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Yugoslavia from 1919 to 1970

Yugoslavia had been the creation of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and a part of the break up of the Austro-Hungarian empire. It was an artificial unification of a variety of people - Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Albanians, Hungarians, Macedonians and others including gypsies. Before World War II these were people ruled by a monarch, Alexander, who changed the name of the region to Yugoslavia, hoping to give his subjects a greater common and identity with his rule. Under Alexander that portion of Yugoslavia called Serbia dominated, accompanied by bureaucratic and police repression, as Alexander ruled autocratically.

King Alexander was assassinated in 1934. His son, under a regent, ruled until 1941, when German armies invaded from Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria and routed the Yugoslav military. Germany and Italy divided Yugoslavia between them, Italy taking control of a part of Slovenia in the north, part of the Dalmatian coast, western Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro. Bulgaria took a part of Macedonia. Hungary took the region northeast of Serbia, Vojvodina, an area that included some Hungarians and a German minority, and German troops occupied Serbia and a part of Slovenia.

Croatia remained independent but an ally of Germany and Italy. Croatia extended its rule into Bosnia and Herzegovina (Hercegovina) - under a fascist regime that had some Moslem allies. Serb resistance to fascist rule began in Bosnia. The Croatian fascists retaliated with massacres second only to the Germany's move against Jews, and the Croat regime opened concentration camps, exterminated Jews and gypsies, while Serbs took to the hills and forests in self-defense. Among the Serbs, a group supporting Yugoslavia's monarchy fought now and then against German occupation and sometimes collaborated with the Germans. The advantage in resistance to German occupation went to those who fought in the name of both democracy and patriotism - guerilla fighters under the leadership of Josip Tito, a half-Croat, half-Slovene communist whose slogan was "brotherhood and unity." It was Tito's group that won aid from the British, the British recognizing Tito's organization as the one effective opposition movement against the Germans.

It was Tito's force that liberated much of Yugoslavia rather than the Russian army, and Tito wished to maintain his authority in Yugoslavia rather than become subservient to Moscow. Tito became Yugoslavia's president-for-life, and Yugoslavia became a federation of six nominally equal republics and two autonomous regions. The republics were Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The autonomous regions were Kosovo, which had an Albanian majority, and Vojvodina (northeast of Belgrade) which had a large Hungarian population. In keeping with his slogan of brotherhood and unity, and compatible with the old Marxist slogan of workers of the world unite, Tito and his Communist Party suppressed nationalism. And Tito's regime put a number of Croat nationalist leaders - and some other dissidents - in prison.

Tito's regime was dogmatic. It abolished organized opposition groups. It  nationalized industries, the means of distribution and exchange. Tito collectivized agriculture and instituted centralized economic planning. Then his regime moved toward decentralization of its economy, what was called worker self-management and the Yugoslav road to socialism. In the 1950s and 1960s Yugoslavia enjoyed unparalleled prosperity, some of it due to its having become a tourist destination, and some of it due to foreign purchases of its metal goods and textiles, while Yugoslavia enjoyed good relations with the West, including the United States, where strategists believed it worthwhile to play Tito's independence against Moscow's control elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

Tito was a hero among many in Yugoslavia for having overthrown fascism, for having created a society with full employment and a sense of purpose. With prosperity, ethnic hatreds declined under routine intercourse among people. Many people in Croatia and elsewhere in Yugoslavia saw themselves as Yugoslavians rather than Croats, Slovenes, et cetera. And also growing in Yugoslavia was the same kind of unity that had created Tito: intermarriage between people of different ethnicities, except in Kosovo, where the Christian Serbs and the Muslim Albanians were more divided.

Croats, Slovenes and Serbs, 1970 to 1991

It was not ethnic hatreds or religious differences that created the coming conflicts; it was the conflicts that inspired the hatreds and reminded people of their religious differences. Yugoslavia's road to socialism was bumpy. Conflicts arose over economic and political concerns. The Croats and Slovenes were more economically developed, and they resented wealth they created being sent south to the poorer regions of Yugoslavia. There was resentment too over Serb domination of Yugoslavia's Communist Party and of the federal government in Belgrade. And Serbs also dominated Yugoslavia's military.

In 1980 Tito died, and that year, Yugoslavia's foreign debt finally became a crisis. Debt had been mounting in the 1970s as Yugoslavia had borrowed from the West, expecting that with economic growth it could pay off its creditors. Instead, in 1980 came inflation with prices that began increasing 60 percent every six months. With this hardship, disagreements and strikes for higher wages and lower prices erupted. More than before, Croats and Slovenes were blaming the Serbs for their troubles and complaining about Serb hegemony, and they began seeking more local power with which to defend their interests.

Those holding political power at federal level and within the Communist Party had promised to uphold the Tito legacy, but they failed to maintain anything like the popularity of Tito. Across Yugoslavia were those who had disliked socialism and Communist rule from the start - among them people from families who had owned small businesses and had lost those businesses to socialist economic policies. And however much the Communists represented justice and equality to some in Yugoslavia, economic failure, including the inability to buy things, increased the dislike for the Communist rule.

Demands were rising across Yugoslavia to replace Communist Party control with a freely competitive multi-party system of politics. Some Serbs feared that this was a road to independence among Yugoslavia's various republics, and, as the most dispersed of people in Yugoslavia, the Serbs feared that this would challenge Serbian rights as citizens within those republics.

In 1986, a Serb from Montenegro, Slobadan Milosevic, became the head of Yugoslavia's Communist Party. Serbs dominated the Party, which was splitting along ethnic lines. Milosevic played to Serb fears. In 1987 he purged the Party of rivals. Kosovo remained an issue with Milosevic, and in 1988 he told a rally of hundreds of thousands of Serbs that Serbia would win the battle for Kosovo despite enemies who were plotting against Serbia's rights there.

Milosevic believed that the Serb minority in Kosovo was being mistreated, and he took up their cause. He took away Kosovo's autonomy - as if rule there should be Serbian against a population that was 88 percent Albanian. The Albanian language and cultural institutions were suppressed. Albanians claimed Kosovo as Albanian from ancient times and themselves as descendants from the ancient Ilyrians, native to the region before the arrival of the Slavs. The Serbs (southern, or Yugo, Slavs) saw Kosovo as the battleground between Islam and Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and they saw Serbs as the victims of Turkish aggression from the fifteenth century and as having been driven from Kosovo in large numbers periodically since then.

1989 and 1990 were shaky times for Communists in Eastern Europe. These were the years that Communism collapsed in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. The Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union disintegrated. In Yugoslavia, Milosevic gave up his post as chairman of the Communist Party and became President of Serbia. The demand for multi-party elections increased, but Milosevic refused. The Slovenes, Croats and other ethnicities rebelled. In February 1990, Milosevic sent troops, tanks, warplanes and 2,000 more police to Kosovo. By the end of the month more than 20 people were killed and a curfew imposed. And Albanians in Kosovo were being thrown off their jobs.

In July, Albanian legislators in Kosovo declared independence. The Milosevic regime dissolved the Kosovo assembly, and strikes and protests by the Albanian majority in Kosovo continued. Milosevic's repression in Kosovo frightened the Slovenes and Croats. The Slovenes rewrote their constitution, walked away from positions in the federal government and from the Yugoslav Communist Party congress of that year, and they declared themselves independent.

Elections in the six Yugoslav republics at the end of the year brought to power people favoring independence for themselves. In Serbia, Milosevic won widespread support among Serbs. The breakup of Yugoslavia was a fact, and the Yugoslav Communist Party, now almost exclusively Serbian, renamed itself the Socialist Party of Serbia.

United States became preoccupied by Saddam Hussein's conquest of Kuwait, while the Bush administration's policy toward Yugoslavia was in a quandary. A part of U.S. Cold War strategy had been opposition to any nationalistic breakup of Yugoslavia, fearing that the Soviet Union would pick up the pieces. But now the Soviet Union no longer existed. The administration of George Bush came down on the side of supporting unity but not if it was at the cost of democracy. Nationalist leaders in Slovenia and Croatia interpreted the U.S. lack of forthright opposition to independence as favorable to their cause. And they believed they had just as much right to self-rule as had the American colonists in 1776 to independence from British rule.

The presidency of Yugoslavia had been rotating among Yugoslavia's various ethnicities, and in 1991 it was scheduled to pass to a Slovene. Instead, Milosevic abolished Yugoslavia's collective presidency. And that year the Slovene's took up arms to struggle for independence.  The Yugoslav (Serbian) army was stationed in Slovenia, Croatia and elsewhere across Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav constitution prohibited the use of these troops within Yugoslavia, the duties of the military being the defense against attack from without. No matter! They fought the Slovenes, and in a ten-day war the Slovenes pushed the Serb army out of Slovenia.

A similar conflict arose in Croatia, and the Croats, like the Slovenes, were joyful over their declared liberation from the Serb-controlled Yugoslav Communist Party. But a problem loomed. The Krajina region of Croatia had a large Serb population. Serbs in Croatia were twelve percent of the population there - about 600,000 in number. Serbs in Croatia saw hundreds of Serbs being purged from positions in Croatia's local governments. The purged were largely Communist Party people, but Serbs nonetheless. The Serbs in Croatia saw the names of Croatian dukes and barons appear in public places, including the names of some who had served the World War II government. Remembering the Croat massacre of Serbs during World War II, the Serbs of the Krajina region were fearful, and they believed that at best they would be without equal rights in an independent Croatia. If the Croats could declare themselves independent, the Serbs of Krajina reasoned, then they could declare themselves independent of Croatia. The Serbs in Krajina picked up their weapons, barricaded themselves against the Croatians and began cleansing their area of Croats. Milosevic and the Serb army saw themselves as protecting the rights of Serbs in Croatia and gave their support to Serbian moves there.

In the war between the Croats and Serbs, Serb forces, in the autumn of 1991, shelled the Croatian city of Dubrovnik, a favorite tourist attraction on the Adriatic coast. In the United States people in positions of power were stirred, but they, including U.S. military leaders and President Bush, remained opposed to any kind of military intervention against the Serbs.

Cyrus Vance, former Secretary of State in the Carter administration, was appointed by the United Nations as a mediator. In November 1991 he was sent to Croatia to negotiate a cease-fire. Unmoved by his own nation's bearing arms in its war of independence declared in 1776, Vance expressed the distaste for violence that was prevalent among many Americans. Observing armed Croats surrounding a barracks of Serbian soldiers, Vance said that he was appalled by Croatia's "shabby treatment of professional soldiers."

War in Bosnia

Meanwhile, Muslims in Bosnia were also restive and looking forward to emancipation from Serbia's Communist rule. Any such attempt was bound for trouble given the 31 percent Serb population dispersed in Bosnia. Muslims were largely in the cities and generally more prosperous and educated than the Bosnians. The Bosnian Serbs were to a great extent rural, and they were Orthodox Christian. A Bosnian Serb, Radovan Karadzic, warned the Muslims against any move toward national separation, to no effect. War broke out between those wanting independence and those opposed. At the end of February, 1992, a referendum in Bosnia produced a 64 percent vote in favor of independence - the Serbs having boycotted the voting.

By now Milosevic realized that the old Yugoslavia was dead, and in April a new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was created, consisting of Serbia and Montenegro, with Belgrade as its capital. Macedonia had opted for independence, and Milosevic and Karadzic were pursuing war in Bosnia, with plans of making two-thirds of Bosnia under Serb control. The Serbs in Bosnia tried to carve out areas that were exclusively Serbian - in other words "cleansed" of Muslims. The Serb army changed clothing and joined the war on the side of the Serbs. They pushed against the largely Muslim forces, drove people from their homes, committed atrocities, laid siege to the city of Sarajevo and erected concentration camps.

The United Nations took responsibility for settling the conflict in Bosnia. At the end of May, 1992, the United Nations, responding to a U.S. initiative, imposed economic sanctions against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The U.N. had a peacekeeping force in Bosnia, made up of soldiers from Europe. And the U.N. and the pacific minded European Community remained opposed to taking sides in the Bosnian conflict. Moreover, it also prohibited the supplying of arms to either the Bosnians fighting against the Serbs or the Serbian forces, which frustrated the Muslim forces, who desperately wanted arms with which to defend themselves. The United Nations created "safe areas" in Bosnia without a strategy to protect such areas, and the Bosnia side in the conflict continued to lose ground to the combined force of Bosnian Serbs and the Serbian army.

In the United States, the Bush administration had decided not to become militarily involved in Balkan conflicts. The U.S. had fought the Gulf War in 1991 and coming off that war the Bush Administration was of the opinion that conflicts in the Balkans should be settled by the powers in Europe, and it was encouraged in this decision by European powers agreeing that it should be they who intervened in the Balkans rather than the United States. Nevertheless, exploring alternatives, the Bush administration discussed the possibility of using air power against Serb artillery around Sarajevo and other targets. The lessons of Vietnam were raised, with the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, a Vietnam veteran, leading the charge. He did not want to risk sending United States forces into another war in which the United States would become bogged down and uncommitted to victory. Powell and advisors to the Bush administration rejected the limited use of air power, and President Bush agreed with them.

Enter William Jefferson Clinton

After George Bush and Colin Powell designed the victory over Saddam Hussein, Bush lost his bid for another four years as President of the United States - to William Jefferson Clinton. Clinton had criticized Bush's policy toward Bosnia, and after taking office he looked toward taking a tougher stand against the Serbs. His Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, went to Europe to argue for lifting the arms embargo against the Bosnians so they could better defend themselves and to argue for the use of airpower against the Serbs. The Europeans remained pacifistic, and the U.S. military, still led by Powell, continued to oppose any involvement in Bosnia, including airdrops to Bosnian forces. It was argued that any military action against the Serbs would anger them, making life more dangerous for the U.N. forces there. And it was argued that the United States had no right to do this because it had no men of its own among the U.N. forces in Bosnia.

Many people who had supported U.S. involvement in Vietnam were now "dovish" regarding Bosnia, but they were among the many people who still reviled Clinton for having been a dove regarding Vietnam. Clinton was uncomfortable advocating any military solution, and he was concerned about his relationship with his nation's military, made worse by his move to keep his promise to those supporting gay rights regarding homosexuals in the military. Clinton was backing down on the issue of gays in the military, content with the compromise position of letting them stay in the military so long as they continued to hide their homosexuality. And Clinton refrained from pushing for a tougher position against the Serbs.

In 1992, Bosnian Serbs set up camps holding tens of thousands of Muslims and Croats. Atrocities in these camps were publicized, verified and described as horrors not seen in Europe since 1945. Clinton spoke of of the "lessons of the Holocaust" and the "high cost of remaining silent." He spoke of using air power against the Serbs. The U.N. Security Council voted to send "peacekeepers to Bosnia." but rather than the estimated 35,000 that would be needed they sent only 7,000.

The Serbs continued killing people as they moved to acquire control over more territory in anticipation of a settlement that was being planned by the United Nations. In 1993 Clinton gave up on the idea of sending troops to Bosnia on the grounds that the 80,000 recommended by the Pentagon would not be accepted by the public.

Leaders of the Serbs talked a lot, introducing ambiguities to prevent intervention against them. Members of the U.N. Security Council were also introducing ambiguities into their debate, countering calls by people who wanted a more serious intervention in Bosnia. President Clinton did some rationalizing of his own, saying that the conflict in Bosnia was ultimately for the warring parties to resolve and that "bad things" will continue to happen there "until these folks get tired of killing each other."

The war in Bosnia dragged on. In 1995, the Serbs moved against the town of Srebrenica - in a valley and about six by nine miles wide. Serb shelling forced a squad of Dutch U.N. troops in front of Srebrenica to abandon an observation post. While pulling back they ran into some Bosnian (Muslim) troops. According to a U.N. resolution, Srebrenica was a safe area, in other words not to be attacked by the Serbs.

It was the job of the Dutch soldier-peacekeepers to monitor events, not to do what soldiers usually do: stand and fight. The Serbs pushed into Srebrenica, and they took the Dutch troops prisoner. That the Serbs were moving aggressively inspired no retaliation by the U.N. or calls for action, such as air strikes, from Western powers. Serbs rounded up tens of thousands of Bosnia Muslims. They deported women and children and then slaughtered thousands of unarmed Muslim men - soldiers and civilians - calculated at more the 6,000.

As the Muslims were sent fleeing from their communities, the Bosnians burned down mosques and planted crosses on the wreckage.

In 1995, Croatia joined the fighting against the Serbs and moved through the Serb enclave in Krajina, driving Serbs in Krajina into a mass exodus to Serbia, the Serbs leaving before the arrival of the Croatian force. (See Operation Storm, Wikipedia.)

After the Coatian offensive, a Serb forced shelled Sarajevo with mortars, killing 38 civilians. This moved people in Europe to support Clinton's call for an air campaign against Serb forces. The air force involved belonged to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an alliance to which European nations and the U.S. belonged. Air strikes between August 30 and September 14, 1995 induced the Serbs to negotiate an end to the war in Bosnia, and in December 1995 a settlement was signed at Dayton Ohio.

Economic sanctions against Serbia were lifted. The Clinton administration and its European allies sent "peacekeeping" troops on a mission to Bosnia, the U.S. public being told that they would need to stay there at least a year. And joining them as "peacekeepers" in Bosnia were troops from Russia.

War in Kosovo

Milosovic was holding on to a habit left over from Eastern Europe's now defunct Communist regimes:control over the media. The state he ran dominated the nation's television station, and journalists who seemed to weaken in their support for the government line were dismissed.

Yugoslavia was no longer in the United Nations. In Kosovo in 1991, Albanians had held a secret referendum, and responding to its results leaders of Kosovo's Albanians announced the creation of an independent "Republic of Kosovo," all of this declared illegal by the Milosevic regime. In 1993, Montenegro had begun to distance itself from Belgrade, and it established an independent relationship with its neighbor, Albania.

Milosevic continued to suppress Kosovo's Albanian majority, winning condemnation by the Helsinki Federation of Human Rights. In July, 1995, a Serbian court sentenced 68 Kosovo Albanians to as many as eight years in prison for allegedly setting up a parallel police force. And those Serbs driven from Krajina began to settle in Kosovo, where, it was believed, they would strengthen the Serb position. Then in 1996, denied the independence that they wanted by peaceful means, some Kosovo Albanians formed a group willing for fight for independence, a group called the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

In August 1998, after a month-long offensive, Serb forces overran a KLA stronghold - the village of Junik. The U.N. called for a cease-fire, and in September the Serb army continued its offensives against villages in Kosovo's Drenica region. The United Nations Security Council then voted for a resolution demanding a cease-fire in Kosovo. The U.N. warned the Milosevic regime that "additional measures" would be applied if he failed to comply, and, in conjunction with this, NATO took its first steps in preparing for intervention against Serbia.

Milosevic believed it was his right and duty to crush the Kosovo Liberation Army and Kosovo independence. Then in January, 1999, in southern Kosovo, where Serb forces had recently conducted an offensive, the bodies of around 40 Albanians were found in what appeared to have been a mass execution.

Also in January, 1999, an international conference at Rambouillet, France, arrived at a plan of limited autonomy for the Albanians in Kosovo. The Clinton administration and members of other NATO powers sought to convince Milosevic to accept autonomy for the Albanians. Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, advised Milosevic to forget about any greater Serbia, and he spoke of Germany's mistake in the forties at attempting to create a greater Germany and take on the rest of the world. NATO sent two senior military officers to Belgrade to warn Milosevic's regime that Serbia faced air strikes if it persisted in violence. Milosevic was offended by NATO's threat to bomb and refused to accept the Rambouillet Agreement.

On March 23, 1999, NATO began bombing, and Milosevic's forces in Kosovo moved against the Kosovo Liberation Army and other Albanians in earnest. Albanians were driven from neighborhoods and areas that Serbian forces, including paramilitary groups, wished to "cleanse." The Serb army struck especially hard against any Albanian community from which shots were fired at them, inspiring massacres of civilians. Thousands of Albanians fled or were pushed out, with some Serbian young men glorying in their freedom to steal, loot and rape. Some people complained that the bombing inspired the Serbs to greater atrocities in Kosovo. Some in the United States complained that the U.S. should not have become involved because it had failed to intervene elsewhere, in Africa, for example, or against the Chinese in Tibet. They overlooked the fact that intervention in Yugoslavia was a NATO operation, that NATO was an alliance dealing with European security matters, that the U.S. was involved as a member of NATO. Some people in the United States complained that Milosevic could hunker down and endure the bombing and that ground troops would be necessary to turn Milosevic around.

The Russians were working for a settlement of the conflict. The Russian envoy, Vicktor Chernomyrdin, told Milosevic not to expect the NATO alliance to come apart or for the Russians to be able to do more than it was already doing. He told Milosevic in so many words that Serbia was alone against the rest of the world and that the best he, Milosevic, was going to get was what NATO was already offering. Perhaps Milosevic knew that if he did not accept NATO's demands that not only would deterioration in Serbia continue, including that of his military, but that eventually NATO would employ ground troops. Hanging over his head was an indictment by the United Nations as a war criminal. He chose the easiest way out. He accepted NATO demands and claimed that his agreement with NATO was a victory for his policy of defending Serbia's position in Kosovo. On June 3, Serbia's parliament accepted the international peace plan. Serb forces began their withdrawal from Kosovo and NATO and Russian "peacekeeping" forces moved in.

Like some Germans just after World War II, Serbs in Kosovo became targets of revenge, while the attitude among some Serbs was little different from those among Germans who had supported Hitler. They admitted that a few extremists might have done some nasty things, but in their opinion the use of force was necessary in Kosovo if Kosovo were to remain Serbian. They were angry with Milosevic not because of "war crimes" but because he had abandoned them. They still saw themselves as victims. And they saw themselves as just the little people - as Germans had described themselves after World War II in laying blame for everything on people at higher levels of political power.

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