationalistic movement and were led by Slobodan Milosevic. Arguably, this movement ended up causing the Yugoslavian war. According to the 2002 census, around 7 million people live in Serbia. Of those, 85% of the people are of Orthodox religion. The economy is slowly recovering from it’s downfall but still remains one of the poorest countries in the Balkan area. The other countries that were a part of the former Yugoslavia have made more progress with their economies however.
Here is the background on the Yugoslavian war. Slobodan Milosevic took power in Serbia in 1987. Before he took power, Serbs felt that they were being discriminated in Yugoslavia by the other ethnic groups. Milosevic saw this struggle as an opportunity to make Serbia a bigger and better country by attaining new land “which would consist of Serbia proper, Vojvodina, Kosovo, the Serb-populated parts of Croatia, large sections of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and possibly Macedonia”(Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia). Serbia began to try and take over the governments of the other provinces. This led to other provinces inside the country feeling that they needed autonomy. Due to Serbia’s attacks inside the country to make Serbia more powerful, the provinces of Slovenia and Croatia seceded from Yugoslavia in 1991. This was the reason for the first military conflict within Yugoslavia. The federal military of Yugoslavia was controlled mostly by Serbia. Serbia ordered troops into Slovenia in 1991. Later in the year, two other provinces, Macedonia and Bosnia, seceded. This led to Serbia invading these provinces and ethnically cleansing the areas to rid the places of anybody who wasn’t a Serb. The result of this ethnic cleansing was “thousands of Muslims were killed, and many more fled Bosnia or were placed in Serb detention camps”(Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia). In 1992, The provinces that had seceded gained their independence and were recognized as their own countries. Yugoslavia had fell and conflicts continued between these countries. The war lasted 4 years and ended in 1995.
The Serbian nationalistic movement began in the 1980’s. Kosovo, a province to the south of Serbia, was considered a “Serbian heartland”(MacDonald 64) even though the majority of the population was Albanian. The Serbs believed that this area was sacred to them as that is said to be where they were born. It is also home to the Serbian church as well. Even though the Serbians believe that Kosovo is their land, 90% of the population is Albanian. The Albanians wanted their own province in Yugoslavia and autonomy. This scared the Serbs and they drafted a “Memorandum” (MacDonald 65) that called for Serbs to rise up and fight the discrimination they had been facing from the Yugoslavian government.
The reasons for Serbia’s rise and violent actions towards the rest of Yugoslavia were complicated. “The 1980s was seeing a massive wave of workers’ strikes throughout Yugoslavia…[and] many Serbs did feel that Yugoslavia had discriminated against Serbs and Serbian interests”(Gagnon). Another reason for the Serb uprising was the exodus of Serbs from other provinces in Yugoslavia in 1988-89. The Serbian media portrayed these events as genocide to make the Serbians unite. The new leader of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, took this discontent and focused it on a need for reform in Yugoslavia. Milosevic used this view that Yugoslavia was anti-Serb to unify the Serbs to gain power. He had his allies in different provinces create uprising against the current leaders. After the leaders were taken out of office, they would be replaced by Milosevic’s allies. This worked in 3 provinces and his views now controlled 4 our of the 8 recognized provinces in Yugoslavia. The other provinces that saw this happening would not let it happen to them. This caused the provinces to secede from Yugoslavia and form their own independent countries. Of course, this only further escalated the war.
One of the major events that happened during the Yugoslavian civil war was the ethnic cleansings that happened to the Muslims in Bosnia. The Serbs believed that they needed the parts of Bosnia to create a better Serbia. These places were already inhabited by Serbs as well as Bosnians, who were mostly Muslim. The Serbs believed that they needed to get the Muslims out of Bosnia for the greater good of Serbia. The radical Serbs forced the Muslims to do various acts against their own religion to humiliate them such as an event where Serbs captured 150 people and “forced them at gunpoint into the local mosque [and] challenged the local community leader to desecrate the mosque…they told him to make the sign of the cross, eat pork and finally have sexual intercourse with a teenage girl” (Carmichael). When the man refused, he was killed. Many more similar events happened where Muslims were forced to watch pigs reside in their mosques or they were forced to eat pork. The Serbs wanted to humiliate the Muslims due to their religious differences. Many of the Serbs that participated in this atrocity were from Bosnia. In fact, they were very well assimilated into the Bosnian culture. However, due to the nationalistic movement for Serbs, they looked for any difference they could to distinguish between “us” and “them”. The only differences they could find were religious beliefs. The Serbians that participated in the ethnic cleansings in Bosnia were defeated when Bosnians and Croatians allied together.
Before the Bosnian conflict, the Serbians who resided in Croatia resisted against Croatia’s attempt for independence. This conflict was less drastic as what happened in Bosnia, but is another example of Serbia’s thirst for power over the other countries In former Yugoslavia. Yugoslav People’s Army (which was mostly controlled by Serbia) invaded Slovenia and secured the border. The conflict lasted only ten days and there were a few dozen causalities.
In 1995, before the war ended, their was a genocide in Bosnia called the Srebrenica massacre. Around 8,000 people were killed by Serbian forces. Also in 1995, Croatia launched a plan to stop war in Croatia as well as getting Serbians out. During this campaign, around 200,000 Serbians were forced out of Croatia. NATO began to launch air strikes on Serb forces in Bosnia. This was the last of the conflict of the Yugoslavian war. Around 100,000 people were killed in the war and around 2.5 million people were displaced from their homes.
The civil war ended in 1995 with the Dayton Agreement to end the war. However, the conflict in the area did not end with this treaty. Another conflict involving Serbia, the Kosovo war, started in 1998 and lasted until 1999. The war was between the still remaining FR Yugoslavia (which was dominated by Serbia and also contained the province of Montenegro) and the army in Kosovo. Once again conflicts had arose between Serbs and Albanians. The Serbs still believed that Kosovo should be theirs and they were willing to fight for it again. The Serbians were devastating the Albanians and NATO continually threatened to do an air strike on Serbia’s capital city, Belgrade. NATO followed through on their threats and continuously attacked the Serbs through the air. The bombings on Serb forces hindered nothing and attacks on the Albanians actually increased. The war stopped in June 1999 when Milosevic agreed to withdrawal Serb forces from Kosovo. The results of the war were “at least 4,400 documented killings of Kosovar Albanian civilians had occurred between late March and mid-June 1999 (with an upper estimate of 10,356 dead)”(Webber). Today, Serbia still believes that Kosovo should belong to them even though Kosovo was granted it’s independence. Serbia refuses to acknowledge that Kosovo is now independent.
During both of these wars, Serbian forces are responsible for many cases of war rape in Bosnia during the Yugoslavian war and in Kosovo during the Kosovo war. It is estimated that around 50,000 women were raped in Bosnia during the war. The Serbian forces established rape camps to rape, torture, and enslave women. The point of the camps were to try and destroy any kind of culture of the community the women were from and make them outsiders to the others. Serbians also hoped to make Bosnian women carry Serbian babies to make the women adopt Serbian ways and leave behind their past Bosnian culture.
Before the rise of Milosevic and the Serb nationalistic movement, Yugoslavia was a prosperous country. In fact, it was one of the wealthiest countries in Europe. It was also one of the only countries to contain so many different ethnic groups and co-exist so well. Under Milosevic’s rule, Serbia was “reduced…to one of the poorest nations in Europe” (Nordland & Cirjakovic). Milosevic had started four wars in the former Yugoslavian area and was responsible for “killing 250,000 people [and] leaving 2.5 million homeless”(Nordland & Cirjakovic). Milosevic was a sort of ethnic entrepreneur who used the Serbian people’s grievances with how they were treated to gain his own power. He used their “suffering” as a way to unite the people and try and create his idea of a great Serbia. In the end, however, all he did was make a prosperous country fall apart and become one of the poorest countries in Europe. He was on trial for many crimes against humanity for four years. The trial was put to rest when he died in his prison cell in 2006.
Serbia is still trying to recover from its past today. The economy continues to be poor but is improving. Politics have still been a problem but are improving along with the economy. The conflicts and war with other countries in the former Yugoslavia has stopped. The government has changed from a dictatorship to a republic. In 2008, Serbia signed a treaty with the European Union . Even though the rest of the countries in Europe are still wary of Serbia due to its recent past, Serbia continues to improve its condition one step at a time.
The Serbians had a huge role in creating the conflict that led to the Yugoslavian war. They were the country that led to the other provinces in Yugoslavia to secede because of their violence towards the rest of Yugoslavia. They were the reason that ethnic cleansing took place in Bosnia. Serbians were the ones who committed the horrible war crimes such as genocide and rape in Bosnia. Under the rule of Milosevic, Serbia wanted to create a greater country and rise to power instead of being mistreated by the rest of Yugoslavia. However, that is not how it turned out. The Serbians committed many crimes against humanity and faced the consequences for it. They created an “us” versus “them” atmosphere and were very ethnocentric in the way that they thought. They tried to justify their war by stating that the other provinces in Yugoslavia were very anti-Serbian. They tried to remove any cultural identity from women by forcing them into rape camps and trying to make them have Serbian babies. They believed that they were the ones who should rule Yugoslavia and took action that led to Yugoslavia’s fall. The whole blame for the fall of Yugoslavia cannot be placed on Serbia, but they were definitely a big part of the problem that caused the war.
Works Cited
Carmichael, Cathie. “Violence and ethnic boundary maintenance in Bosnia in the 1990s.” Journal of Genocide Research 8.3 (2006): 283-293. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 27 Mar. 2011.
Gagnon, Chip, V.P. “Yugoslavia in 1989 and after.” Nationalities Papers 38.1 (2010):23- 39. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 27 Mar. 2011.
MacDonald, David Bruce. Balkan Holocausts? : Serbian and Croatian Victim Centered Propaganda and the War in Yugoslavia. Manchester University Press, 2003. Web.
Nordland, Rod, and Zoran Cirjakovic. “The Death of a Monster.” Newsweek 20 Mar. 2006: 44. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 27 Mar. 2011.
Webber, Mark. “The Kosovo war: a recapitulation.” International Affairs 85.3 (2009): 447-459. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 27 Mar. 2011.
“Yugoslavia.” Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition (2010): 1. MasterFILE Premier. EBSCO. Web. 27 Mar. 2011.
