Yugoslav Wars

The Yugoslav Wars were a series of linked wars and insurgencies fought between 1991 and 2001 as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia broke apart. The fighting in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia killed an estimated 130,000 to 140,000 people and displaced millions. The wars saw ethnic cleansing, mass rape and, at Srebrenica in 1995, an act that international courts have ruled was genocide.

Yugoslavia had been rebuilt after the Second World War as a federation of six republics under Josip Broz Tito, whose communist party kept nationalist tensions in check. After his death in 1980 the country faced economic crisis and rising nationalism. Slobodan Milošević, who took power in Serbia in 1987, promoted Serb nationalism and strengthened Serbian control over Kosovo and Vojvodina. In 1990 multi-party elections brought nationalist or reformist governments to power in the republics, and on 25 June 1991 Slovenia and Croatia declared independence.

The Yugoslav army fought a brief war in Slovenia, lasting about ten days, before withdrawing. In Croatia, Serb rebels backed by the Yugoslav army took control of about a quarter of the country, and towns such as Vukovar were besieged and largely destroyed in 1991. A UN-monitored ceasefire took effect in early 1992. In August 1995 the Croatian army's Operation Storm retook most of the Serb-held territory, and some 150,000 to 200,000 Serbs fled.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats lived intermingled, declared independence in 1992 after a referendum boycotted by most Serbs. Bosnian Serb forces, supported by Serbia, seized much of the country and expelled or killed non-Serbs in a campaign widely described as ethnic cleansing; Croat forces also fought the Bosniak-led government for a time. Sarajevo was besieged for nearly four years. In July 1995 Bosnian Serb forces overran the UN "safe area" of Srebrenica and killed more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys. NATO air strikes and Croatian and Bosniak offensives followed, and the Dayton Agreement, signed in December 1995, ended the war, which had killed around 100,000 people.

In Kosovo, where most people were ethnic Albanians, the Kosovo Liberation Army began an armed insurgency against Serbian rule in the late 1990s, and Yugoslav forces responded with heavy repression. After talks failed, NATO bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days from March 1999, during which Yugoslav forces drove hundreds of thousands of Albanians from Kosovo. In June Yugoslavia withdrew, and Kosovo came under UN administration. Many Serbs and Roma later left or were driven out.

Ethnic Albanian insurgents fought in southern Serbia's Preševo Valley from 1999 to 2001 and in Macedonia in 2001, where a peace deal, the Ohrid Agreement, gave Albanians greater rights.

The UN established the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague in 1993. It convicted leaders from several sides, including the Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić for genocide at Srebrenica; Milošević died in 2006 before his trial ended. The International Court of Justice also found in 2007 that genocide occurred at Srebrenica. Yugoslavia gave way to seven states, counting Kosovo, whose independence remains disputed.

Our 1985 map shows Yugoslavia whole, the 1994 map shows the new states in the middle of the wars, and the 2000 map shows the region after the Kosovo War, with Serbia and Montenegro still joined.