But it was devastating to separatist Croatian and — later — Bosnian forces, which were just beginning to build their armies. By the time Croatia declared its independence on June 25, — the same day as Slovenia , it was already embroiled in the beginnings of a bloody war. Croatia's more than half-million Serb residents immediately declared their own independence from Croatia.
The Yugoslav People's Army now dominated by Serbs, as many Croats and Slovenes had defected swept in, ostensibly to put down the Croat rebellion and keep the nation together. The ill-prepared Croatian resistance, made up mostly of policemen and a few soldiers who defected from the People's Army, were quickly overwhelmed. The Serbs gained control over the parts of inland Croatia where they were in the majority: a large swath around the Bosnian border including Plitvice and part of Croatia's inland panhandle the region of Slavonia.
As the Serbs advanced, hundreds of thousands of Croats fled to the coast and lived as refugees in resort hotels. The Serbs began a campaign of ethnic cleansing, systematically removing Croats from contested territory — often by murdering them. The bloodiest siege was at the town of Vukovar, which the Yugoslav People's Army surrounded and shelled relentlessly for three months. By the end of the siege, thousands of Croat soldiers and civilians had disappeared.
Many were later discovered in mass graves; hundreds remain missing, and bodies are still being found. In a surprise move, Yugoslav forces also attacked the tourist resort of Dubrovnik — which resisted and eventually repelled the invaders. By early , both Croatia and the Republic of Serbian Krajina had established their borders, and a tense ceasefire fell over the region. Some Croats retaliated for earlier ethnic cleansing by doing much of the same to Serbs — torturing and murdering them, and dynamiting their homes.
Croatia quickly established the borders that exist today, and the Erdut Agreement brought peace to the region. As violence erupted in Croatia and Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina was suspiciously quiet. Even optimists knew it couldn't last. At the crossroads of Balkan culture, Bosnia-Herzegovina was even more diverse than Croatia; it was populated predominantly by Muslim Bosniaks 43 percent of the population , but also by large numbers of Serbs 31 percent and Croats 17 percent.
Bosniaks tended to live in the cities, while Serbs and Croats were more often farmers. While most Bosnian Croats and virtually all Bosniaks supported this move, Bosnia's substantial Serb minority resisted it.
Bosnian Serbs preferred to remain part of an increasingly dominant ethnic group in a big country Yugoslavia rather than become second fiddle in a new, small country Bosnia-Herzegovina. The stage was set for a bloody secession. In the spring of , as a referendum on Bosnian independence loomed, the Serbs made their move.
To legitimize their territorial claims, the Serbs began a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Bosniaks and Croats residing in Bosnia. Many people were executed on the spot, while others were arrested and taken to concentration camps. Survivors were forced to leave the towns their families had lived in for centuries. Militia units would enter a town and indiscriminately kill anyone they saw — civilian men, women, and children.
Pregnant women mortally wounded by gunfire were left to die in the street. Fleeing residents crawled on their stomachs for hours to reach cover, even as their family and friends were shot and blown up right next to them. Soldiers rounded up families, then forced parents to watch as they slit the throats of their children — and then the parents were killed, too.
Dozens of people would be lined up along a bridge to have their throats slit, one at a time, so that their lifeless bodies would plunge into the river below. Villagers downstream would see corpses float past, and know their time was coming soon. Many were intentionally impregnated and held captive until they had come to term too late for an abortion , when they were released to bear and raise a child forced upon them by their hated enemy.
The Bosnian Serb aggressors were intentionally gruesome and violent. Leaders roused their foot soldiers with hate-filled propaganda claiming, for example, that the Bosniaks were intent on creating a fundamentalist Islamic state that would do even worse to its Serb residents , then instructed them to carry out unthinkable atrocities. For the people who carried out these attacks, the war represented a cathartic opportunity to exact vengeance for decades-old perceived injustices.
Everyday Serbs — who, for centuries, have been steeped in messages about how they have been the victims of their neighbors — saw this as an opportunity to finally make a stand. But their superiors had even more dastardly motives. Bosnia-Herzegovina was torn apart. Even the many mixed families were forced to choose sides. If you had a Serb mother and a Croat father, you were expected to pick one ethnicity or the other — and your brother might choose the opposite.
The majority of people, who did not want this war and couldn't comprehend why it was happening, now faced the excruciating realization that their neighbors and friends were responsible for looting and burning their houses, and shooting at their loved ones.
As families and former neighbors trained their guns on each other, proud and beautiful cities such as Mostar were turned to rubble, and people throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina lived in a state of constant terror. At first, the Bosniaks and Croats teamed up to fend off the Serbs.
But even before the first wave of fighting had subsided, Croats and Bosniaks turned their guns on each other. A bloody war raged for years among the three groups: the Serbs with support from Serbia proper , the Croats with support from Croatia proper , and — squeezed between them — the internationally recognized Bosniak government, with little support from anybody.
Their charge allowed them only to feed civilians caught in the crossfire — an absurd notion in places like Sarajevo, where civilians were forced to live like soldiers. A political cartoon from the time shows a Bosnian Serb preparing to murder a Bosniak with a knife. This ugly situation was brilliantly parodied in the film No Man's Land which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in , a very dark comedy about the absurdity of the Bosnian war. Other Bosniak cities were also besieged, most notoriously Srebrenica in July of Additionally, 35, to 40, Bosniak women and children were forcibly removed from the city; many of them including babies died en route.
After four long years, the mounting mass of atrocities — including the siege of Srebrenica and the bombing of innocent civilians at a market in Sarajevo — finally persuaded the international community to act. In the late summer of , NATO began bombing Bosnian Serb positions, forcing them to relax their siege and come to the negotiating table. While this compromise helped bring the war to an end, it also created a nation with four independent and redundant governments — further crippling this war-torn and impoverished region.
After years of bloody conflicts, public opinion among Serbians had decisively swung against their president. The transition began gradually in early , spearheaded by Otpor, a nonviolent, grassroots, student-based opposition movement, and aided by similar groups.
Using clever PR strategies, these organizations convinced Serbians that real change was possible. How did one of the world's most wanted men effectively disappear in plain sight for 12 years?
He had grown a very full beard and wore thick glasses as a disguise, and frequented a neighborhood bar where a photo of him, in his earlier life, hung proudly on the wall It's alleged that at least some Serb authorities knew of his whereabouts, but, considering him a hero, refused to identify or arrest him.
After the departures of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia which peacefully seceded in , by the late s only two of the original six republics of Yugoslavia remained united: Serbia which still included the provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina and Montenegro. But in , Montenegro began a gradual secession process that ended when it peacefully tiptoed its way to independence in The Yugoslav crisis concluded in the place where it began: the Serbian province of Kosovo.
For nearly a decade, Kosovo remained a UN protectorate within Serbia — still nominally part of Serbia, but for all practical purposes separate and self-governing under the watchful eye of the UN.
Reading between the lines, Serbs point out that independent Kosovo quickly became a very close ally of the US, allowing one of Europe's biggest military bases — Camp Bondsteel — to be built in their territory. Serbia opposed the move, and was backed by several countries involved in their own internal disputes with would-be breakaway regions: Russia areas of Georgia , China Taiwan , and Spain Catalunya, the Basque Country, and others.
The new Kosovo government carefully stated that it would protect the rights of its minorities, including Serbs. But the Serbs deeply believed that losing Kosovo would also mean losing their grip on their own history and culture.
They also feared for the safety of the Serb minority there and potential retribution from Albanians who had for so long been oppressed themselves.
For a few tense months, international observers watched nervously, worrying that war might erupt in the region once more.
There have been a few scuffles, especially in some of the larger Serb settlements. But as of this writing, Kosovo's independence appears to be holding — representing, perhaps, the final chapter of a long and ugly Yugoslav succession. Kosovo is the seventh country to emerge from the breakup of Yugoslavia.
And yet, nagging questions remain. But in the streets and the trenches, it was never that straightforward. And when Croats retook the Serb-occupied areas in , they were every bit as brutal as the Serbs had been a few years before. Both sides resorted to genocide, both sides had victims, and both sides had victimizers. Even so, many can't help but look for victims and villains. And of course, the foot soldiers of those monstrous men — who followed their immoral orders — cannot be excused.
And yet, you can't paint an entire group with one brush. While some Bosnian Serbs did horrifying things, only a small fraction of all Bosnian Serbs participated in the atrocities. Travelers to this region quickly realize that the vast majority of people they meet here never wanted these wars. And so finally comes the inevitable question: Why did any of it happen in the first place? Explanations tend to gravitate to two extremes. Some observers consider this part of the world to be inherently warlike — a place where deep-seated hatreds and age-old ethnic passions unavoidably flare up.
This point of view sees an air of inevitability about the recent wars and the potential for future conflict. And it's hard to deny that the residents of the region tend to obsess about exacting vengeance for wrongdoings real or imagined that happened many decades or even centuries in the past.
For others, however, this theory is an insulting oversimplification. Sure, animosity has long simmered in the Balkans, but for centuries before World War II, the various groups had lived more or less in harmony.
The critical component of these wars — what made them escalate so quickly and so appallingly — was the single-minded, self-serving actions of a few selfish leaders who shamelessly and aggressively exploited existing resentments to advance their own interests.
By vigorously fanning the embers of ethnic discord, polluting the airwaves with hate-filled propaganda, and carefully controlling media coverage of the escalating violence, these leaders turned what could have been a healthy political debate into a holocaust. Tension still exists throughout the former Yugoslavia — especially in the areas that were most war-torn. Croatians and Slovenes continue to split hairs over silly border disputes, Bosnia-Herzegovina groans under the crippling inefficiency of four autonomous governments, and Serbs ominously warn that they'll take up arms to reclaim Kosovo.
Observers can't escape the painful truth that, just as grudges held over from World War II were quickly ignited in the s, holdover tensions from the recent wars could someday ignite a new wave of conflict.
When the people of this region encounter other Yugoslavs in their travels, they instantly evaluate each other's accent to determine: Are they one of us, or one of them? Are they preaching a message of reconciliation or one of provocation?
With time, hard feelings are fading. The appealing prospect of European Union membership is a powerful motivator for groups to set aside their differences and cooperate. The younger generations don't look back — teenaged Slovenes no longer learn Serbo-Croatian, have only known life in an independent little country, and get bored and a little irritated when their old-fashioned parents wax nostalgic about the days of a united Yugoslavia.
A middle-aged Slovene friend of mine thinks fondly of his months of compulsory service in the Yugoslav People's Army, when his unit was made up of Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks, Albanians, Macedonians, and Montenegrins — all of them countrymen, and all good friends. To the young Yugoslavs, ethnic differences didn't matter.
My friend still often visits with an army buddy from Dubrovnik — miles away, not long ago part of the same nation — and wishes there had been a way to keep the country all together. Then, in a way, we will all be united once again. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Share. By Cameron Hewitt Americans struggle to understand the complicated breakup of Yugoslavia — especially when visiting countries that have risen from its ashes, such as Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Balkan Peninsula For starters, it helps to have a handle on the different groups who've lived in the Balkans — the southeastern European peninsula between the Adriatic and the Black Sea, stretching roughly from Hungary to Greece. World War II Observers struggle to comprehend how it was possible for interethnic conflict to escalate so quickly here in the early s.
This, in turn, solidifies old contests about authenticity, territorial roots and past grievances. The second gap in formal education is a lack of meaningful intercultural activities. This has significantly impeded interaction between younger generations, building tolerance and increasing resilience against ethno-nationalism.
Efforts to build intercultural exchanges have largely come from civil society and international organizations. In the 20 years that have passed since the Ohrid peace agreement, the state has not invested significantly in this endeavour.
The third gap is in media literacy. This is essential to tackling nationalist sentiments. Discriminatory, inflammatory and hateful speech are promoted on irresponsible news portals. However, while media literacy programs have been piloted through several external projects, they have yet to fully introduced into educational curricula. Education is not a panacea against hate and intolerance, of course. But it is an important starting point, and the government of North Macedonia must include this consideration in its future educational reforms.
Nationalism is a significant risk to North Macedonian society, and education must form part of the effort to build resilience.
Anti-nationalism must become the cornerstone of the education process and a primary educational goal. The state must invest to build such an education. Intercultural education requires funds for joint activities, school mergers and outreach to parents and communities. It requires patience on the ground and persistent policy pushes at the national level.
The same goes for reforming historical curricula. Any attempt to modernize content will face even stronger opposition. Nationalism has found a fertile breeding ground online, and it is increasingly easy to distribute intolerance widely. A new wave of political populists is already riding the wave. Investment in knowledge leads to mutual recognition and understanding. It all begins with education.
He has researched and published on civic and political participation, political culture, public opinion and corruption. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BIRN.
Nationalism poses a significant risk to North Macedonian society — and reforms to school curricula must form part of the effort to build resilience. Related Articles.
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