Credit: United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)

The Yugoslav Wars (as known as the The Balkan Wars) were a series of separate, but related ethnic conflicts, wars of independence and insurgencies fought in the former Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2001, which led to the breakup of the Yugoslav state. Its constituent republics declared independence, despite unresolved tensions between ethnic minorities in the new countries, fueling the wars.

Yugoslavia came into existence in the aftermath of World War I, in 1918, as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The creation of the new state was based on the concept of ethnicity, i.e. that the South Slavs share an ethnicity and they should therefore be in the same state. Yet, the term ethnicity used at that time to imply only the notion of “race” and its content was partly biological. Its essence was language. Thus, it was assumed that people speaking the same language were members of the same nation and should in accordance be living in the same state. Hence the South Slavs were all members of one nation. Such projects of social engineering were common in the nineteenth century.

However, the exclusive emphasis on language as the basis of the state’s creation implied that other key elements of identity, such as the South Slav’s distinct histories and previous experiences, their diverse expectations and claims as well as their various religious affiliations, were ignored. This was an important flaw in the creation of the state, as it did not take into serious account the different ethnic identities of its groups and it did not try to form a system that could assimilate them in a way that they would not constitute the base of the 1991 conflict.

The Ethnic Groups of Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia’s ethnic groups were differentiated in their religious beliefs.

Serbs, Montenegrins and Macedonians are Eastern Orthodox. Croats and Slovenes are Roman Catholics, while in Bosnia-Herzegovina there is a sizeable Muslim population. The differentiations in terms of the various religious affiliations created distinctive customs, rituals and beliefs which shaped the everyday life of the groups. The separate calendars, Julian for the Eastern Orthodox and Gregorian for the Roman Catholic, prescribed a separate set of feast days even for the common Christian celebrations.

The people known as Serbs, Bosnian Muslims, and Croats belong to three distinct ethnic groups. All three speak their own dialect of the Serbo-Croatian language.

Originally farmers, Serbs increasingly migrated to cities where they became wage earners after World War II. With their religion being Eastern Orthodox, Serbs are strongly influenced by Eastern European culture. Serbs predominantly populated Serbia with Albanians in its southern region known as Kosovo.

Bosnia-Herzegovina's population included the ethnic groups of Bosnian Muslims, Serbs, and Croatians. Ethnically, Bosnian Muslims (also called Bosniaks) were originally the same as Serbs many centuries ago. However, they converted to Islam in the fifteenth century. Bosnian Muslims traditionally lived in cities working as professionals and in government.

Croats are predominantly rural farmers, but many live in cities of southern Croatia. Croats are strongly influenced by the Western European culture in literature, art, science, and education. They are geographically located near the Italian cities of Genoa and Venice. Croatian culture reflects Italian culture.

The majority of Croatia's population was Croatian, Slovenia's population was overwhelmingly Slovene, Montenegro's was predominantly of Montenegrins, and Macedonia was dominated by Macedonians.

The Wars At Home

Credit: BBC, The Borgen Project, Wikipedia, Encyclopedia, Montclair State University

Credit: Image of War Photography Museum, Zagreb, Croatia

Nationalism and Ethnic Cleansing

The tensions in first the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes and later in Yugoslavia was not the result of varying ethnicities hating the neighbors they had to share a country with, but rather conflicting and competing nationalisms that got in the way of each other because of structural problems in the way the unified state was constructed. Yugoslavia was simply too small for the nationalisms of its constituent ethnicities. What occurred leading to and during the Balkan Wars then was a result of manipulative leaders like Ante Pavlic, Slobodan Milosevic, and Franjo Tudjman, who exploited and manipulated people's nationalist leanings to gain power and prominence.

Nationalism

The very existence of Yugoslavia seemed to defy the history of relations among its different nations, which had already waged one ethnic and religious war among themselves with the collapse of the first Yugoslavia (1918-41). The feeling of ressentiment among Yugoslavia's nations, however, did not emerge from this experience alone. To be sure, Yugoslavia's national groups all share a common history of struggling to save their distinct identities and renew their lost medieval states--a history of repressive domination that fostered disloyal and militant minorities and arrogant and repressive majorities. Almost every one of these peoples has been perceived as a threat to another national group and has felt threatened itself. This general atmosphere of ressentiment, real or imagined, could easily be used to produce the feeling that one's national group was threatened with extinction as the object of another's aggression.

The sheer complexity of the former Yugoslavia's crisis has supported numerous interpretations of its origins. One explanation that has acquired a certain currency is "nationalism as a power game," which views the main cause of the Yugoslav crisis as an ideology (in the sense of "false consciousness") of "aggressive nationalism," perpetuated by members of the old nomenklatura who seek to preserve their threatened positions of power in the face of democratic change. Given that these government bureaucrats, party officials, and military officers were overwhelmingly concentrated in Serbia, this republic was the first to forge an effective conservative coalition under the banner of the old Serbian ideology to inhibit a "democratic revolution" that would drive them from power.

In the "nationalism as a power game" argument, Communist elites in Yugoslavia's other republics faced similar reformist pressures and attempted to duplicate the Serbian leaders' strategy in their own republics. By promoting their own nationalisms, Yugoslavia's other republican leaders acknowledged not only that Serbian threats--real or perceived--must be countered, but that nationalism was the most successful card to play in maintaining their positions of power. Indeed, stirring up nationalist sentiment seemed to be the most convenient strategy for Yugoslavia's republican political elites, particularly when they could easily manipulate public opinion through their control of their respective republic's major sources of information.

Ethnic Cleansing

in the 18th century under Austrian rule and in the 19th century in Serbian and Montenegrin territory, the Muslims were driven out. Subsequently, what happened then in Croatia and Bosnia in 1941 for the first time was ethnic cleansing that was practiced by representatives of a Christian people on another Christian people, i.e. the Croats on Serbs. That would mark the first time that ethnic cleansing was taking place without the Muslims being the victims. That would also be the first time where the proportions were as vast, as systematic, as they were, which was in tune with the fascist Nazi ideology at the time.

Ethnic cleansing is a practice where in a given territory the members of a given ethnic group are eliminated. It means a practice that aims to make a territory ethnically pure. That territory would contain only members of the ethnic group that took the initiative of cleansing the territory. In other words, the members of the other groups are eliminated by different ways, by different methods. Massacred, persecution and submission to pressures to leave.

The destruction of the monuments which marked the presence of a given population in a given territory, for instance, religious places, Catholic churches or mosques are destroyed. Rape was used for the purpose to ethnic cleanse because rape signifies humiliation - humiliation felt by the woman who is raped and by her whole family and the whole group to which she belongs. Rape is something that makes it even more difficult, even more intolerable, to live together amongst the different groups. Returning in the region where rape takes place, it is even more difficult. Undoubtedly, rape is a weapon that has been used systematically.

The first sustained violence between Croats and Serbs did not occur until World War II and while the violence was indeed horrific, it hardly qualifies as ancient. Even then, the violence witnessed did not occur because genocide is a "natural" product of Serbo-Croatian relations, but rather because of the desire of the fascist Ustase to create an ethnically pure Croat state, which in turn called for the elimination of Serbian and Muslim minorities in Croatia. While this does nothing to excuse the horrors committed by the Ustase, it does point to the fact that what occurred was in fact a historical anomaly as opposed to ancient historical hatreds. Although Serbs were by far the most successful "cleansers” during the Balkan Wars, all sides adopted this method in the course of war. Record ethnic cleansing operations were Serbian Operation Horseshoe in Kosovo and Croatian Operation Storm in Krajina.

The Refugees’ Migration: Where Do We Belong?

Credit: History Collection - Christmas during the Croatian War of Independence

When asked about the reasons for their flight, most respondents replied "fear." People who left their homes as early as the spring of 1991 more frequently mentioned direct attacks and ill treatment in general than those who left later. People who fled later expressed a more general fear for life as the war spread and indiscriminate artillery attacks escalated in frequency.

Villages tend to be predominantly Serb or Croat, depending on the region. But in urban areas, Croats, Serbs, Ukrainians, Czechs, Slovaks and Hungarians lived as neighbors and intermarriage was on the rise, with people increasingly identified themselves as "Yugoslav" as opposed to Croat, Serb, Slovene, etc. The war and the ensuing displacement of persons created further polarization and ethnic homogenization: Croats fled mainly to Croatia, Serbs to Serbia and to Bosnia Herzegovina. Clearly, people who spoke one language, shared the same culture and intermarried could only be separated by such violent methods.

The military intervention served only the purposes of Tudjman and Milosevic: it separated ethnic populations, especially where they were geographically and socially mixed and "purified" the newly created ethnic states. Since people did not live in isolated, ethnically pure enclaves, the situation had been a disaster, in particular in binational families - and in some front-line towns fully half of all families were ethnically mixed. Among the many families who resisted separation along ethnic lines, the war produced thousands of stateless persons, with no place to go and no place to go back to. Wherever they reside, Serbia or Croatia, such people are now considered potential enemies, "traitors against the nation."

The fate of such refugees demonstrates the fallacy of ethnic solutions to the Yugoslavian problem. There are about three million Yugoslavs, who are unable to accept ethnic citizenship in place of their Yugoslav citizenship, either because they come from mixed marriages or because they have lived in different parts of Yugoslavia and have established close ties with people throughout the country.

The ethnic aspect of the war meant that return was often complicated. Even after the peace agreement, many internally displaced refugees could not, or were not willing to, return to their former homes in so-called minority areas where they feared persecution. In addition to the economic conditions for the returnees with the official unemployment rate around 40% for most of the post-war period.

Within the Balkans, accommodating refugees had significant socio-economic impacts. For instance, Serbian refugees have reported lengthy processes to obtain citizenship in the former Yugoslav country with which they ethno-nationally identified. Although the breakup of Yugoslavia has profoundly impacted the Balkans, its consequences throughout Europe are sometimes overlooked. For instance, the breakup resulted in migrations of former Yugoslavs to other European countries, including Germany, Hungary, Austria, and Sweden, among others.

The EU is interested in the labor force, not in the human being who provides it. Not even in the labor force in general, but only for those branches of the economy that lack workers. The EU is therefore not a fortress; its migration policies are a sophisticated mechanism for the hierarchical inclusion of migrants on the labor market.

On the other hand, people migrate for various reasons. Obviously, one of the important reasons are “objective” circumstances (wars, natural disasters, lack of prospects, etc.) in the countries of their origin. However, many factors are completely subjective, such as the desire to move, love and establish other kinds of relationships, the wish to live in a specific city, etc. The combination of these reasons is crucial for a person to migrate. Migrant workers therefore are not only in search of employment but they also legalize their residence through mechanisms that a specific state makes available. Since the EU is pushing for labor migrations while restricting other paths for the legalization of residence, this phenomenon increases during times of economic well-being.

European Union (EU)’s “Tolerable” Influence

Initially, all Western European countries granted temporary protection to Yugoslav refugees, specifically Bosnian refugees, at the time of their arrival. Governments were urged by the UN Refugee Agency to provide protection on at least a temporary basis to persons forced to flee from the area. States were asked to keep their borders open to new arrivals, and presented temporary protection as a practical tool to provide protection in cases of mass influx, while alleviating pressures on the reception capacity of the immediately affected neighboring areas. Granting temporary protection in a flexible manner rather than requiring individuals formally to apply for asylum and to have their claims considered would also avoid imposing an undue toad on the asylum procedures of receiving states. For many host countries, it was the only way of dealing with the large influx of refugees without amending or overburdening their asylum systems.

Culturized - Migration_ Yugoslavia War Refugees 2.JPG

In Germany, the majority of beneficiaries of temporary protection hold a toleration permit, which protects them from deportation for renewable periods of six months. As such, they do not enjoy freedom of movement (without special permission) outside their area of assigned residence, cannot collect children's allowances, and are not entitled to family reunification or government-sponsored training courses. Many have been living for years in collective centers, frequently together with asylum-seekers from other parts of the world. Although tolerable for short periods, it is virtually impossible over time to maintain a semblance of normal family life in the setting of a refugee camp, and difficult for persons who have suffered severe trauma, such as those who were driven from their homes at gunpoint, raped or held in detention camps. Some need specialized psycho-social counselling which they cannot afford, or cannot find at their place of residence.

The intertwining of migration regulations and practices is then directed in such a way that the labor force is extracted from migrants when the economy is in an upswing while at the same time keeping them from the benefits and protections of the welfare state, which are based on accumulated years of legal residence. Moreover, [Yugoslavia] migration policy does not enable migrants with temporary work permits to reside legally on its territory if they lose employment – even if the obligations of employers toward their workers have not been fulfilled. In practice, this is achieved through the subtle mechanism connecting the work permit and residency permit. The residency permit is dependent on the work permit, and the latter is arranged by employers, which means that they have in their hands an influential tool for exploitation.

This opens up possibilities for violations of rights in practically all fields and consequently hugely affects migrants’ quality of life. However, many workers agree to this condition with the intention of accumulating enough years of residency status to gain access to free movement on the labor market, free movement within the territory of the EU, and more rights. The damage done by violations of workers’ rights (unpaid salaries, pensions, overtime work, layoffs in cases of sick leave, dangerous working conditions resulting in accidents and other health problems, poor living conditions, lack of free time, rest, and paid holidays, bullying, having to pay for procedures that should be covered by the employer, illegal work, restrictions on forming unions, etc.) in many cases cannot be compensated, since official sanction procedures are ineffective or persons are not allowed to reside in the former-Yugoslavia anymore. They face great obstacles when trying to launch official investigations, since they are illegally residing in certain former-Yugoslavia states, such as Slovenia, (after losing their jobs) and avoid contacts with official institutions, or they are physically absent. A court procedure is expensive and takes a long time, and even if the judgement is returned in favor of the migrant, the money owed is long gone.

Manipulated Purpose

From the beginning of the state’s creation, ethnicity was an important flaw. Ethnicity became the most prevalent element of the groups’ identification. The political elites played a central role, emphasizing the differences, having the power of imposing the vision of divisions, that is the power of making visible and explicit social divisions that are implicit. It was the power to make groups, to manipulate the objective structure of society. Yugoslavia was led to this sad ending mostly due to the emergence of nationalism and, within this context, ethnicity’s politicization offered fertile ground for the nationalistic ideologies to disintegrate the state and lead its people to conflict.