A History of conflict

The region of the former Yugoslavia has a long history of conflict and changing borders. With the end of the Cold War came the latest crisis, the collapse of the Yugoslav state and the ensuing Bosnian war.

The Dayton agreement reached in November set the stage for the arrival of tens of thousands of NATO troops to enforce peace.

Bosnia

Bosnia is the common name for the whole country. Herzegovina, a rural region of the country, is included in its formal name.

Size: It covers 19,741 square miles, about half the size of Ohio or slightly larger than Tennessee.

Terrain: The northern part is mountainous and covered with thick forests. The southern part is composed largely of rocky hills and farmland.

Serbia

Population: 4.3 million, a little less than the population of Georgia.

Language: Serbo-Croatian, spoken in different dialects. The Croats and Muslims used the Latin alphabet, the Serbs use Cyrillic script.

Time: Bosnia is six hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.

Source: U.S. Department of Defense

The three factions

Muslims

After World War II, the Bosnian Muslims were strong supporters of Communist leader Josip Broz Tito, who headed Yugoslavia from 1945 until his death in 1980. They supported him because he worked to keep the ethnic groups at peace. Intermarriages in Bosnia were common and many Bosnian Muslims, especially younger people in the urban areas, were not religious. Muslims see themselves as the victims of Serbian aggression. The Serbs, using weapons from the once-powerful Yugoslav army, attacked Muslims in hopes of forcing most of Bosnia to annex to Serbia.

When trouble began in Serbia and Croatia in the late 1980s, many Muslims in Bosnia held to the ideal of a multi-cultural and unified Bosnia. One Bosnian Muslim journalist, now living outside of Chicago as a refugee, compared Bosnia to a tiger, with different colored stripes. One people, but separate colors.

Many Bosnian Muslims still cling to this ideal, but they clearly see the Bosnian Serbs - and behind them Serbia - as the aggressors in this war. Many hold Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president, personally responsible for the fighting because of his staunch and aggressive Serbian nationalism.

Serbs

During World War I, Austro-Hungary destroyed Belgrade and swept over Serbia. But the poorly armed Serbian army eventually drove them out of Serbia and the region. After the war, the Serb monarchy returned to dominate the new nation of Yugoslavia. But during World War II, hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies were killed by Croat fascists, called Ustashe, and Germans. This led to resentment toward the Croats as a whole by many Serbs after the war. Some Muslims also were recruited to fight for the Nazis, but many other Muslims and Croats fought for the partisans.

Under Communism, many Serbs felt Tito, a Croat, purposely undermined Serbia because he saw the Serb monarchy as a threat.

During the recent crisis, Serbs felt the rights of Serbs living in Croatia and Bosnia were being violated by Croats and Muslims eager to establish separate states. They see this war as a war to preserve the freedom of Serbs in these regions.

Many Serbs acknowledge the well-documented atrocities committed by Bosnian Serb militia against Muslim and Croat civilians, but they also argue that similar crimes have been committed against Serb civilians. The Western press, they argue, has systematically favored the Muslim and Croat sides in this war.

Croats

During World War Two, the Nazis set up a puppet state of Croatia with fascist 'stashe. These fascists committed many atrocities against Serbs and Jews. But Croats point out that Chetniks, right-wing Serbian guerrillas, also committed many atrocities against Croat civilians during that war. Croats felt Tito oppressed the Croats after the war because of the fascists, who were only supported by some of the Croats. Tens of thousands of Ustashe sympathizers were slaughtered by the Communists after the war.

Many Croats saw Tito's Yugoslavia as an artificial creation, forcing two groups - Serbs and Croats - to struggle for control in one state.

In the late 1980s, Croats saw a chance, with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Communism, to break away from Yugoslavia. In 1991, following Slovenia, Croatia declared independence. Yugoslavia, as the world had known it for most of the 20th century, was dead. Croats also see Serbs as the aggressors in this war. But Croats have been somewhat divided on Bosnia. Some Croat nationalists supported efforts by rural Croats in Herzegovina to break off from Bosnia and join Croatia. Others supported an independent Bosnian state made up of Muslims, Serbs and Croats. Today Bosnian Croats are in federation with the Muslim-led Bosnian government against the Bosnian Serb militias.

Despite earlier support for the nationalists, the Croatian government supports the concept of a unified Bosnia. Some Croats in Bosnia, particularly around the ancient city of Mostar, continue to fight occasionally with Muslims.

1400s to late 1800s: Imperial borderlands

1914: The eve of World War I

This annexation angered many Slavs, who felt the territory should be part of Serbia or part of an independent Slavic nation. The future of Bosnia was the cause of great tension between Austro-Hungary and Serbia to the south. On June 28, 1914, a lone Bosnian Serb student shot and killed the Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The assassination led to war between Austro-Hungary and Serbia. That fighting set off a chain of diplomatic reactions that became World War I.

1918-1941: The first Yugoslavia

1941-1945: World War II

An intense guerilla war ensued. Royalists, Ustashe, Conservative Catholics, Germans, Italians, Albanians and other groups fought for control of the forests and valleys of Yugoslavia. Of the resistance groups, none was more powerful than the Communists, headed by Josip Broz Tito. While fighting the Axis forces, he also attacked and wiped out other guerilla groups. Fighting in Bosnia was the most severe.

1945-1990: Tito's Yugoslavia

Tito, born from a Croat father and a Slovene mother, established a socialist federation of states, with each large ethnic group having its rights secured under regional constitutions. Control, however, rested with the Communist Party, ruled by Tito with an iron fist.

Yugoslavia under Tito was the renegade of Communist Eastern Europe. Rebelling against Stalinist control from Moscow in 1948, Tito held to Socialism, but had open trade and borders with the West. Yugoslavia received aid from both the United States and the U.S.S.R., both of whom did not want Yugoslavia to go to the other camp. As a result, Yugoslavia had a higher standard of living than most other nations of Eastern Europe. Nationalism or anti-Communism were supressed with force. Many supported Tito because he kept firm control on any ethnic or religious hatreds. Others felt he simply allowed hatreds stemming from the Yugoslav fighting of World War Two to fester without any resolution.Tito died in 1980.

1990-1996: The collapse of Yugoslavia

Also, the country's leaders could not hold ethnic and cultural resentmentsin check as well as Tito. In the late 1980s, several politicians, including Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, began to play up ethnic divisions. Mr. Milosevic, for example, urged Serbs to defend their fellow Serbs throughout Yugoslavia against encroachment by other Slavs. Meanwhile Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians and others began to agitate for splitting up Yugoslavia.

Slovenia, the wealthiest republic in the Yugoslav federation, declared its independence first in 1991. After a brief fight with the Yugoslav army, it left Yugoslavia relatively peacefully. Croatia followed suit, but Serbs who had lived in rural areas of Croatia for centuries rebelled, arguing they they wanted to stay in Yugoslavia. Bosnia held a referendum, and voters chose independence. But Bosnian Serbs, the second largest ethnic group in the area, boycotted the vote, choosing instead to declare an independent "Republic of Serbia." The bloody war ensued. In four years, more than 200,000 people - most of them civilians - have died in the fighting.

Published Jan. 28, 1996