Serbian war

Actually, from what I discovered everyone was a nationalist, be they Serb, Croat, Montenegran, Bosnian or just unhappy with their lot.


That is really ignorant.

Not everybody in the Balkans is a nationalist, thats like claiming everbody in the USA is a Zionist, or like claiming that everyboy in the USA likes Obama.

There are still large numbers of Communists in the Balkans [Serbia having the least, and I beleive Slovenia having the most]. Yes, there are nationalists, but not everyone is.

I am friends with fellow Communist comrades in Serbia [And Republika Srpska], and I am proud to be their comrade.
 
Balkan Mig just to clarify my meaning - by Nationalist, I am saying supportinve of their own nation state. In the Former Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) everyone seems to want to be independent of everyone else, that is based on experience and observation - but I am not an expert.

The divisions run along ethnic & religious lines, but the overriding sentiment sems to be that FRY was artificial and as each region should go it separate way, or at least be free to make friends with whoever they want to.

This situation is further confused by the fact that there are no clear geographic divides & that the population has moved around, so you have settlements of one ethnic group sat in the middle of the enclave of another ethnic group & so on.

In summary I'm not talking about political orientation, more about the fundamental divides between the peoples of the FRY.
 
No, in SFRJ everybody co-existed peacefully with eachother, under the leadership of the greatest leader, known as Josip Broz Tito. Serbians and Croats worked and lived together with no troubles [Religiously no, religion was allowed in SFRJ but wasnt popular].

The Nationalism started after Tito died, and when Slobodan Milosevic started turning the country ino a hole.

Most likely, if Tito banned religion altogether, there might not have been such problems with nationalism. But Tito was a kind man, he gave us total freedom to do what we want [Considering if it was legal].

In SFRJ [At least in Tito's time], it would be very hard to find a Croat, Bosnian or Serb arguing amongst each other about religion. That would have been like a Texan arguing with a Californian about whos state is better.

Unfortunately,Tito couldnt live forever. If he could, there would still be great Yugoslavia, not this messup of hotch-potch countries in the Balkans.
 
That is really ignorant.

Not everybody in the Balkans is a nationalist, thats like claiming everbody in the USA is a Zionist, or like claiming that everyboy in the USA likes Obama.

There are still large numbers of Communists in the Balkans [Serbia having the least, and I beleive Slovenia having the most]. Yes, there are nationalists, but not everyone is.

I am friends with fellow Communist comrades in Serbia [And Republika Srpska], and I am proud to be their comrade.


I believe he said everyone was nationalist.And when the war was there it really was such.

As for myself I dislike communists,because i dislike communism.
 
Unfortunately,Tito couldnt live forever. If he could, there would still be great Yugoslavia, not this messup of hotch-potch countries in the Balkans.

Highly doubt it, when Reagan targeted Yugoslavia for economic destruction that was checkmate for the Communist Party and when times are hard old grievances have a way of coming back into the fore front. Yugoslavia was too dependent on trade with the West and loans from Western banks to survive the sudden loss of support from those areas of the world, especially given the poor relationship between Yugoslavia and the USSR, granted Tito was one of the most popular leaders in the world (the massive turnout at his funeral from every country in the world can attest to this) but if the Yugoslav economy that was already in a protracted recession collapsed even Tito would be unable to hold such an unlikely conglomeration of ethnic groups together. Yugoslavia might still be around, but it just didn't stand a chance when the political situation changed and the US decided to pounce on Yugoslavia rather than continue to support the country as it was by no means firmly in the Soviet camp.
 
Yugoslavia's economy would have definitely stammered greatly, but it would have managed to regain itself, maybe not totally, but fairly [From sources, ive heard that Yugoslavia was one of the countries quickest to recover from WW2].
Also, Yugoslavia wasnt a strong trading partner with the west. It had trade with countries that the USA wasnt holding by the balls, and that werent total crap holes either.

Either way, we will never know what happened. Seeing as nobody can live forever, and Tito was only human.
 
As I remember, Tito was the strong man who kept Stalin at bay, and thereby maintained a greater degree of independence than the other satellite countries. We found Yogslavia relaxed and easy to trade with and a favourite holiday choice of many. I never visited myself, but i did travel among the 'Iron Curtain' countries during the cold war.

I was involved in great business ventures with Yugoslav industries for many years in early sixties. The quality of their work was very high and reliable; in the field I worked in, the highest quality of the Iron Curtain countries, a class act. I was absolutely shocked to see Belgrade bombed, I have to say.
 
As I remember, Tito was the strong man who kept Stalin at bay, and thereby maintained a greater degree of independence than the other satellite countries. We found Yogslavia relaxed and easy to trade with and a favourite holiday choice of many. I never visited myself, but i did travel among the 'Iron Curtain' countries during the cold war.

I was involved in great business ventures with Yugoslav industries for many years in early sixties. The quality of their work was very high and reliable; in the field I worked in, the highest quality of the Iron Curtain countries, a class act. I was absolutely shocked to see Belgrade bombed, I have to say.

To me this was the problem, Tito held Yugoslavia together, using a wide range of tactics. He juggled the balls superbly, political unrest was quashed, as was any form of dissent. But when he died there was no one to take over - who had a major power backing them & who was willing to step in & destroy any opposition. The result, is what we have today, a long way from perfect, but better than it was.
 
I totally agree with the last two posts. Id much prefer to live in 50's-70's Yugoslavia than any other place in the world [Particularly Australia, no offence to any Aussies out there].

Once Tito died, everything unwravelled like a Bulgarian sports jacket [I like that metaphor]. And yes, it was much better now than it was during the 80's and definitely the 90's.
 
I totally agree with the last two posts. Id much prefer to live in 50's-70's Yugoslavia than any other place in the world [Particularly Australia, no offence to any Aussies out there].

Once Tito died, everything unwravelled like a Bulgarian sports jacket [I like that metaphor]. And yes, it was much better now than it was during the 80's and definitely the 90's.

I'd rather disagree.I would rather be on my own ground than rich in a country that simply is not mine.:brave:
 
I'd rather disagree.I would rather be on my own ground than rich in a country that simply is not mine.:brave:

Money may not be able to buy you happiness, but it can but a better class of misery & a lot of return aeroplane tickets.

Nature has and still is taking its course in the Balkans, not without cost!! I think that things are somewhat stabilised and at least the population can get on with living a normal life, without the worry of being shot. To me this stands as testimony of the worth of intervention, shame it took so long to actually start getting proactive.
 
The Serbian war was a battle that never finished...The NATO did not take the historic desicion to put land forces in to the war and fight man to man with the Serbians.The Russian fleet was on a move in Adriatic and the Goverment of them was week.It was a decision that it could change the face and the fate of EAurope if we have got a Great Batle wit Serbs and Russians.The Geopolitical win of NATO maybe it would never become the today economic crisis...In the other hand a possible win of Russia it will give an other impact in the pro - conmencon countries future...
Keyrole Country it would be the stance of Greece.
Greece during the bompardment of Beligrade keep an mutual stance of neutruallity..showing to all over the world that she was in a secret ballance beetween the NATO and RUSSIAN sERBIAN oRTHODOX BROTHERS...
The war ennded through diplomacy...and the disputes are still allive in balkans with one historic change ...the Rise of Russia...
 
Greece's position vis-a-vis the balkans is irrelevent to NATO. Greece's only interest in the Balkans is keeping Macedonia and Albania weak; their support for Greek minorities in both countries is excessive and unwarranted.
As usual Greece remained neutral on this issue because it may have been called on to actually fight; the leftist and rightists would have torn the country apart as a consequence.
NATO's 'decision' not to go to war with Russia over Kosovo was largely because they were on NATO's side- Russian forces provided one of the biggest contributions to the peacekeeping effort. Similarly Russia's position on Bosnia was largely pro-NATO; the fate of Serbia concerned them and they did much to redress the bias towards the muslims and Croats in the Western Media but they no more wanted a wholesale slaughter than did NATO.
and the Global Financial Crisis started in America and had to do with house prices being over inflated by cheap finance and lax provisions for repayment. the follow on effect in Europe first hit those economies with a similar housing finance structure- Spain and Britain. the collapse of American Banks then weakened confidence in banks with high leverage- Iceland for example. how does a war in the Balkans in the 1990's affect this?
 
The breakup of Yugoslavia was, in general, a good thing. There was a great flowering of supressed nationalism that resulted in a massive multidirectional civil war. In spite of my support of the breakup of Yugoslavia, I think the massive interference of the US and NATO in the conflict and their demonization of the Serbs was a tragedy which resulted probably in more deaths than would otherwise have taken place. Clinton and his Western European buddies told terrible lies about nearly a million Albanians being slaughtered rather than a few thousand. While Milosevic was no choirboy, his murder while under NATO custody shows he knew where the skeletons were hidden.
 
The breakup of Yugoslavia was, in general, a good thing. There was a great flowering of supressed nationalism that resulted in a massive multidirectional civil war. In spite of my support of the breakup of Yugoslavia, I think the massive interference of the US and NATO in the conflict and their demonization of the Serbs was a tragedy which resulted probably in more deaths than would otherwise have taken place. Clinton and his Western European buddies told terrible lies about nearly a million Albanians being slaughtered rather than a few thousand. While Milosevic was no choirboy, his murder while under NATO custody shows he knew where the skeletons were hidden.

Huh? People were telling lies about the Serbs? Get real, although there were no innocents in the Balkans War, the Serbs definitely got the first licks in on the atrocity front!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_War

I saw the aftermath of this and it wasn't pretty. There is enough blame to go round, but for the UN is that they constrained their peacekeepers hands & allowed more atrocities. The Dayton Peace Accords sorted that, by bringing heavy metal & realistic ROE. As we deployed armour the Serbs decided to try & gain some face by deploting a couple of T-64's (I think) onto one of our MSR's - bad luck as we were just about to roll out the British Challenger & the Dutch Leopard II into their back yard. Needless to say they beat a hasty retreat, much to the dissatisfaction of the cav.

As conspiracy theories go - yours is a doozie, looking forward to the next one.
 
actually i think you will find it was the Croats who scored first in the atrocity stakes after they had more or less kicked the Serbian army out of the country. by then attention was shifting to Bosnia and the Croats took advantage of the distraction to start booting the Serbian minority out of Croatia.
the initial ROE were set by the security council- of which several members might reasonably have expected to be next on the list of settling scores.
the follow up ROE were set by the governments involved- most of whom were becoming unsettled by the lack of control they had over their various militia.
i don't see why there shouldn't just be the one set of ROE for every UN deployment rather than setting it on a case by case basis. if it is clear that these are the ROE when the UN comes riding in it might make people think twice in the first place.
 
actually i think you will find it was the Croats who scored first in the atrocity stakes after they had more or less kicked the Serbian army out of the country. by then attention was shifting to Bosnia and the Croats took advantage of the distraction to start booting the Serbian minority out of Croatia.
the initial ROE were set by the security council- of which several members might reasonably have expected to be next on the list of settling scores.
the follow up ROE were set by the governments involved- most of whom were becoming unsettled by the lack of control they had over their various militia.
i don't see why there shouldn't just be the one set of ROE for every UN deployment rather than setting it on a case by case basis. if it is clear that these are the ROE when the UN comes riding in it might make people think twice in the first place.

I was pretty sure it was the Serbs, but I'm not going to argue as the whole situation was a real buggers muddle and there were generation old grudges that were utilised by the powers that be.

I will have to disagree about the ROE, they were mandated by the Security Council, with individual nations adding self protection codicils, but the main thrust was you cannot do anything without authorisation from the UN our office hours are noon till 1pm Tue, Thu and every other Friday. What disgusts me is that nations signed up to allow this arbitrary control and not enforce basic international law - which is what they were there to do, as well as making sure that no one kicked the ref in the goolies - which they did.
 
Hi there, i live in Serbia, and unfortuntly i have seen 2 wars. From most neutral point of view, there are small number of people that know true about war in Bosnia and Croatia because there was a lot of propagand's warfare. All i have to say about that period is that unfortuntly a big number of people, no metter what side thay belong, lost someone or a whole family in that war for no reson at all.

War in Kosovo started 1999, but Kosovo was a problem about 20-30 years before because Albanian's, that lived in Kosovo, wanted to separate from Serbia(in that time SFRJ). It happend in 1999 when Albanians (OVK) started killing Serbian civilian's in Kosovo. Then Milosevic started sending millitary in Kosovo, and to solve problem one for all he started a operation like Croatians did 1993 with operation "Storm" (operacija "Oluja"). He wanted to exile Albanians from Kosovo, and Kosovo to remain in Serbia. After that NATO started bombing Serbia. Unfortuntly a lot of civilians, again, was killed in that war for no reson. Then in 2006 (or 2007) Albanian people in Kosovo called it independent.

Huh? People were telling lies about the Serbs? Get real, although there were no innocents in the Balkans War, the Serbs definitely got the first licks in on the atrocity front!

I agree with it, but you have to know that 90% of all war crime was not commited by regular army, it was commited by civilians with guns - paramilitary. But do you think that only Serbs commited a war crimes?
 
nobody said that the Serbs had cornered the market on atrocities during the conflict; but there is nothing the muslims or Croats did that came close to a Srebenicza. even the most rudimentary statistical analysis suggests that the Serbs killed almost half again as many civillians as the other two racial groups combined.
the problems in Kosovo/ Bosnia go back further than 20 years ago- to when Serbia was defeated at the Battle of Kosovo in the ?1400's?. ever since there has been a cycle of peasant violence that gave rise to some pretty brutal acts when Serbia gained its independence. Relative peace was restored with the formation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1920. with a Serbian King and a Serbian dominated government there tended to be much favour for Serbian ideas- most notably the attempts to make Serbian the national language and to eradicate Slovenian, Croatian and Albanian. the war years witnessed another round of inter ethnic violence- massacres of entire villages were not uncommon. generally, the Croatians and Muslims supported the Germans and the Serbs supported the Allies, although there were many exceptions. this is to give the conflict itself a higher meaning- Croatians also tended to be monarchists whilst Serbians tended to be communists. whilst there were high minded men and women on all sides, the opportunity to settle scores dating hundreds of years proved too irresistable to some members of these organisations.
it says much of Josip Tito that he not only dreamed of a truly united and equal Yugoslavia but that he managed to enforce that peace. but the period following the war- from May 1945 to early 1946, saw a cycle of revenge attacks as scores built up during the war were settled. because of the concurrent Greek Civil War much of this went unreported in the West. Tito enforced a peace- he did not succeed in uniting the peoples of the various republics. his death was the signal to prepare for the next cycle of violence.
the excesses of the following Bosnian and Kosovo wars were regrettable but inevitable. without a strong moderate at the centre it was only a matter of time before Yugoslavia was torn apart. largely because the Serbians were coming to see Yugoslavia as there own Empire, the split was going to be sooner rather than later.
Slovenia's economic progress was such that the Serbian commitment to socialism was retarding its growth- this served as the catalyst to begin preparations for their independence. how Croatia became involved is not known to me- it seems that the Croatians simply took advantage of the situation in the north, but this does not preclude, by any measure, that their was a collaboration between the Croats and Slovenians. either way the Serbian dominated Yugoslavian army's response was as inept as it was precipitate; by attempting to move out of their barracks it gave the impression that the Serbians were attempting a coup de main against the republican governments- by doing so without even the least of measure of deception it gave the republicans time to prepare. the humiliation of the Serbian senior generals would have great repercussions on the conduct of the Bosnian War.
Montenegro stayed loyal to Serbia- Macedonia took advantage of the political upheavel to break away. The Croatians chose to 'force' out the Serbian minority within its border; though not official policy it was the beginning of the cycle of war crimes. Bosnia was in a unique position- it had no ethnic base to become independent and the influx of Croatia's displaced Serbs led to a steady rise in the cycle of violence. at this stage it would (and probably could) have been divided between Serbia, Croatia and Albania. a number of factors prevented this, not the least Serbian intransigence, Croatian greed, Bosnian stupidity and UN interference.

The Kosovo situation was even more problematic. it had been ethnic cleansing in the early days of the Turkish occupation that had allowed Muslims to become the dominant group in the region- 500+ years ago. because of its symbolic importance to the Serbian people, any attempt to remove it from Serbian control would be met with violence. the important thing to remember here is that after the humiliations in Croatia and Slovenia, the Bosnian war was being fought with militias. the powerful army of Serbia and Montenegro was still largely ready to be deployed- probably keen to make up for the past. it was the presence of regular troops that prompted EU, UN and NATO intervention.
yes civillians died in Serbia; but however unforunate it was the failure of moderate elements to retain or gain control of Serbia that led to the more extreme incidents during the war- indeed popular support during the earliest days of the conflict when it seemed likely that the Serbs would win without provoking Western intervention was in the 80% range. but it was the excesses in Bosnia led to the OVK's actions- do unto others before they do it to you.

even at this time there are more than enough people preparing for a renewal of the conflict to presume that it only awaits the first incident to begin again.

one special feature of these wars was the claim by feminist and human rights groups that pornography led to many of the rape horror stories. having studied many of the incidents in this region in the closing days of World War 2 it strikes me that most are simply repeats of what happened then. perhaps instead of pornography a more insidious instuctor was to be found in Grandpa's war history.
 
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What a sad event whenever innocent women, children and men are massacred.
Albert Einstein had rightly said that 'Nationalism' is the biggest virus that mankind has to fight and advocated the whole world be run by one government, however ridiculous that might sound.
 
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