THE DISSOLUTION OF YUGOSLAVIA IN THE 1990s term paper

To decrease ethnic rivalries after the death of Marshal Tito, ruler of Yugoslavia between 1945 and 1980, the seat of government of Yugoslavia in the 1980s rotated among the six autonomous republics of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Montenegro. But this system of rotation soon proved unworkable, and in 1991 Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence from Yugoslavia. Serbia, the largest of the republics, tried to forestall further dissolution, but in March 1992, after a referendum boycotted by most of its Serbian minority, the Muslim-dominated Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina also declared its independence from Yugoslavia.

At the time of the 1992 referendum on independence, the 4 million Bosnians were divided into a population that was approximately 44 percent Muslim, 31 percent Serbian, and 17 percent Croatian, with the remainder composed of Gypsies, Albanians, and other Balkan or western European people. Beginning in the spring of 1992, brutal internecine fighting broke out among the Muslim, Serbian, and Croatian populations in Bosnia.

The practice of “ethnic cleansing”—the removal and killing—of a targeted population was used by all groups against their enemies. Two of the most grotesque examples of mass killing took place in Srebrenica in July 1995, when Bosnian Serb troops, under the command of General Ratko Mladic, with the support of Slobodan Milosevic, president of Serbia, invaded a United Nations “safe haven,” held UN peacekeepers hostage, and executed 7,000 Muslim men. It was the worst atrocity in Europe since the Holocaust. On 4 August 1995, Franjo Tudjman, president of Croatia, ordered 200,000 Croat soldiers in Operation Storm to cleanse 40,000 Serb soldiers and 150,000 Bosnian Serbs from the Serb-held Krajina region of western Bosnia. On 14 December 1995, after three long years of fighting, the Dayton Peace Agreement was signed. This provided for a peacekeeping force led by NATO to enforce a truce that divided Bosnia into two parts: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the Muslims and Croats, and Republika Srpska for the Bosnian Serbs. While the Dayton agreement reduced violence in Bosnia, early in 1999 Kosovo, a Serbian province with a large Muslim Albanian population, exploded in violence. Ethnic cleansing of Kosovars by Serbs resulted in hundreds of thousands people fleeing Kosovo for Albania and Macedonia and prompted NATO aircraft to attack Serbia.
Suggestions for Term Papers
1. How might one account for violence between people who have lived next to one another for years without significant problems? Survey the accounts in the primary sources (see Suggested Sources) for possible explanations.
2. Investigate the plight of women in this conflict. Explain why rape became one of the preferred tactics of ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia.
3. Review what happened at Srebrenica. Why were the UN peacekeepers unable to stop the killing?
4. When Serb soldiers killed Muslims, they quite often referred to them as “Turks.” Examine the historic role of Turkey in the region and explain why Serbs might refer to Muslims as “Turks.”
5. One of the most brutal paramilitary leaders of the 1990s was Zeljko Raznayovic, also known as “Arkan.” Arkan and his “tigers” killed hundreds of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. In a paper on Arkan, his role in ethnic cleansing, and his relationship with the Serbian military and political leadership, explain how and why he was able to kill with impunity. 6. Assess the effectiveness of the NATO air campaign against Serbia in the spring of 1999.

Research Suggestions

In addition to the boldfaced items, look under the entries for “The Holocaust, 1941–1945” (#34), “Pol Pot and the Cambodian Incursion, 1970–1978 (#72), and “Genocide in Rwanda, 1994” (#95). Search under Radovan Karadzic and International War Crimes Tribunal (The Hague).

SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary Sources

Beljo, Ante, ed. Bosnia-Herzegovina: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing in Northwestern Bosnia. Zagreb: Croatian Information Centre, 1993. First-person accounts describing the killings.

Gutman, Roy. A Witness to Genocide. New York: Macmillan, 1993. Chilling firsthand accounts by an award-winning Newsday reporter.

Holbrook, Richard. To End a War. New York: Random House, 1998. A detailed account of diplomacy by America’s chief negotiator at the Dayton Peace Accords.

Mousavizadeh, Nader. The Black Book of Bosnia: The Consequences of Appeasement: By the Writers and Editors of the New Republic. New York: Basic Books, 1996. Riveting firsthand reports by journalists of the fighting in Bosnia, along with maps and editorials.

Sudetic, Chuck. Blood and Vengeance: One Family’s Story of the War in Bosnia. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998. By telling the story of the Celik family’s battle to survive, the author (who is a member of this family) has written a compelling book on the tragedy.

Zimmermann, Warren. Origins of a Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and Its Destroyers—America’s Last Ambassador Tells What Happened and Why. New York: New Times Books, 1996. A candid and revealing account by a longtime student of the region.

Secondary Sources

Honig, Jan Willem, and Norbert Both. Srebenica: Record of a War Crime. New York: Penguin, 1997. A damning account of the failure of the UN’s mission in the former Yugoslavia.

Peress, Gilles, Eric Stover, and Richard J. Goldstone. The Graves: Srebrenica and Vukovar. New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 1998. Grim photographs documenting two brutal atrocities in the region. Rogel, Carole. The Breakup of Yugoslavia and the War in Bosnia. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998. A good overview for students, with accompanying biographical profiles and primary documents.

Rohde, David. Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997. The author won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting of this atrocity.

Sells, Michael Anthony.The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. By focusing on the role of religion, this study provides a useful context to the genocide.

Silber, Laura, and Allain Little. Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation. New York: Penguin, 1996. Originally published for a TV documentary, the text is reliable and graphic.