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"Ethnic Cleansing" and the Future of Military Intervention: Lessons Learned in the Former Yugoslavia
In the aftermath of World War I and with the collapse of the Ottoman and Hapsburg Empires, the first Yugoslav state was formed. Yugoslavia (land of South Slavs), consisting of Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia, united after World War I to form a kingdom under the Serbian Royal House. In the very distant past, both Croatia and Serbia had been independent states. This first unified state disintegrated due to both internal power struggles between the Serbs and the Croats and the on-set of World War II.
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| Sarah Sewell |
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| Lt. Col. Robin P. Swan |
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World War II is another important moment in the history of the country. The Croats became a puppet of the Nazi regime, perpetrating like crimes in Yugoslavia. The Croat force was
the Ustasche. The Serbian state fought the Nazis, forming its own militia, the Chetniks. The Partizans under Marshall Josip Tito were a multi-ethnic force eventually supported by the Allies. The Partizans emerged victorious at the end of World War II. The monarchy was abolished, and Communist Party leader Tito proclaimed the country the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, with himself as prime minister. The sheer force of Tito's rule and
his attempts to balance the competing ethnicities within the state over the next 30+ years are both the reason that Yugoslavia succeeded as a non-aligned state until 1980 and the reason that it began its decline with Tito's death in 1980. The fragility of
the federation he ruled quickly became apparent.
- Serbs: Dominant in Yugoslavia's politics and army, living mainly in Serbia and Montenegro but with large minorities in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Orthodox
Christianity makes them natural allies of Russia.
- Croats: Roman Catholics, closer to the West than Serbs and exposed to Western influences by tourist influx to Croatia's picturesque Adriatic coast.
- Muslims: Living mainly in ethnically mixed towns and cities in
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Hostilities among these groups resurfaced as neighboring communist governments collapsed at the end of the 1980s, leading to war in the 1990s.
ELECTIONS AND INDEPENDENCE
In 1990, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Bosnia held their first multi-party elections in 50 years. Communist reformers lost the elections to parties favoring national sovereignty within a reorganized Yugoslav confederation. Throughout the first half of 1991, Bosnia's and Macedonia's presidents desperately sought to find a democratic solution which would allow the Slovenians and Croatians to remain within a decentralized and reorganized union
of sovereign Yugoslav states. Slobodan Milosevic and the federal military leadership rejected joint Slovenian and Croatian proposals for a union of sovereign Yugoslav states. Serbian leaders appointed representatives to the presidency from the no-longer existent provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina (whose autonomy had already been abolished by the Serbian parliament). The Serbs and Montenegrins blocked the confirmation of the moderate Croatian Stipe Mesic as
chairman of the federal presidency. According to the constitution, the presidency was to pass each year to the representative of a different republic who was to be chosen by his republic's parliament. It was Croatia's turn to select the federal president. The Croatians responded to Serbian stonewalling by authorizing the Croatian parliament to declare independence at the end of June 1991 if negotiations failed.
INSURGENTS IN CROATIA
In late 1990, Serbian insurgents organized autonomous districts with their own army and police. During the spring of 1991, armed guerrillas infiltrated districts in the Serbian populated areas of Croatia. They brought large quantities of weapons provided by the Serbian police, federal army, and weapons factories and thrust them upon the Serbian villagers in these areas. The Yugoslav federal army, led by an officer corps that was eighty percent
Serbian, then entered the rebellious districts under the pretext of preventing ethnic violence. Long before the Croatians made their final and irrevocable declaration of independence from Yugoslavia, the "federal" army had completed the occupation of as much as one quarter of Croatian territory.
RECOGNITION
The American, British, and French governments continued to believe that a unified Yugoslavia had to be preserved and that Croatia and Slovenia should be pressured into remaining in the Yugoslav federation. American Secretary of State James Baker and Under Secretary Lawrence
Eagleburger publicly opposed the Croatians' and Slovenians' moves towards independence.
SEIZURE AND DESTRUCTION OF TERRITORY
Serbian and "federal" armed forces entered Serbian-populated areas to "protect" Serbs and
seized vast territories where Croatians formed an overwhelming majority. They systematically attempted to terrorize and expel Croatians from these areas. This was well documented by international human rights organizations. The same pattern was introduced
simultaneously in Vojvodina against non-Serbs. Factories, buildings, and property were destroyed. Hundreds of Serbian civilians were killed by the bombardment of villages of mixed nationality and cities like Vukovar and Sarajevo, where a substantial part of the population is Serbian.
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT PEACE
Representatives of the European Community and the United Nations spent months together in early 1992, failing in their attempt to find a peaceful solution acceptable to Slobodan Milosevic, President of Serbia. After considerable delay, the United Nations sent peace-keeping forces into the designated areas of Croatia, but none to Bosnia. The Serbian military and civilian leaders blocked repatriation of thousands of Croatians who were driven from their homes, and claimed the right to determine which Croatians were to be allowed into the areas they controlled. The federal army handed much of its heavy weaponry over to local Serbian militias in Croatia, who put on the uniforms of local police forces allowed by the peace agreement. Efforts by UNPROFOR to collect weapons from Serbian forces in Croatia failed. Following this
failure, the Croatian government launched military action to reestablish control over part of the occupied areas.
THE WAR IN BOSNIA
By October 1995, the number of war refugees was approaching two million. The "federal" military in Bosnia joined the fight on the side of the Serbians and added its weaponry for the destruction of Sarajevo. In areas where Bosnians surrendered their weapons to the Yugoslav army or Serbian militias, the local non-Serbian population suffered mass atrocities. Areas which were well defended by local Bosnian Muslim and Croatian militias were spared this fate.
RESPONSE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY TO AGGRESSION
The United States, France and England -- by initially publicly opposing the democratic decision of the Slovenian and Croatian peoples when they declared independence after months of Serbian negotiations -- gave the "Yugoslav" military an open invitation to intervene militarily to prevent the independence of these republics and to seize territory for Greater Serbia alias Yugoslavia.
The UN arms embargo on all of former Yugoslavia, at the end of 1991, effectively granted a monopoly on heavy weaponry and air power to the "Yugoslav National Army" and the various Serbian and Montenegrin paramilitary forces supported by the army leadership.
In mid-1992, the UN placed economic sanctions on Serbia andMontenegro, creating considerable economic discomfort, but having little effect on Serbia's policy or behavior towards Bosnia. The UN began providing food and medical supplies to the blockaded citizens of Bosnian cities. The aid mission did nothing to end the war itself, and UN forces sent to deliver humanitarian aid and monitor cease fire agreements became virtual hostages. After television news reporters showed the world public video footage of the appalling treatment of prisoners at Serbian run camps, world powers took notice of the problem.
DAYTON PEACE ACCORDS
On November 21, 1995, the Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian presidents signed the Dayton Peace Accords, thereby making Bosnia a single state consisting of two parts: a Muslim-Croat
Federation and a Serbian Republic. Sarajevo would house the central government with a rotating presidency and a parliament composed of two-thirds Muslim-Croat and one-third Serb representatives.
In order to implement the military aspects of Dayton, the United Nations authorized a special force of 60,000 troops, the Implementation Force (IFOR), which is commanded by NATO. On December 20, 1996, the U.N. authorization of IFOR expired and was replaced by a follow-on
force known as the Stabilization Force (SFOR) of about 33,000 troops.
NATO, through the IFOR and SFOR deployments, successfully implemented the military parts of the Dayton Peace Accords. The warring parties were separated and more than 300,000 troops were demobilized, and thousands of heavy weapons systems have been destroyed.
What remains ahead is the repatriation of refugees and internally displaced persons and the prosecution of war criminals.
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