Yugoslavia was a federation formed in 1918, following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I.
The country comprised six republics: Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro, as well as two autonomous provinces: Kosovo and Vojvodina.
Yugoslavia was led by a charismatic communist leader, Josip Broz Tito, from 1945 until 1980. Under Tito’s leadership, Yugoslavia managed to maintain its independence and unity despite being composed of various ethnicities, religions, and languages.
Tito also maintained good relations with both the West and the East without aligning with either bloc during the Cold War.
However, after Tito’s death in 1980, Yugoslavia began experiencing political and economic crises. Nationalism and separatism began to rise among the republics dissatisfied with Serbia’s dominance, the largest and strongest republic in Yugoslavia.
Moreover, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s triggered waves of democratization and independence movements in various countries, including Yugoslavia.
In 1990, Yugoslavia held its first multi-party elections, resulting in nationalist parties winning in several republics.
In 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia, triggering a harsh response from the central government led by Milosevic, who was then serving as the President of Serbia.
Milosevic sent federal troops to prevent the secession of these two republics but failed. Slovenia successfully maintained its independence after a brief war, while Croatia experienced a four-year-long civil war.
That same year, Bosnia-Herzegovina also declared independence, leading to the most brutal and bloody war in Yugoslavia.
The Bosnian War involved three main ethnic groups in the country: Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Serbs, and Bosnian Croats, each supported by neighboring countries.
The war was characterized by atrocities, massacres, rapes, and ethnic cleansing targeting civilians. One of the most notorious examples is the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, where around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb forces.
The Yugoslav Wars finally ended in 1995 after a peace agreement sponsored by the United States was signed in Dayton, Ohio.
The agreement recognized the independence of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and formed a federation between Serbia and Montenegro as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
However, the conflict continued in Kosovo, a province in Serbia with a majority Albanian population demanding independence.
In 1998, an armed rebellion erupted between Kosovo guerrillas and Serbian forces, leading to NATO military intervention in 1999.
NATO conducted airstrikes against Yugoslavia for 78 days until Milosevic agreed to withdraw his forces from Kosovo.
Kosovo was then placed under UN administration and unilaterally declared its independence in 2008.
