Serbia And The War In Yugoslavia

donnbradman

Had to do a bit of research for college on this but what your opinions on the whole conflict. In one way I am completely in support of Serbia as after both world wars they peacefully welcomed back their foes with open arms. However in the 1990s they do seem responsible for needless killing but I can in a way understand why they were so upset after being fecked over in both world wars by their neighbours. Am I missing a big point here? What are your views?

HansHolzel

The Yugoslav war effectively started in the late summer of 1991 after Krajina Serbs started cutting the balls off any Croatian police unfortunate enough to be ambushed and overpowered in Serb villages in that border region. Slovenia got out first, having already made their minds up because the Serbs had started printing money like toilet paper and destroying the common currency. The 'federal' army pulled out of Slovenia after a few days, with a view to 'settling decisively' with Croatia, as one of Milosevic's senior sidekicks put it at the time. Slobbo had already transferred all Serbian members of the Yugoslav army into units in positions to attack Croatia and Bosnia. At first the plan went swimmingly - the Knin statelet of Krajina was set up, the city of Vukovar in eastern Croatia was successfully besieged and the centre of Sarajevo was only kept out of Serbian hands by the intervention of the local mafia on the side of the fledgling Bosnian government. Then the war settled down to a mutual series of massacres of unfortunate groups in localities that were unable to defend themselves. The Serbs were the worst culprits. By 1995 the Americans had prepped and armed Croatia well enough to settle decisively with Serbia. The Serbs were run out of it and pinned back to eastern Bosnia and Serbia proper. Hence the Dayton agreement. By 1999, it was Kosovo's turn. This was ten years after Milosevic, in response to a ruck in Kosovo, had told a million cheering supporters in Belgrade what he had in mind for the decade that followed. We had been warned. This time the West dropped a lot of bombs and soon the Serbian parliament was being besieged by irate citizens. Milosevic had always made sure the Serbian cops were well paid and on his side but now even they saw the game was up. I'll always remember what a Bosnian Muslim woman colleague of mine said to me at the time in Dublin. "After what they did to us, now they're getting a taste of it themselves and they want to get rid of him." In WWII, Croatia supplied the most Nazi collaborators AND the most communist guerrillas that kicked the Nazis out. In relative terms, the Serbian population did little of the fighting (but plenty of the dying, of course). Tito was of mixed parentage but his father was a Croat and he grew up in Croatia. After the war, Ireland sheltered Andrija Artukovich, the interior minister of wartime Croatia. He was closely linked to the Jasenovac concentration camp in which 600,000 Serbs, Muslims, Jews, Gypsies (etc etc) were killed by the Croatian fascist regime. Thanks to the assistance of the Catholic Church and the De Valera government, Artukovich escaped to America.

Czarcasm

Hans, I'm often lurking in here and never say anything, but, that was quite simply an amazing read!

HansHolzel

Thanks, C. I had to come up with a summary to help somebody a few years back, so I had to do some research then. But somebody is sure to dislike something about it.

Anyhow, the words of the Bosnian woman I knew were just anecdotal testimony to go with it.

RDM_83 again

Now I am not excusing the Serbs actions but I've never really understood why:

Breakup of a larger region to allow more representative self determination is good in the case of the other Former Yugoslav countries and later Kosovo, but that its bad in terms of the Krajina (Serbs). (There seems to be a similar attitude displayed sometimes to the "breakaway" regions in Georgia, e.g breaking away is an acceptable goal as long as your not breaking away to be associated with the "wrong" side)

HansHolzel wrote: »

The Yugoslav war effectively started in the late summer of 1991 after Krajina Serbs started cutting the balls off any Croatian police unfortunate enough to be ambushed and overpowered in Serb villages in that border region.

Is that the Borovo Selo killings your talking about?

HansHolzel wrote: »

Slovenia got out first, having already made their minds up because the Serbs had started printing money like toilet paper and destroying the common currency.

Back in the boom I was working in a European bank and I remember one of the Modellers talking about how the disintegration of Yugoslavia was really down to the national debt and economics since Yugoslavia had huge debts from the 80's. Though with what happened with that bank perhaps they weren't as smart as they thought :rolleyes:

ps does anybody else find that for these modern controversial topics on wikipedia there's always a question about which "side" has last done a batch of edits.

HansHolzel

RDM_83 again wrote: »

Now I am not excusing the Serbs actions but I've never really understood why:

Breakup of a larger region to allow more representative self determination is good in the case of the other Former Yugoslav countries and later Kosovo, but that its bad in terms of the Krajina (Serbs). (There seems to be a similar attitude displayed sometimes to the "breakaway" regions in Georgia, e.g breaking away is an acceptable goal as long as your not breaking away to be associated with the "wrong" side)


Is that the Borovo Selo killings your talking about?

Thanks for that link, I'd forgotten that place name. Apparently the Krajina Serbs cleansed the Croats from Krajina and then suffered the same fate themselves when the tide turned but only last year two Croats here in Ireland told me that those Serbs have since been allowed back to their homes. If true, this magnanimity must have had some connection to Croatia joining the EU.

After organizing a €120k flop of a Boney M concert in Mostar in 2000, one of those Croats I mentioned threw his four phones into the river and disappeared into the country, where he bought a few cows from the remaining petty cash, but later decided to come here.:cool:

josip

As regards the domestic Serbian opposition to Milosevic there was significant opposition to Milosevic in Belgrade and many of the major towns since 1996. Belgrade citizens were well informed of what he was doing through the likes of B92 and underground media. Upwards of 200,000 people would march against him. Milosevic was able to remain in power from 1996 on largely due to his control of RTS which was the only provider of news to rural Serbia which was where Milosevic had most of his power base. When Milosevic lost the countryside then he was defeated. I believe the turning point was the Kolubara coal mine revolt. The people from the country side then marched from the countryside on parliament, led by "Dzo" with his digger.

The Corinthian

I remember the odd comment about Serbians being made by a Croatian friend, back in the eighties, but Yugoslavia seemed pretty normal and stable, at least until the hyperinflation became impossible to ignore. Of all the communist counties, it was the most comparable to the West - standard of living was lower than in neighbouring Italy or Austria, but was still probably higher than Ireland's, and having once visited East Berlin, it was definitely higher than the DDR.

Anyhow, the comments. There was a fair bit of resentment against the Serbians, from what I saw. Slovenia and Croatia weren't exactly enthusiastic about joining the new pan-Slavic Balkans nation back in 1918 (both still retain an element of nostalgia for Austria-Hungary). And from unification it was clear that the Serbians were the primus inter pares in the union. Even under Tito (who was actually Croatian) this status quo continued and while you didn't really see it all that much, as a foreigner, it was definitely seen by some (although they rarely said so) that Yugoslavia was simply a form of Greater Serbia.

Looking back on all of it, it probably had been simmering since Tito died and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and most importantly the economic collapse of Yugoslavia was the straw that broke the donkey's back (nationalist leaders like Tusman and Milosevic were political powder-kegs). I've often thought that there are many nations that are united only as a matter of economic convenience (when in reality the different ethnic groups dislike each other), and Yugoslavia is probably one of the better examples of this.

Problem was that the federal boundaries no longer reflected the reality of who lived there. They were still historical, largely unchanged since 1918, and populations had migrated - Kosovo is a good example of this; in the middle ages it was over 90% Serbian and by the late nineteenth century it was still majority Serbian. Yet by the end of World War II it was 68% Albanian and by the end of the century it had become over 90% Albanian.

Ethnic cleansing was inevitable, as each group sought to reconcile historical boarders, with modern reality and, of course, territorial ambitions. And it wasn't as if ethnic cleansing was unknown to the Yugoslavs - after all, Istria and much of the Dalmatian coast had been largely ethnically Italian (principally concentrated around the urban centres) up until the end of World War II; the lucky ones there managed to flee. They even came very close to annexing Trieste.

During the war the place seemed transformed. The atmosphere was paramilitary, nationalist to the point of Fascist and there was a constant sense of paranoia around. The Bosniaks probably suffered the most, as they were far less nationalistic, and thus were least prepared for what the Serbians and Croatians unleashed. Sarajevo is still full of buildings peppered with bullet holes and the stories you'll hear, one-on-one, after a few drinks are horrifying.

My take on it all is that it was all a car crash, a perfect storm, waiting to happen for decades. All (although not so much Macedonia and Slovenia) are guilty to a degree, although some more than others; even if innocent at the beginning, by the end they'd had to get their hands dirty too.