How the break-up of Yugoslavia 30 years ago led to bloody wars and lingering tensions

Peace in parts of Europe is fragile as separatist groups stoke a decades-old fire

Timeline of Yugoslavia's formation and breakup: Nazi soldiers of the German Wehrmacht advance in Nis, Yugoslavia, in April 1941. Getty

Field Marshal Harold Alexander, left, confers over a large map with Gen Josip Tito at the latter's residence, the White Palace in Belgrade. Tito was president of Yugoslavia from 1953 until his death in 1980. Getty

Tito signs the declaration establishing the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia in Belgrade on March 7, 1945. AFP

Personalities attend Tito's funeral at the Yugoslav parliament on May 8, 1980, in Belgrade. AFP

After Tito's death, Serbia seeks to establish greater control over the country, leading to tensions with other ethnic groups. Here, demonstrators attend a Serbian nationalist rally in Belgrade on November 19, 1988, hours after ethnic Albanians took to the streets in Kosovo to protest Serbian repression. AFP

Slobodan Milosevic addresses Serbs in Gazimestan, the field in Kosovo where Serbs lost a battle against the Turks six centuries prior, on June 28, 1989. Milosovic became president of Serbia in 1989. AP

Smoke and flames rise from the walled city of Dubrovnik on November 12, 1991. The city was heavily bombarded by the Serbian-dominated Yugoslavian Federal Army after Croatia declared independence. AFP

A street seller holds a map showing the ethnic distribution of Bosnia-Herzegovina on March 1, 1992 amid a state-wide vote on independence. AFP

A Bosnian soldier returns fire as he and civilians come under fire from Serbian snipers in downtown Sarajevo on April 6, 1992. Serb extremists were shooting from the roof of a hotel at a peace demonstration of about 30,000 people as fighting between Bosnian and Serb fighters escalated. AFP

The old Yugoslav flag, with the Socialist red star symbol, is removed as the new one without the red star is flown on Monday, April 27, 1992 in Belgrade after the proclamation of the constitution in New Yugoslavia. The new state was announced as the unification of Serbia and Montenegro, despite western threats that the new state could lose diplomatic recognition and UN membership as the old Yugoslavia. AP

Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina President Kresimir Zubak, left, looks on as Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, second left, and Republic of Croatia President Franjo Tudjman, right, shake hands on November 10, 1995. Bosnia and Croatia signed an agreement toward reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia. AFP

Hundreds of ethnic Albanians from the Serbian province of Kosovo protest against the inclusion of Serbia and its president Slobodan Milosevic in the peace talks between Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia, on November 19, 1995. AFP

Inside a US Airforce KC-135 tanker for inflight refuelling over the skies of Albania on June 17, 1998, as part of "Operation Determined Falcon". Nato forces stepped up military exercises as the conflict in Kosovo spread beyond the borders of Serbia. Nato would go on to intervene by striking Bosnian Serb forces. Getty

A UK paratrooper captures the attention of young Albanians after a parachute jump on August 17, 1998, during the Kosovo War. Getty

A rebel of the ethnic Albanian UCK movement mans a position on May 13, 2001 in the northern Macedonian town of Slupcane. Fighting ended with a Nato ceasefire monitoring force and the Albanian side agreed to give up separatist demands. AFP

Supporters of Milosevic mourn their idol as they line the route of the funeral procession on March 18, 2006, in Pozarevac, Serbia and Montenegro. He died in his prison cell in The Hague while being tried for crimes against humanity. Getty Images

Montenegrin pro-independence supporters celebrate their newly found independence on May 22, 2006 in the town of Cetinje. Montenegro laid its own claim to nation status after voting narrowly in favour of independence, consigning the last vestiges of former Yugoslavia to history. AFP

Protesters outside the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, on March 24, 2016, before the verdict in the trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. He was found guilty of genocide and sentenced to 40 years in jail over the worst atrocities in Europe since the Second World War. AFP

Signs are changed at the border between Macedonia and Greece near Gevgelija on February 13, 2019, to read North Macedonia after objections from Athens because Greece has a northern province of the same name. AFP

April 27, 1992, marked the end of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It was the culmination of decades of tension within a region deeply divided by ethnic and religious groups and would send the Balkans into a series of wars and massacres. The outcome of the years of bloodshed was seven nations and a fragile peace. Thirty years on, this is under threat from political parties exploiting lingering divisions, all while a new war rages in Eastern Europe.

“The internees are horribly thin, raw-boned. Some are almost cadaverous, with skin like parchment folded around their arms. Their faces are lantern-jawed, and their eyes are haunted by the empty stare of the prisoner who does not know what will happen to him next.”

These were the scenes reported by British journalist Ed Vulliamy at the Omarska concentration camp, operated by the Bosnian Serb army in August 1992.

The inmates were largely Bosnian Muslims captured in a civil war that had started months after the break-up of Yugoslavia on April 27, 1992.

The conflict unleashed savagery not seen in Europe since the Second World War. Tensions and hatred, suppressed for generations, overflowed into 20 years of sectarian and ethnic conflict that would leave at least 130,000 dead and create 2.4 million refugees.

Serious intercommunal conflict will accompany the break-up [of Yugoslavia] and will continue afterward ... The violence will be intractable and bitter.

US National Intelligence Estimate,
1990

It was marked by massacres such as the 8,000 men and boys, all Muslims, murdered by Bosnian Serbs in the town of Srebrenica three years later, in July 1995.

Yet for nearly 40 years, the complex web of nationalities, religions and cultures known as the Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia had known peace and relative prosperity.

“I am the leader of one country which has two alphabets, three languages, four religions, five nationalities, six republics, surrounded by seven neighbours, a country in which live eight ethnic minorities,” was the description of its founding president, Josip Tito.

And it was Tito’s death, in May 1980, that began unravelling Yugoslavia and a return to the centuries of conflict and ethnic tensions that had preceded that brief stability.

The birth of Yugoslavia and Tito's presidency

In June 1914, the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo by a Bosnian nationalist triggered the First World War.

Four years later, with millions dead and the old order of Europe in ruins, a new country — formed from part of a region known as the Balkans and sandwiched between the dying Ottoman and Habsburg Empires — was born in 1918, bringing together Croats and Slovenes under the Kingdom of Serbia.

In 1929, the country was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, or “Land of the South Slavs.”

Nazi Germany invaded in 1941, and a war of insurgency followed, led by communist republican partisans backed by the Soviet Union.

Nazi soldiers of the German Wehrmacht on advance in Nis, Yugoslavia, April 1941. Getty

This National Liberation Army succeeded in driving out Germany and its allies in 1945, with the new People’s Republic of Yugoslavia headed by Tito, the charismatic Serbo-Croat leader of the partisans.

For the next 35 years, he would hold the federation together, the strength of his personality containing the country’s divisions. His version of socialism was absolute, but Tito also resisted Moscow’s authority, with a split from the USSR and its leader Joseph Stalin in 1948.

Instead, the country became one of the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement, along with Egypt and India. Its vision of “socialism with a human face” attracted many admirers, and its sun-soaked beaches and historic sites attracted millions more as tourists.

But it could not last. Tito’s death in 1980 was followed by the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, destabilising Yugoslavia’s economy and leading to a rise of nationalism and calls to break up the country.

Ethnic tensions reach their peak as provinces seek to break off

In 1990, a US National Intelligence Estimate concluded “serious intercommunal conflict will accompany the break-up and will continue afterward".

“The violence will be intractable and bitter. There is little the United States and its European allies can do to preserve Yugoslav unity.”

The prediction of American intelligence officers proved grimly accurate.

A year before the report, Serbia, the largest member of the Yugoslav federation, elected Slobodan Milosevic as its president.

A fervent nationalist, Milosevic's goal was to carve a Greater Serbia out of the collapsing Yugoslavia. Instead, as The Guardian newspaper wrote in his 2006 obituary “From 1991 to 1999, he presided over mayhem and mass murder in south-eastern Europe.”

Croatia and Slovenia were the first to declare themselves independent states in 1991. A 10-day war between Slovenia and the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) resulted in fewer than 100 deaths, a ceasefire and effective victory for the Slovenes.

Croatia’s bid for sovereignty was far more bloody and protracted. An estimated 20,000 people were killed in a five-year struggle where the JNA, effectively the army of Serbia, intervene in support of Croatia’s ethnic Serb population.

To international outrage, the ancient walled city of Dubrovnik was badly damaged in a siege by the JNA, and acts of brutality were committed on both sides before the Croatian army achieved victory in 1995.

Smoke and flames rise from the harbour inside the walled city of Dubrovnik on November 12, 1991, after it was bombarded by the Yugoslavian Federal Army. Peter Northall / AFP

The toll in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina was far worse. Almost half the country was Bosniac Muslims, but a substantial minority were Serbian Orthodox Christians. The declaration of independence in February 1992 led the Bosnian Serbs to form the breakaway Republika Srpska, led by a former poet Radovan Karadzic, who would go on to oversee the genocide of Bosniacs.

More than 100,000 died in the conflict, mostly Bosniac Muslims, and the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, was besieged for three years. Elsewhere, under the command of the Bosnian Serb Ratko Mladić, soldiers raped up to 15,000 women, most of them Muslim.

Bloody wars prompt global intervention

Eventually the world was forced to intervene. At the request of the UN, Nato forces carried out a series of air strikes on Bosnian Serb forces that finally resulted in peace negotiations and the international recognition of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in late 1995.

Nato was forced to step in again in 1999, as an insurgency by the Albanian population of Serbian-controlled Kosovo resulted in more ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians by Serbian forces.

A man visits the grave of his father and relatives killed during the late 1990s war in Kosovo at a cemetery in the village of Rezalle on November 27, 2021. The war between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian guerrillas killed an estimated 13,000 and only ended after Nato intervened. Armend Nimani / AFP

A bombing campaign, initiated by the then US president Bill Clinton, involved aircraft and cruise missiles attacks on hundreds of targets, including several in the Serbian capital of Belgrade.

“We do no favours to ourselves or to the rest of the world when we justify looking away from this kind of slaughter by oversimplifying and conveniently, in our own way, demonising the whole Balkans by saying that these people are simply incapable of civilised behaviour with one another,” Mr Clinton said at the time.

Under UN protection, the Republic of Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, while Macedonia, which had declared independence back in 1991, formally became the Republic of North Macedonia in 2019.

What was once one country is now seven independent nation states.

The International Criminal Court charged a number of Bosnia Serb leaders with war crimes. Karadzic was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity in 2016 and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Milosevic became the first head of state to be prosecuted for war crimes. He died of a heart attack while on trial in 2006. Mladic is serving life imprisonment for his part in the Siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre.

A total of 161 people have been indicted for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, and 90 were convicted.

Impact on Europe today

In 2022, the region is mostly at peace. Millions of Europeans again flock each summer for holidays on the coast of Croatia and Slovenia, now full members of the European Union.

This month, Serbian elections brought a landslide victory for Aleksandar Vucic, and his ruling Serbian Progressive Party.

Mr Vucic, a populist who has progressively clamped down on dissenting voices, has a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and thousands took the streets of Belgrade on April 15 in support of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

As the war rages on, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo have applied to join Nato to both protect themselves and preserve regional security. Internally, decades-long peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina is at risk from the Bosnian Serbs of Republika Srpska threatening to secede and join neighbouring Serbia.

The separatist movement is led by former Republika Srpska president Milorad Dodik, who was placed under sanctions by the US and UK this year for his denial of the massacres in Srebrenica and Sarajevo, and is reportedly backed by Mr Putin.

“These two politicians are deliberately undermining the hard-won peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Encouraged by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, their reckless behaviour threatens stability and security across the Western Balkans,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement this month.

The latest unrest shows just how fragile peace is in the region, as it has been for centuries.