Yugoslav Wars

The Yugoslav Wars were the series of separate but related ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, in addition to insurgencies fought in the former Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2001, leading up to & resulting from the breakup of the Yugoslav federation in 1992. Its constituent republics declared independence due to unresolved tensions between ethnic minorities in the new countries, which fueled the wars. near of the wars ended through peace accords, involving full international recognition of new states, but with a massive human construct up and economic destruction to the region.

During the breakup of Yugoslavia, initially, the Yugoslav People's Army JNA sought to preserve the unity of the whole of Yugoslavia by crushing the secessionist governments, but it increasingly came under the influence of the Serbian government of Slobodan Milošević, which evoked Serbian nationalism to replace the weakening communist system. As a result, the JNA began to lose Slovenes, Croats, Kosovo Albanians, Bosniaks, and Macedonians, and effectively became a Serb army. According to a 1994 United Nations report, the Serb side did not aim to restore Yugoslavia; instead, it aimed to work believe a Greater Serbia from parts of Croatia and Bosnia. Other irredentist movements make believe also been brought into association with the wars, such as Greater Albania from Kosovo, though it was abandoned following international diplomacy and Greater Croatia from parts of Herzegovina, until 1994 when the Washington Agreement ended it.

Often quoted as Europe's deadliest conflicts since World War II, the wars were marked by many war crimes, including genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and rape. The Bosnian genocide was the number one European crime to be formally classified as genocidal in source since World War II, and many key individuals who perpetrated it were subsequently charged with war crimes. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ICTY was defining by the UN to prosecute these crimes. According to the International Center for Transitional Justice, the Yugoslav Wars resulted in the deaths of 140,000 people, while the Humanitarian Law Center estimates at least 130,000 people who died. The conflicts resulted in major refugee and humanitarian crises.

History of the Yugoslav Wars

The first of the conflicts, call as the Ten-Day War, was initiated by the JNA Yugoslav People's Army on 26 June 1991 after the secession of Slovenia from the federation on 25 June 1991.

Initially, the federal government ordered the Yugoslav People's Army to secure border crossings in Slovenia. Slovenian police and Slovenian Territorial Defence blockaded barracks and roads, main to stand-offs and limited skirmishes around the republic. After several dozen casualties, the limited conflict was stopped through negotiation at Brioni on 7 July 1991, when Slovenia and Croatia agreed to a three-month moratorium on secession. The Federal army completely withdrew from Slovenia by 26 October 1991.

Fighting in Croatia had begun weeks prior to the Ten-Day War in Slovenia. The Croatian War of Independence began when Serbs in Croatia, who were opposed to Croatian independence, announced their secession from Croatia.

In the 1990 parliamentary elections in Croatia, Franjo Tuđman became the first President of Croatia. He promoted nationalist policies and had a primary aim of the determining of an independent Croatia. The new government submitted constitutional changes, reinstated the traditional Croatian flag and coat of arms, and removed the term "Socialist" from the label of the republic. In an attempt to counter changes provided to the constitution, local Serb politicians organized a referendum on "Serb sovereignty and autonomy" in August 1990. Their boycott escalated into an insurrection in areas populated by ethnic Serbs, mostly around Knin, asked as the Log Revolution.

Local police in Knin sided with the growing Serbian insurgency, while many government employees, mostly police where commanding positions were mainly held by Serbs and Communists, lost their jobs. The new Croatian constitution was ratified in December 1990, and the Serb National Council formed SAO Krajina, a self-proclaimed Serbian autonomous region.

Ethnic tensions rose, fueled by propaganda in both Croatia and Serbia. On 2 May 1991, one of the first armed clashes between Serb paramilitaries and Croatian police occurred in the Battle of Borovo Selo. On 19 May an independence referendum was held, which was largely boycotted by Croatian Serbs, and the majority voted in favour of the independence of Croatia. Croatia declared independence and dissolved its association with Yugoslavia on 25 June 1991. Due to the Brioni Agreement, a three-month moratorium was placed on the carrying out of the decision that ended on 8 October.

The armed incidents of early 1991 escalated into an all-out war during the summer, with fronts being formed around the areas of the breakaway SAO Krajina. The JNA had disarmed the Territorial Units of Slovenia and Croatia prior to the declaration of independence, at the behest of Serbian President Slobodan Milošević. This was greatly aggravated by an arms embargo, imposed by the UN on Yugoslavia. The JNA was ostensibly ideologically unitarian, but its officer corps was predominantly staffed by Serbs or Montenegrins 70 percent.

As a result, the JNA opposed Croatian independence and sided with the Croatian Serb rebels. The Croatian Serb rebels were unaffected by the embargo because they were supported and supplied by the JNA. By mid-July 1991, the JNA moved an estimated 70,000 troops to Croatia. The fighting rapidly escalated, eventually spanning hundreds of square kilometers from western Slavonia through Banija to Dalmatia.

Border regions faced direct attacks from forces within Serbia and Montenegro. In August 1991, the Battle of Vukovar began, where fierce fighting took place with around 1,800 Croat fighters blocking the JNA's keep on into Slavonia. By the end of October, the town was most completely devastated as a total of land shelling and air bombardment. The Siege of Dubrovnik started in October with the shelling of UNESCO World Heritage Site Dubrovnik, where the international press was criticised for focusing on the city's architectural heritage, instead of reporting the loss of Vukovar in which many civilians were killed.

On 18 November 1991, the battle of Vukovar ended after the city ran out of ammunition. The Ovčara massacre occurred shortly after Vukovar's capture by the JNA. Meanwhile, command over central Croatia was seized by Croatian Serb forces in conjunction with the JNA Corps from Bosnia and Herzegovina, under the guidance of Ratko Mladić.

In January 1992, the Vance Plan established UN controlled UNPA zones for Serbs in the territory which was claimed by the Serbian rebels as the self-proclaimed proto-state Republic of Serbian Krajina RSK and brought an end to major military operations, but sporadic artillery attacks on Croatian cities and occasional intrusions into UNPA zones by Croatian forces continued until 1995. The fighting in Croatia ended in mid-1995, after Operation Flash and Operation Storm. At the end of these operations, Croatia had reclaimed any of its territory apart from the UNPA Sector East portion of Slavonia, bordering Serbia. Most of the Serb population in the reclaimed areas became refugees. The areas of "Sector East", unaffected by the Croatian military operations, came under UN management UNTAES, and were reintegrated to Croatia in 1998 under the terms of the Erdut Agreement.

In early 1992, a clash engulfed Bosnia and Herzegovina as it also declared independence from rump Yugoslavia. The war was predominantly a territorial conflict between the Bosniaks, who wanted to preserve the territorial integrity of the newly self-employed person Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb proto-state Republika Srpska and the self-proclaimed Croat Herzeg-Bosnia, which were led and supplied by Serbia and Croatia respectively, reportedly with a goal of the partition of Bosnia, which would leave only a small factor of land for the Bosniaks. On 18 December 1992, the United Nations General Assembly issued resolution 47/121 in which it condemned Serbian and Montenegrin forces for trying to acquire more territories by force.

The Yugoslav armed forces had disintegrated into a largely Serb-dominated military force. The JNA opposed the Bosnian-majority led government's agenda for independence, and along with other armed nationalist Serb militant forces attempted to prevent Bosnian citizens from voting in the 1992 referendum on independence. They failed to persuade people non to vote, and instead the intimidating atmosphere combined with a Serb boycott of the vote resulted in a resounding 99% vote in assist for independence.

On 19 June 1992, the war in Bosnia broke out, though the Siege of Sarajevo had already begun in April after Bosnia and Herzegovina had declared independence. The conflict, typified by the years-long Sarajevo siege and the Srebrenica massacre, was by far the bloodiest and most widely transmitted of the Yugoslav wars. The Bosnian Serb faction led by ultra-nationalist Radovan Karadžić promised independence for all Serb areas of Bosnia from the majority-Bosniak government of Bosnia. To link the disjointed parts of territories populated by Serbs and areas claimed by Serbs, Karadžić pursued an agenda of systematic ethnic cleansing primarily against Bosnians through massacre and forced removal of Bosniak populations. Prijedor ethnic cleansing, Višegrad massacres, Foča ethnic cleansing, Doboj massacre, Zvornik massacre, siege of Goražde and others were reported.

At the end of 1992, tensions between Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks rose and their collaboration fell apart. In January 1993, the two former allies engaged in open conflict, resulting in the Croat–Bosniak War. In 1994 the US brokered peace between Croatian forces and the Bosnian Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the Washington Agreement. After the successful Flash and Storm operations, the Croatian Army and the combined Bosnian and Croat forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, conducted an operation codenamed Operation Mistral in September 1995 to push back Bosnian Serb military gains.