The origin of the Balkan conflicts

Nationalism fed by geographic and ethnic ties led to bloodshed in the Balkan region throughout the 1990s. Serbia was the largest state by population, and Serbs comprised the largest ethnic group in what was Yugoslavia. In Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, tensions ran high between Serbs and the other ethnic groups, Croats, Bosniaks and Albanians, respectively. Serbs living in Croatia felt that their constitutional rights and human rights were threatened by an independent Croat regime not tied to the federal republic. In Bosnia, Serb populations felt a connection to the land, and religious tensions between Catholic Serbs and Muslim Bosniaks exacerbated the territorial disputes. Serbs have a special respect for Kosovo because it is purported to be home to a battle in which the last Serbian king died during the Ottomon invasions. By the early 90s, however, the Kosovo population was overwhelmingly Albanian.

War, ethnic cleansing, genocide

Croatia: When in August 1990 Croatia attempted to replace police in the Serb-populated Croat Krajina by force, the civilians organised armed resistance. These armed conflicts between the Croatian armed forces (“police”) and civilians mark the beginning of the Yugoslav war that inflamed the region.

Bosnia: On January 9, 1992, a self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb assembly announced a separate “Republic of the Serb people of Bosnia and Herzegovina”. The referendum and creation of the republic were proclaimed unconstitutional by the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Conflict ensued between Bosnian Serbs and Bosniaks. During the Bosnian War, Serb forces segregated Bosniaks according to gender and established concentration camps. They then conducted a sexual abuse strategy against Muslim girls and women. Between 20,000 and 44,000 women were systematically raped by the Serb forces. Many atrocities occurred during the Bosnian war; however, to date only the Srebrenica Massacre — in which Radovan Karadzic has been indicted — has been found to be an act of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The Dayton Agreement arranged by the international community in 1995 ended the Bosnian conflict.

Kosovo: The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an ethnic Albanian guerrilla group, by 1996 had started offering armed resistance to Serbian and Yugoslav security forces, resulting in the early stages of the Kosovo War. By 1998, the violence worsened, and scores of Albanians were displaced. Eventually, NATO involvement in 1999 forced the Yugoslav forces to withdraw, and the region was maintained by NATO and Russia until February of this year, when the disputed territory declared independence to the approval of the international community.