THE BALKANS AS AN AREA OF ESCALATED CONFLICT

BY MANIZEH SYED ALI*

Since the beginning of the nineties the Southern Eastern part of Europe known as the Balkans, comprising of the states of the former Yugoslavia; Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia Herzegovina, former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Slovenia, Albania and Greece, have been a constant source of tension and violence for the rest of Europe. At times the disturbances have threatened the territorial integrity of the other nations surrounding the Balkans and spiral into a greater European conflict.  If the conflicts spread across national frontiers then the first to be engulfed will be Greece and Turkey, followed by the Central European states such as Romania and Bulgaria. This will in turn lead to Russia and the Caucasus getting sucked in with other states such as Iran, etc falling like nine pins. This is a scenario, which is too horrifying even to contemplate since it will become a global conflict like World War First and Second.

The present situation whereby Serbia with its sister republic of Montenegro is a virtual international pariah state is as a result of the expansionist, nationalist and short sighted polices made by the Serbian President Slobovan Milosovic. He has led his people into three disastrous wars, crushed democracy and economically destroyed the economic fabric of his state as well as Montenegro's. Milosovic is a Serbian nationalist who wants to become the conqueror of the Balkans and dreams of a Greater Serbia with its visions of a Serbia that includes the entire region of the former Yugoslavia. However this is an idea vehemently opposed to by the other states of the former Yugoslavia who have fought bloody wars with Serbia primarily on the issue of gaining independence from their former motherland. To them Milosovic is a dictator, a tyrant who wants to rule the entire region under the guise of being the upholder of Yugoslavian unity, and one of the most destabilizing factors in the area. However to say that the perception of the region as a source of instability is due to the hegemonic designs of one person would be to grossly exaggerate the situation. Milosovic is merely another player in a long line of other players and factors that have come down through the centuries each adding a volatile element to an already chaotic situation. Also in here are the interests of Greece which shares a common religious heritage with the Serbs, it nearly went to war with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia since after independence from Yugoslavia Macedonia wanted to call itself the Republic of Macedonia. For the Greeks that was unacceptable since they themselves have a province of Macedonia and so did not want the people of that province to join their brethren across the border and unify.  Albania is another state whose chronic political instability and economic weakness after the death of its dictator the Communist leader Enver Hoxha and the issue of the Albanians in the Serb province of Kosovo makes for a murky climate.

The Balkans like other unstable regions such as the Middle East has the weight of history, religious and linguistic differences as a potent and lethal cocktail. Add to that the competing interests of the major powers, theories of nationalism and racial purity and what you get is one incredibly volatile situation with the potential of exploding any time.

As far as historical background goes before Yugoslavia became a nation, the Slovenes, Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, Bosnians, Macedonians, and Albanians had virtually independent histories. The Slovenes struggled to define and defend their cultural identity for a millennium, first under the Frankish Kingdom and then under the Austrian Empire. The Croats of Croatia and Slavonia enjoyed a brief independence before falling under Hungarian and Austrian domination. The Serbs, who briefly rivaled the Byzantine Empire in medieval times, suffered 500 years of Turkish domination before winning independence in the nineteenth century. Their Montenegrin kinsmen lived for centuries under a dynasty of bishop-priests and savagely defended their mountain homeland against foreign aggressors. Bosnians turned to heresy to protect themselves from external political and religious pressure, converted in great numbers to Islam after the Turks invaded, and became a nuisance to Austria-Hungary in the late nineteenth century. A hodgepodge of ethnic groups peopled Macedonia over the centuries. As the power of the Ottoman Empire waned, the region was contested among the Serbs, Bulgars, Greeks, and Albanians, and also was a pawn among the major European powers. Finally, the disputed Kosovo region, with an Albanian majority and medieval Serbian tradition, remained an Ottoman backwater until after the Balkan Wars of the early twentieth century.

It was Joseph Tito who after gaining recognition as a communist guerrilla leader of the Yugoslav Communist Party fighting the Nazis in World War Second was able to combine the disparate peoples of the Balkans into a new state. Tito believed in a federal state with limited autonomy for the provinces and he was able to exercise strict central authority through a policy of strong government and fear. Under communist rule, Serbia was transformed from an agrarian to a predominantly industrial society. After Tito's death, Yugoslavia became increasingly divided over economic policy. Serbia favored strong central state support for the backward south, including Kosovo, while Croatia and Slovenia moved toward a freer market economy. Failure to reconcile these competing objectives contributed to the breakup of the old Yugoslav federation in 1991.

It was the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 that was to prove to be the decisive point in a process of destabilization, which had begun, earlier with the deaths of Tito(1980) and Hoxha ( 1985). The Communist states began collapsing as the winds of change began to grow louder and one by one dictatorial regimes broke down in a spirit of " reverse domino theory". The long hidden feelings of nationalism, religious fervor and desire for democracy erupted with terrifying consequences for the region, with great political and economic turmoil as people began fighting for rights that had for a long time been silenced.  These also affected the Balkans as old rivalries and new political ones threatened to take over from the process of democratic change and economic reform.

In 1991 the ethnic divisions which had long strained the former Yugoslavia and indeed the region as a whole dissolved into the Balkan Wars when the Serbs resisted the  disintegration of Yugoslavia, fearing the consequences for Serb minorities in other  republics. They backed the efforts of the Yugoslav army to prevent the secession of Slovenia and Croatia in 1991 and supported the creation of Serb republics in the predominantly Serb region of Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Serbs' efforts to prevent the independence of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia ultimately proved unsuccessful. In April 1992 Serbia and Montenegro formed a new Yugoslav federation. When Croatian independence was declared on June 25, 1991, armed clashes spread throughout Serb enclaves in  Croatia. This provided a pretext for the Yugoslav People's Army to launch an attack on Croatia; in the ensuing war, the city of Vukovar in Slavonia was leveled  by bombardment, Dubrovnik and other Dalmatian cities were shelled, and about

 one-third of Croatian territory was occupied. Warfare was halted by an agreement whereby foreign troops sponsored by the United Nations were installed in the disputed areas in order to stabilize and demilitarize them.

In early 1990 multiparty elections  were held in Slovenia and Croatia; when elections were held in Bosnia in  December, new parties representing the three national communities gained seats  in rough proportion to their populations. A tripartite coalition government was  formed, with the Bosnian politician Alija Izetbegovic leading a joint presidency.  Growing tensions both inside and outside Bosnia, however, made cooperation with  the Serbian Democratic Party, led by Radovan Karadzic, increasingly difficult. When the  European Community (EC; now European Union) recognized the independence of  Croatia and Slovenia in December, it invited Bosnia to apply for recognition also. A  referendum on independence was held Feb. 29-March 1, 1992, although Karadzic's  party obstructed voting in many Serb-populated areas. Nearly two-thirds of the electorate cast a vote; almost all voted for independence. When Bosnia's independence  was recognized by the United States and the EC on April 7, Serb paramilitary  forces immediately began firing on Sarajevo, and the bombardment of the city by  heavy artillery began soon thereafter. During April many of the towns in eastern  Bosnia with large Bosnian populations, such as Zvornik, Foca, and Visegrad, were  attacked by a combination of paramilitary forces and Yugoslav army units. Most of  the local Bosnian population was expelled from these areas, the first victims in  Bosnia of a process described as "ethnic cleansing." Within six weeks, a coordinated offensive by the Yugoslav army, Serbian paramilitary groups, and local Bosnian Serb forces left roughly two-thirds of Bosnian territory under Serb control. 

A cease-fire negotiated in December 1994 generally held until mid-March 1995. In  May, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces launched air strikes on  Serb targets after the Serb military refused to comply with a UN ultimatum to  remove all heavy weapons from a 12-mile exclusion zone around Sarajevo. Further NATO air strikes against Serb targets in  late August and September, together with a new offensive by the Army of Bosnia  and Herzegovina and Croatian forces in northern Bosnia, helped bring about  U.S.-sponsored peace talks in Dayton, Ohio, in November. Formalized in Paris in  December, the agreement that resulted from those talks called for a federalized  Bosnia in which 51 percent of the land (including Gorazde, connected by a land corridor to Sarajevo) would constitute the Croat-Bosniac federation and 49  percent (including UN safe areas Srebrenica and Zepa, which had fallen to the  Serbs in July 1995) would constitute the Serb Republic.

In early 1998, large-scale fighting broke out in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo, resulting in the displacement of some 300,000 people.   A cease-fire was agreed in October 1998 which enabled refugees to find shelter, averting an impending humanitarian crisis over the winter.  A Verification Mission was deployed under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).  However, violence continued and the situation worsened significantly in January 1999.  Yugoslav military, paramilitary and police forces mounted a systematic campaign of murder, persecution and mass deportation of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians.  A peace conference, held in Paris, broke up on 19 March with the refusal of the Yugoslav delegation to accept a peaceful settlement.

On 24 March, NATO forces began air operations over the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in pursuit of a resolution to the Kosovo crisis.  On 3 June, President Slobodan Milosevic finally accepted peace terms presented by EU envoy President Martti Ahtisaari and Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin.  With the authorization of the United Nations, NATO and Russian forces deployed into Kosovo to begin the task of restoring peace to the province.  By 20 June, all Serb forces had left Kosovo and security matters in the province had passed into the hands of KFOR, the international peacekeeping force.

* M.A (Previous) Department of International Relations, University of Karachi.

All content (C) Department of International Relations, Karachi University

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