Yugoslav Wars

Yugoslav Wars

Clockwise from the top-left: Slovenian police escort captured JNA soldiers back to their unit during the 1991 Slovenian war of independence; A destroyed tank during the Battle of Vukovar; Anti-tank missile installations in the siege of Dubrovnik; Reburial of victims from the 1995 Srebrenica massacre on 11 July 2010; UN vehicle driving on the streets of Sarajevo during the siege.
Date31 March 1991 – 11 June 1999 / 12 November 2001
(10 years, 7 months, 1 week and 5 days)
LocationSlovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo
Result Dissolution of SFR Yugoslavia and formation of independent successor states
Total deaths: c. 140,000[1][2]
Displaced: c. 4,000,000[3]

The Yugoslav Wars were a series of ethnically-based wars and insurgencies fought from 1991 to 1999/2001[Note 1] in the former Yugoslavia. These wars accompanied and facilitated the breakup of the Yugoslav state, when its constituent republics declared independence, but the issues of ethnic minorities in the new countries (chiefly Serbs, Croats and Albanians) were still unresolved at the time the republics were recognized internationally. The wars are generally considered to be a series of separate but related military conflicts which occurred in, and affected, most of the former Yugoslav republics.[5][6][7]

Most of the wars ended through peace accords, involving full international recognition of new states, but with massive economic damage to the region. 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 that evoked Serbian nationalist rhetoric and was willing to use the Yugoslav state to preserve the unity of Serbs in one state. As a result, the JNA began to lose Slovenes, Croats, Kosovar Albanians, Bosniaks, and ethnic Macedonians, and effectively became a Serb army.[8] According to the 1994 United Nations report, the Serb side did not aim to restore Yugoslavia, but to create a "Greater Serbia" from parts of Croatia and Bosnia.[9]

Other irredentist movements have also been brought into connection with the wars, such as "Greater Albania"[10][11][12][13][14] and "Greater Croatia".[15][16][17][18][19] However, unlike the Serbian irredentists, these were peacefully abandoned when the international diplomacy negotiated an end to the Croat-Bosniak conflict through Washington agreement and an end of Kosovo's ambitions to unite with Albania, respectively.[20]

Often described as Europe's deadliest conflicts since World War II, the wars were marked by many war crimes, including ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and rape. The Bosnian genocide was the first European crime since World War II to be formally judged as genocidal in character and many key individual participants were subsequently charged with war crimes.[21] The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established by the UN to prosecute these crimes.[22]

According to the International Center for Transitional Justice, the Yugoslav Wars resulted in the death of 140,000 people.[1] The Humanitarian Law Center estimates that in the conflicts in the former Yugoslav republics at least 130,000 people lost their lives.[2]

Terminology

The war(s) have alternatively been called:

Background

Map of the six Yugoslav republics and autonomous provinces of the time.[26]

Clear ethnic conflict between the Yugoslav peoples only became prominent in the 20th century, beginning with tensions over the constitution of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes in the early 1920s and escalating into violence between Serbs and Croats in the late 1920s after the assassination of Croatian politician Stjepan Radić. During World War II the Croatian Ustaše committed genocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma, leading to later reprisals against Croats and Bosniaks. The Yugoslav Partisan movement was able to appeal to all groups, including Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks.[5][27] In Serbia and Serb-dominated territories, violent confrontations occurred, particularly between nationalists and non-nationalists who criticized the Serbian government and the Serb political entities in Bosnia and Croatia.[28] Serbs who publicly opposed the nationalist political climate during the Yugoslav wars were reportedly harassed, threatened, or killed.[28]

The nation of Yugoslavia was created in the aftermath of World War I, and it was mostly composed of South Slavic Christians, but the nation also had a substantial Muslim minority. This nation lasted from 1918 to 1941, when it was invaded by the Axis powers during World War II, which provided support to the Ustaše (founded in 1929), which conducted a genocidal campaign against Serbs, Jews and Roma inside its territory and the Chetniks who supported reinstating the Serbian royals. In 1945, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was established under Josip Broz Tito,[5] who maintained a strongly authoritarian leadership that suppressed nationalism.[29] After Tito's death, in the 1980s relations among the six republics of the SFRY deteriorated. Slovenia and Croatia desired greater autonomy within the Yugoslav confederation, while Serbia sought to strengthen federal authority. As it became clearer that there was no solution agreeable to all parties, Slovenia and Croatia moved toward secession. Although tensions in Yugoslavia had been mounting since the early 1980s, it was 1990 that proved decisive. In the midst of economic hardship, Yugoslavia was facing rising nationalism among its various ethnic groups. By the early 1990s, there was no effective authority at the federal level. The Federal Presidency consisted of the representatives of the six republics, two provinces, and the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA). The communist leadership was divided along national lines.[30]

Serbian-held territories of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Yugoslav wars. The War Crimes Tribunal accused Slobodan Milošević of "attempting to create a Greater Serbia"', a Serbian state encompassing the Serb-populated areas of Croatia and Bosnia, and achieved by forcibly removing non-Serbs from large geographical areas through the commission of criminal activity.[31]

The representatives of Vojvodina, Kosovo and Montenegro were replaced with loyalists of the President of Serbia, Slobodan Milošević. Serbia secured four out of eight federal presidency votes[32] and was able to heavily influence decision-making at the federal level, since all the other Yugoslav republics only had one vote. While Slovenia and Croatia wanted to allow a multi-party system, Serbia, led by Milošević, demanded an even more centralized federation and Serbia's dominant role in it.[30] At the 14th Extraordinary Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in January 1990, the Serbian-dominated assembly agreed to abolish the single-party system; however, Slobodan Milošević, the head of the Serbian Party branch (League of Communists of Serbia) used his influence to block and vote-down all other proposals from the Croatian and Slovene party delegates. This prompted the Croatian and Slovene delegations to walk out and thus the break-up of the party,[33] a symbolic event representing the end of "brotherhood and unity".

Upon Croatia and Slovenia declaring independence in 1991, the Yugoslav federal government attempted to forcibly halt the impending breakup of the country, with Yugoslav Prime Minister Ante Marković declaring the secessions of Slovenia and Croatia to be illegal and contrary to the constitution of Yugoslavia, and declared support for the Yugoslav People's Army to secure the integral unity of Yugoslavia.[34]

According to Stephen A. Hart, author of Partisans: War in the Balkans 1941–1945, the ethnically mixed region of Dalmatia held close and amicable relations between the Croats and Serbs who lived there in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many early proponents of a united Yugoslavia came from this region, such Ante Trumbić, a Croat from Dalmatia. However, by the time of the outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars, any hospitable relations between Croats and Serbs in Dalmatia had broken down, with Dalmatian Serbs fighting on the side of the Republic of Serbian Krajina.

Even though the policies throughout the entire socialist period of Yugoslavia seemed to have been the same (namely that all Serbs should live in one state), Dejan Guzina argues that "different contexts in each of the subperiods of socialist Serbia and Yugoslavia yielded entirely different results (e.g., in favor of Yugoslavia, or in favor of a Greater Serbia)". He assumes that the Serbian policy changed from conservative–socialist at the beginning to xenophobic nationalist in the late 1980s and 1990s.[35]

The wars

damaged JNA tanks on the road
Photo of ambushed JNA tanks near Nova Gorica, on the border with Italy

Ten-Day War (1991)

The first of these conflicts, known 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.[36][37]

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, leading 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.

Croatian War of Independence (1991–95)

Damage after the bombing of Dubrovnik
Destroyed Serbian house in Sunja, Croatia. Most Serbs fled during Operation Storm in 1995.

Fighting in this region 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 following Croatia's declaration of independence.

After the 1990 parliamentary elections, Franjo Tuđman came to power and became the first President of Croatia. He promoted nationalist policies and had a primary goal of the establishment of an independent Croatia. The new government proposed constitutional changes, removed Communist symbols and renamed many streets and squares.[38] In an attempt to counter changes made 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, known as the Log Revolution.[39] Local police in Knin sided with the growing Serbian insurgency, while many government employees, mostly in police where commanding positions were mainly held by Serbs and Communists, lost their jobs.[40] The new Croatian constitution was ratified in December 1990, when the Serb National Council proclaimed the SAO Krajina.[41]

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.[42] 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.[43][41] 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 implementation of the decision that ended on 8 October.[44]

The armed incidents of early 1991 escalated into an all-out war over the summer, with fronts 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.[45][46] This was aggravated further 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).[47] As a result, the JNA opposed Croatian independence and sided with the Croatian Serb rebels. The Croatian Serb rebels were unaffected by the embargo as they had the support of and access to supplies of 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.[48]

A JNA M-84 tank disabled by a mine laid by Croat soldiers in Vukovar in November 1991.

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 JNA's advance into Slavonia. By the end of October, the town was almost completely devastated from land shelling and air bombardment.[49] 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 destruction of Vukovar in which many civilians were killed.[50] 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.[51] Meanwhile, control over central Croatia was seized by Croatian Serb forces in conjunction with the JNA Corps from Bosnia and Herzegovina, under the leadership of Ratko Mladić.[52]

In January 1992, the Vance Plan proclaimed UN controlled (UNPA) zones for Serbs in territory claimed by Serbian rebels as the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) and brought an end to major military operations, though sporadic artillery attacks on Croatian cities and occasional intrusions of Croatian forces into UNPA zones 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 all of its territory except the UNPA Sector East portion of Slavonia, bordering Serbia. Most of the Serb population in the reclaimed areas became refugees, and these operations led to war crimes trials by the ICTY against elements of the Croatian military leadership, some of whom were found guilty of "war crimes and crimes against humanity".[53] The areas of "Sector East", unaffected by the Croatian military operations, came under UN administration (UNTAES), and were reintegrated to Croatia in 1998 under the terms of the Erdut Agreement.[54]

In 2007, Milan Martić, former president of RSK, was sentenced to 35 years imprisonment as part of a joint criminal enterprise against the non-Serb population of Croatia.[55] Milan Babić, the first President of RSK, pleaded guilty and was sentenced by the ICTY to 13 years in prison.[56]

Bosnian War (1992–95)

People waiting in line to gather water during the Siege of Sarajevo, 1992

In 1992, conflict engulfed Bosnia and Herzegovina. The war was predominantly a territorial conflict between the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina chiefly supported by Bosniaks, the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb entity Republika Srpska, and the self-proclaimed Herzeg-Bosnia, who were led and supplied by Serbia and Croatia respectively, reportedly with a goal of the partition of Bosnia.

The Yugoslav armed forces had disintegrated into a largely Serb-dominated military force. Opposed to the Bosnian-majority led government's agenda for independence, and along with other armed nationalist Serb militant forces, the JNA attempted to prevent Bosnian citizens from voting in the 1992 referendum on independence.[57] This did not succeed in persuading people not to vote and instead the intimidating atmosphere combined with a Serb boycott of the vote resulted in a resounding 99% vote in support for independence.[57]

A Serb woman mourns at a grave at the Lion's cemetery in Sarajevo, 1992

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 Srebrenica, was by far the bloodiest and most widely covered of the Yugoslav wars. Bosnia's 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.[58]

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.[59] 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 to push back Bosnian Serb military gains.[60]

Together with NATO air strikes on the Bosnian Serbs, the successes on the ground put pressure on the Serbs to come to the negotiating table. Pressure was put on all sides to stick to the cease-fire and negotiate an end to the war in Bosnia. The war ended with the signing of the Dayton Agreement on 14 December 1995, with the formation of Republika Srpska as an entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina being the resolution for Bosnian Serb demands.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the United States reported in April 1995 that 90 percent of all the atrocities in the Yugoslav wars up to that point had been committed by Serb militants.[61] Most of these atrocities occurred in Bosnia. In 2004, the ICTY ruled that the Srebrenica massacre constituted genocide.[62] In May 2013, in a first-instance verdict, the ICTY convicted six Herzeg-Bosnia Officials for their participation in a joint criminal enterprise against Muslim population in Bosnia and Herzegovina.[63] Radovan Karadžić, former president of Republika Srpska, and Ratko Mladić, former Chief of Staff of the Army of the Republika Srpska, are as of 2015 at trial by the ICTY.

Kosovo War (1998–99)

A Tomahawk cruise missile launches from the aft missile deck of the USS Gonzalez on March 31, 1999
Post-strike bomb damage assessment photograph of the Kragujevac Armor and Motor Vehicle Plant Crvena Zastava, Serbia
Smoke in Novi Sad, Serbia after NATO bombardment in 1999

After its autonomy was quashed, Kosovo was faced with state organized oppression: from the early 1990s, Albanian language radio and television were restricted and newspapers shut down. Kosovar Albanians were fired in large numbers from public enterprises and institutions, including banks, hospitals, the post office and schools.[64] In June 1991 the University of Priština assembly and several faculty councils were dissolved and replaced by Serbs. Kosovar Albanian teachers were prevented from entering school premises for the new school year beginning in September 1991, forcing students to study at home.[64]

Later, Kosovar Albanians started an insurgency against Belgrade when the Kosovo Liberation Army was founded in 1996. Armed clashes between the two sides broke out in early 1998. A NATO-facilitated ceasefire was signed on 15 October, but both sides broke it two months later and fighting resumed. When the killing of 45 Kosovar Albanians in the Račak massacre was reported in January 1999, NATO decided that the conflict could only be settled by introducing a military peacekeeping force to forcibly restrain the two sides. After the Rambouillet Accords broke down on 23 March with Yugoslav rejection of an external peacekeeping force, NATO prepared to install the peacekeepers by force. The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia followed, an intervention against Serbian forces with a mainly bombing campaign, under the command of General Wesley Clark. Hostilities ended 2½ months later with the Kumanovo Agreement. Kosovo was placed under the governmental control of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo and the military protection of Kosovo Force (KFOR). The 15-month war had left thousands of civilians killed on both sides and over a million displaced.[65]

Insurgency in the Preševo Valley (1999–2001)

The Insurgency in the Preševo Valley was an armed conflict between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the ethnic-Albanian insurgents[66][67][68] of the Liberation Army of Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac (UÇPMB).[69] There were instances during the conflict in which the Yugoslav government requested KFOR support in suppressing UÇPMB attacks since they could only use lightly armed military forces as part of the Kumanovo Treaty that ended the Kosovo War, which created a buffer zone so the bulk of the Yugoslav armed forces could not enter.[70]

Yugoslav president Vojislav Koštunica warned that fresh fighting would erupt if KFOR units did not act to prevent the attacks that were coming from the UÇPMB.[71]

Insurgency in the Republic of Macedonia (2001)

The insurgency in the Republic of Macedonia was an armed conflict in Tetovo which began when the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) militant group began attacking the security forces of the Republic of Macedonia at the beginning of February 2001, and ended with the Ohrid Agreement. The goal of the NLA was to give greater rights and autonomy to the country's Albanian minority, who make up 25.2% (54.7% of the population in Tetovo) of the population of Macedonia.[72][73] There were also claims that the group ultimately wished to see Albanian-majority areas secede from the country,[74] although high-ranking NLA members have denied this.[72]

Arms embargo

The United Nations Security Council had imposed an arms embargo in September 1991.[75] Nevertheless, various states had been engaged in, or facilitated, arms sales to the warring factions: Bulgaria, North Korea, Poland, Ukraine, Romania and Russia were all export countries for weapons to the conflict; the headquarters for a huge logistics operation was in Vienna; financial transactions were executed by a Hungarian bank; arms smugglers used companies registered in the off-shore haven of Panama; and the United Kingdom sent military equipment and provided loans for arms purchases, as did Germany.[76] In 2012, Chile convicted nine people, including two retired generals, for their part in arms sales.[77]

After the fighting ended, millions of weapons were left with civilians who held on to them in case violence should resurface. These weapons later turned up on the black arms market of Europe.[78]

War crimes

Genocide

The skull of a victim of the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre in an exhumed mass grave outside of Potočari, 2007

It is widely considered that mass murders against Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina escalated into genocide. On 18 December 1992, the United Nations General Assembly issued resolution 47/121 condeming "aggressive acts by the Serbian and Montenegrin forces to acquire more territories by force" and called such ethnic cleansing "a form of genocide".[79] In its report published on the 1 January 1993, Helsinki Watch was one of the first civil rights organisations that warned that "the extent of the violence and its selective nature along ethnic and religious lines suggest crimes of genocidal character against Muslim and, to a lesser extent, Croatian populations in Bosnia-Hercegovina".[80]

A trial took place before the International Court of Justice, following a 1993 suit by Bosnia and Herzegovina against Serbia and Montenegro alleging genocide. The ICJ ruling of 26 February 2007 indirectly determined the war's nature to be international, though clearing Serbia of direct responsibility for the genocide committed by the forces of Republika Srpska. The ICJ concluded, however, that Serbia failed to prevent genocide committed by Serb forces and failed to punish those responsible, and bring them to justice.[81] A telegram sent to the White House on 8 February 1994 and penned by U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, Peter W. Galbraith, stated that genocide was occurring. The telegram cited "constant and indiscriminate shelling and gunfire" of Sarajevo by Karadzic's Yugoslav People Army; the harassment of minority groups in Northern Bosnia "in an attempt to force them to leave"; and the use of detainees "to do dangerous work on the front lines" as evidence that genocide was being committed.[82] In 2005, the United States Congress passed a resolution declaring that "the Serbian policies of aggression and ethnic cleansing meet the terms defining genocide".[83]

Despite the evidence of many kinds of war crimes conducted simultaneously by different Serb forces in different parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially in Bijeljina, Sarajevo, Prijedor, Zvornik, Banja Luka, Višegrad and Foča, the judges ruled that the criteria for genocide with the specific intent (dolus specialis) to destroy Bosnian Muslims were met only in Srebrenica or Eastern Bosnia in 1995.[81] The court concluded that other crimes, outside Srebrenica, committed during the 1992–1995 war, may amount to crimes against humanity according to the international law, but that these acts did not, in themselves, constitute genocide per se.[84]

The crime of genocide in the Srebrenica enclave was confirmed in several guilty verdicts handed down by the ICTY, most notably in the conviction of the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.[85]

Ethnic cleansing

Ethnic cleansing was a common phenomenon in the wars in Croatia, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. This entailed intimidation, forced expulsion, or killing of the unwanted ethnic group as well as the destruction of the places of worship, cemeteries and cultural and historical buildings of that ethnic group in order to alter the population composition of an area in the favour of another ethnic group which would become the majority. These examples of territorial nationalism and territorial aspirations are part of the goal of an ethnically pure nation-state.[86]

According to numerous ICTY verdicts and indictments, Serb[87][88][89] and Croat[90] forces performed ethnic cleansing of their territories planned by their political leadership to create ethnically pure states (Republika Srpska and Republic of Serbian Krajina by the Serbs; and Herzeg-Bosnia by the Croats).

According to the ICTY, Serb forces deported at least 80–100,000 Croats in Croatia in 1991–92[91] and at least 700,000 Albanians in Kosovo in 1999.[92] Further hundreds of thousands of Muslims were forced out of their homes by the Serb forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina.[93] By one estimate, the Serb forces drove at least 700,000 Bosnian Muslims from the area of Bosnia under their control.[94]

War rape

Detainees at the Trnopolje camp, near Prijedor (photograph provided courtesy of the ICTY)

War rape occurred as a matter of official orders as part of ethnic cleansing, to displace the targeted ethnic group.[95] According to the Tresnjevka Women's Group, more than 35,000 women and children were held in such Serb-run "rape camps".[96][97][98] Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovač, and Zoran Vuković were convicted of crimes against humanity for rape, torture, and enslavement committed during the Foča massacres.[99]

The evidence of the magnitude of rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina prompted the ICTY to deal openly with these abuses.[100] Reports of sexual violence during the Bosnian War (1992–1995) and Kosovo War (1998–1999) perpetrated by the Serbian regular and irregular forces have been described as "especially alarming".[96] The NATO-led Kosovo Force documented rapes of Albanian, Roma and Serbian women by both Serbs and members of the Kosovo Liberation Army.[101]

Others have estimated that during the Bosnian War between 20,000 and 50,000 women, mainly Muslim, were raped.[102][103] There are few reports of rape and sexual assault between members of the same ethnic group.[104]

War rape in the Yugoslav Wars has often been characterized as a crime against humanity. Rape perpetrated by Serb forces served to destroy cultural and social ties of the victims and their communities.[105] Serbian policies allegedly urged soldiers to rape Bosnian women until they became pregnant as an attempt towards ethnic cleansing. Serbian soldiers hoped to force Bosnian women to carry Serbian children through repeated rape.[106] Often Bosnian women were held in captivity for an extended period of time and only released slightly before the birth of a child conceived of rape. The systematic rape of Bosnian women may have carried further-reaching repercussions than the initial displacement of rape victims. Stress, caused by the trauma of rape, coupled with the lack of access to reproductive health care often experienced by displaced peoples, lead to serious health risks for victimized women.[107]

During the Kosovo War thousands of Kosovo Albanian women and girls became victims of sexual violence. War rape was used as a weapon of war and an instrument of systematic ethnic cleansing; rape was used to terrorize the civilian population, extort money from families, and force people to flee their homes. According to a report by the Human Rights Watch group in 2000, rape in the Kosovo War can generally be subdivided into three categories: rapes in women's homes, rapes during fighting, and rapes in detention.[108][109] The majority of the perpetrators were Serbian paramilitaries, but also included Serbian special police or Yugoslav army soldiers. Virtually all of the sexual assaults Human Rights Watch documented were gang rapes involving at least two perpetrators.[108][109] Since the end of the war, rapes of Serbian, Albanian, and Roma women by ethnic Albanians — sometimes by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) – have been documented.[108][109] Rapes occurred frequently in the presence, and with the acquiescence, of military officers. Soldiers, police, and paramilitaries often raped their victims in the full view of numerous witnesses.[95]

Consequences

Casualties

Some estimates put the number of killed in the Yugoslav Wars at 140,000.[1] The Humanitarian Law Center estimates that in the conflicts in former Yugoslav republics at least 130,000 people lost their lives.[2] Slovenia was the first one to get out of the conflicts, thus avoiding higher casualties, and around 70 people were killed in its ten-day conflict. The War in Croatia left an estimated 20,000 people dead. Bosnia and Herzegovina suffered the heaviest burden of the fighting: around 100,000 people were killed in the war. In the Kosovo conflict, around 13,500 were killed. Overall, no less than 133,000 people were killed in the post-Yugoslav conflicts in the 90s.[110] The highest death toll was in Sarajevo: with around 14,000 killed during the siege,[110] the city lost almost as many people as the entire war in Kosovo.

In relative and absolute numbers, Bosniaks suffered the heaviest losses: 64,036 people of their nationality were killed, which represents a death toll of over 3 % of their entire nation.[111] They experienced the worst plight in the Srebrenica massacre, where the mortality rate of the Bosniak men (irrespective of their age or civilian status) reached 33% in July 1995.[112]

Internally displaced and refugees

Bosnian refugees in 1993
Kosovo Albanian refugees in 1999
Kosovo Serb refugees in 1999

It is estimated that the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo produced about 2.4 million refugees and an additional 2 million internally displaced persons.[113]

The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina caused 2.2 million refugees or displaced, of which over half were Bosniaks.[114] Up until 2001, there were still 650,000 displaced Bosniaks, while 200,000 left the country permanently.[114]

The Kosovo War caused 862,979 Albanian refugees which were either expulsed from the Serb forces or fled from the battle front.[115] In addition, several hundreds of thousands were internally displaced, which means that, according the OSCE, almost 90 % of all Albanians were displaced from their homes in Kosovo by June 1999.[116] After the end of the war, Albanians returned, but over 200,000 Serbs, Romani and other non-Albanians fled Kosovo. By the end of 2000, Serbia thus became the host of 700,000 Serb refugees or internally displaced from Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia.[117]

From the perspective of asylum for internally displaced or refugees, Croatia took the brunt of the crisis. According to some sources, in 1992 Croatia was the host to almost 750,000 refugees or internally displaced, which represents a quota of almost 16 % of its population of 4.7 million inhabitants: these figures included 420 to 450,000 Bosnian refugees, 35,000 refugees from Serbia (mostly from Vojvodina and Kosovo) while a further 265,000 persons from other parts of Croatia itself were internally displaced. This would be equivalent of Germany being a host to 10 million displaced people or France to 8 million people. [118] Official UNHCR data indicate that Croatia was the host to 287,000 refugees and 344,000 internally displaced in 1993. This is a ratio of 64.7 refugees per 1000 inhabitants.[119] In its 1992 report, UNHCR placed Croatia #7 on its list of 50 most refugee burdened countries: it registered 316 thousand refugees, which is a ratio of 15:1 relative to its total population.[120] Together with those internally displaced, Croatia was the host to at least 648,000 people in need of an accommodation in 1992.[121] In comparison, Macedonia had 10.5 refugees per 1000 inhabitants in 1999.[122] Slovenia was the host to 45,000 refugees in 1993, which is 22.7 refugees per 1000 inhabitants.[123] Serbia and Montenegro were the host to 479,111 refugees in 1993, which is a ratio of 45.5 refugees per 1000 inhabitants. By 1998 this grew to 502,037 refugees (or 47.7 refugees per 1000 inhabitants). By 2000 the number of refugees fell to 484,391 persons, but the number of internally displaced grew to 267,500, or a combined total of 751,891 persons who were displaced and in need of an accommodation.[124]

Number of refugees or internally displaced in 1991—2000
Country, region Albanians Bosniaks Croats Serbs Others (Hungarians, Gorani, Romani)
Croatia — — 247,000[125] 300,000[126] —
Bosnia and Herzegovina — 1,270,000[127] 490,000[127] 540,000[127] —
Kosovo 1,200,000[128]—
1,450,000[116] 		— — 143,000[129] 67,000[129]
Vojvodina, Sandžak — 30,000—
40,000[130] 		35,000[118]—
40.000[131] 		— 60.000[131]
Total ~1,200,000—
1,450,000 		~1,300,000—
1,310,000 		~772,000—
777,000 		~983,000 ~127,000

Timeline of the Yugoslav Wars

A shelled Croatian hotel resort of the Dalmatian coastline in Kupari near Dubrovnik (1991)

1990

1991

1992

Sarajevo. Besieged residents collect firewood in the bitter winter of 1992.
Two Croatian Defense Council (HVO) T-55 Main Battle Tanks pull into firing position during a three-day exercise held at the Barbara Range in Glamoč, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

1993

1994

1995

Srebrenica Genocide Memorial Stone at Potočari.
A boy at a grave during the 2006 funeral of Srebrenica victims

1996

1998

Yugoslav Ministry of Defence building in Belgrade destroyed during the 1999 NATO bombing.

1999

2000

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Some historians only narrow the conflicts to Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo in the 1990s.[4] Others also include the Preševo Valley Conflict and Insurgency in Macedonia (2001).

References

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  2. 1 2 3 "About us". Humanitarian Law Center. Archived from the original on 22 May 2011. Retrieved 17 November 2010.
  3. ↑ "Transitional Justice in the Former Yugoslavia". ICJT. International Center for Transitional Justice. 1 January 2009.
  4. ↑ Shaw 2013, p. 132.
  5. 1 2 3 Judah, Tim (17 February 2011). "Yugoslavia: 1918–2003". BBC. Retrieved 1 April 2012.
  6. ↑ Finlan (2004), p. 8
  7. ↑ Naimark (2003), p. xvii.
  8. ↑ Armatta, Judith (2010), Twilight of Impunity: The War Crimes Trial of Slobodan Milosević, Duke University Press, p. 121
  9. ↑ Annex IV – II. The politics of creating a Greater Serbia: nationalism, fear and repression
  10. ↑ Jannsens, Jelle (5 February 2015). "State-building in Kosovo. A plural policing perspective". Maklu. p. 53. ISBN 978-90-466-0749-7.
  11. ↑ Totten, Samuel; Bartrop, Paul R. (2008). "Dictionary of Genocide". with contributions by Steven Leonard Jacobs. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 249. ISBN 978-0-313-32967-8.
  12. ↑ Sullivan, Colleen (14 September 2014). "Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)". Encyclopædia Britannica.
  13. ↑ Karon, Tony (9 March 2001). "Albanian Insurgents Keep NATO Forces Busy". TIME.
  14. ↑ Phillips, David L. (2012). "Liberating Kosovo: Coercive Diplomacy and U.S. Intervention". in cooperation with the Future of Diplomacy Project, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The MIT Press. p. 69.
  15. ↑ International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (29 May 2013). "Prlic et al. judgement vol.6 2013" (PDF). United Nations. p. 383.
  16. ↑ Gow, James (2003). "The Serbian Project and Its Adversaries: A Strategy of War Crimes". C. Hurst & Co. p. 229. ISBN 9781850654995.
  17. ↑ van Meurs, Wim, ed. (11 November 2013). "Prospects and Risks Beyond EU Enlargement: Southeastern Europe: Weak States and Strong International Support". Springer Science & Business Media. p. 168.
  18. ↑ Thomas, Raju G. C., ed. (2003). "Yugoslavia Unraveled: Sovereignty, Self-Determination, Intervention". Lexington Books. p. 10.
  19. ↑ Mahmutćehajić, Rusmir (1 February 2012). "Sarajevo Essays: Politics, Ideology, and Tradition". State University of New York Press. p. 120.
  20. ↑ Economist (18 January 2007). "What happened to Greater Albania?". The Economist.
  21. ↑ Bosnia Genocide, United Human Rights Council, retrieved 13 April 2015
  22. ↑ United Nations Security Council Resolution 827. S/RES/827(1993) 25 May 1993.
  23. ↑ Tabeau, Ewa (15 January 2009). "Casualties of the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia (1991–1999)" (PDF). Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia.
  24. ↑ Glenny (1996), p. 250
  25. ↑ Bideleux & Jeffries (2007), p. 429
  26. ↑ "Serbia and Kosovo reach EU-brokered landmark accord". BBC. 19 April 2013. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
  27. ↑ Hart, Stephen A. (17 February 2011). "Partisans: War in the Balkans 1941–1945". BBC History. Retrieved 11 July 2012.
  28. 1 2 Gagnon (2004), p. 5
  29. ↑ Annex III – The Balkan wars and the world wars
  30. 1 2 Annex IV – Prelude to the breakup
  31. ↑ Decision of the ICTY Appeals Chamber; 18 April 2002; Reasons for the Decision on Prosecution Interlocutory Appeal from Refusal to Order Joinder; Paragraph 8
  32. ↑ Brown & Karim (1995), p. 116
  33. ↑ "Milosevic's Yugoslavia: Communism Crumbles". Milosevic's Yugoslavia. BBC News.
  34. ↑ Cohen & Dragović-Saso (2008), p. 323
  35. ↑ Guzina 2003, p. 91.
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  38. ↑ Tanner 2001, p. 229.
  39. ↑ Tanner 2001, p. 233.
  40. ↑ Ramet 2010, p. 262.
  41. 1 2 Goldstein 1999, p. 222.
  42. ↑ Ramet 2010, p. 119.
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  44. ↑ Goldstein 1999, p. 226.
  45. ↑ Glaurdić, Josip (2011). The Hour of Europe: Western Powers and the Breakup of Yugoslavia. Yale University Press. p. 57. ISBN 978-0-300-16645-3.
  46. ↑ Annex III – The Conflict in Slovenia
  47. ↑ Annex III – General structure of the Yugoslav armed forces
  48. ↑ Annex III – Forces operating in Croatia
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  50. ↑ Pearson, Joseph (2010). "Dubrovnik's Artistic Patrimony, and its Role in War Reporting (1991)". European History Quarterly. 40 (2): 197–216.
  51. ↑ Ramet 2010, p. 263.
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  53. ↑ "Judgement Summary for Gotovina et al." (PDF). The Hague: International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. 15 April 2011. Retrieved 15 April 2011.
  54. ↑ "The Erdut Agreement" (PDF). United States Institute of Peace. 12 November 1995. Retrieved 17 January 2011.
  55. ↑ "Milan Martić sentenced to 35 years for crimes against humanity and war crimes". International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. 12 June 2007. Retrieved 24 August 2010.
  56. ↑ "Milan Babić". International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Retrieved 19 July 2015.
  57. 1 2 Meštrović (1996), p. 36.
  58. ↑ Meštrović (1996), pg. 7.
  59. ↑ "Prosecutor v. Rasim Delić Judgement" (PDF). International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. 15 September 2008. p. 24.
  60. ↑ CIA 2002, p. 379.
  61. ↑ Meštrović (1996), p. 8.
  62. ↑ "ICTY "Prosecutor v. Krstic"" (PDF). United Nations. 5 March 2007. Retrieved 11 July 2012.
  63. ↑ "Six Senior Herceg-Bosna Officials Convicted" (Press release). The Hague: International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. 29 May 2013. Retrieved 13 April 2015.
  64. 1 2 The Prosecutor vs Milan Milutinović et al. – Judgement, 26 February 2009, pp. 88–89
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  66. ↑ Perritt, Henry H., Jr. (July 18, 2008). Kosovo Liberation Army: The Inside Story of an Insurgency. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0252033421.
  67. ↑ Morton, Jeffrey S.; Bianchini, Stefano; Nation, Craig; Forage, Paul, eds. (17 January 2004). Reflections on the Balkan Wars: Ten Years After the Break-up of Yugoslavia. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1403963321.
  68. ↑ Nation, R. Craig (8 July 2014). War in the Balkans, 1991–2002. contributions by Strategic Studies Institute. lulu.com. ISBN 978-1312339750.
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  81. 1 2 Marlise Simons (27 February 2007). "Court Declares Bosnia Killings Were Genocide". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 July 2017.
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  83. ↑ A resolution expressing the sense of the Senate regarding the massacre at Srebrenica in July 1995, thomas.loc.gov; accessed 25 April 2015.
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  86. ↑ Wood 2001, p. 57–75.
  87. ↑ "Prosecutor v. Vujadin Popovic, Ljubisa Beara, Drago Nikolic, Ljubomir Borovcanin, Radivoje Miletic, Milan Gvero, and Vinko Pandurevic" (PDF). In the Motion, the Prosecution submits that both the existence and implementation of the plan to create an ethnically pure Bosnian Serb state by Bosnian Serb political and military leaders are facts of common knowledge and have been held to be historical and accurate in a wide range of sources.
  88. ↑ "ICTY: Radoslav Brđanin judgement". Archived from the original on 14 April 2009.
  89. ↑ "Tadic Case: The Verdict". Importantly, the objectives remained the same: to create an ethnically pure Serb State by uniting Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina and extending that State from the FRY […] to the Croatian Krajina along the important logistics and supply line that went through opstina Prijedor, thereby necessitating the expulsion of the non-Serb population of the opstina.
  90. ↑ "Prosecuter v. Jadranko Prlic, Bruno Stojic, Slobodan Praljak, Milivoj Petkovic, Valentin Coric and Berislav Pusic" (PDF). Significantly, the Trial Chamber held that a reasonable Trial Chamber, could make a finding beyond any reasonable doubt that all of these acts were committed to carry out a plan aimed at changing the ethnic balance of the areas that formed Herceg-Bosna and mainly to deport the Muslim population and other non-Croat population out of Herceg-Bosna to create an ethnically pure Croatian territory within Herceg-Bosna.
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  92. ↑ "Five Senior Serb Officials Convicted of Kosovo Crimes, One Acquitted". ICTY. 26 February 2009. Retrieved 10 July 2017.
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  94. ↑ Geldenhuys 2004, p. 34.
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