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What was Serbia-Bosnia-Kosovo all about?
- Thread starter ronki23
- Start date
Yugoslavia was a country split into religious areas and held together by Tito. When Tito died and communism fell apart the different religious "republics" did what most religion do. I don't know who threw the first stone.
It was both ethnic and religious differences that were involved before the blood stopped flowing.
leov
Well-Known Member
Augustus
…
Was another chapter in the 20th C story of violent nationalism. It really began with the spread of democracy in Europe and the breakup of the continental Habsburg Empire:
“The end of the Cold War was followed by a period of triumphal delusion, with the victorious powers acting as missionaries for their own version of political religion – a belief in democracy as a universal panacea. It was not the first time something like this had happened. A similar response underpinned the ill-fated European settlement that was put in place after the First World War. Woodrow Wilson welcomed the collapse of the Habsburg Empire as leading the way to a Europe of self-governing nations. What followed was an era of xenophobia, ethnic cleansing and ultimately genocide.
Many circumstances led to disaster in inter-war Europe, but the savage logic of national self-determination was an integral part of the process. Enabling rulers to be held accountable and changed without violence, democratic government has definite advantages. But democracy does not always expand freedom, or even prevent atrocities. For the minority populations of Eastern and Central Europe the ramshackle empire of the Habsburgs was a protector. Joseph Roth, one of the most perceptive inter-war European writers, observed that it had come to be believed that ‘every individual must now be a member of a particular race or nation’ – in other words, a member of a group defined by the exclusion of others. A Jew from the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia, Roth viewed the spread of ideas of national self-determination with foreboding. If the Habsburg monarchy collapsed, he feared, the result would be a type of modern barbarism. Mocked as a reactionary, he foresaw Europe’s future with a clarity possessed by none of his progressive contemporaries.” John Gray - Gray's Anatomy
As the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire unleashed nationalist forces that led to WW1, the breakup of Yugoslavia did likewise leading to the (2nd) Balkan War.
Bosnia and Croatia (and other states like Slovenia, Macedonia and Kosovo) were concerned about being dominated by Serbia in a post-communist Yugoslav confederation, and so they moved towards independence.
As they had been part of larger entities, ethnic groupings did not live in neatly defined territorial areas, and this led to competing irredentist claims about what should constitute Serbia, Croatia or Bosnia.
The Serbs who dominated the Yugoslav government and army were opposed to independence and aimed to prevent it militarily, hence the wars. These became particularly messy in certain places where other ethnic groups lived in territory claimed by a different faction (for example Serbs in Bosnia) and who were opposed to being a part of a country ruled by a different ethnic group. This is why ethnic cleansing became an ugly feature of the wars
“The end of the Cold War was followed by a period of triumphal delusion, with the victorious powers acting as missionaries for their own version of political religion – a belief in democracy as a universal panacea. It was not the first time something like this had happened. A similar response underpinned the ill-fated European settlement that was put in place after the First World War. Woodrow Wilson welcomed the collapse of the Habsburg Empire as leading the way to a Europe of self-governing nations. What followed was an era of xenophobia, ethnic cleansing and ultimately genocide.
Many circumstances led to disaster in inter-war Europe, but the savage logic of national self-determination was an integral part of the process. Enabling rulers to be held accountable and changed without violence, democratic government has definite advantages. But democracy does not always expand freedom, or even prevent atrocities. For the minority populations of Eastern and Central Europe the ramshackle empire of the Habsburgs was a protector. Joseph Roth, one of the most perceptive inter-war European writers, observed that it had come to be believed that ‘every individual must now be a member of a particular race or nation’ – in other words, a member of a group defined by the exclusion of others. A Jew from the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia, Roth viewed the spread of ideas of national self-determination with foreboding. If the Habsburg monarchy collapsed, he feared, the result would be a type of modern barbarism. Mocked as a reactionary, he foresaw Europe’s future with a clarity possessed by none of his progressive contemporaries.” John Gray - Gray's Anatomy
As the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire unleashed nationalist forces that led to WW1, the breakup of Yugoslavia did likewise leading to the (2nd) Balkan War.
Bosnia and Croatia (and other states like Slovenia, Macedonia and Kosovo) were concerned about being dominated by Serbia in a post-communist Yugoslav confederation, and so they moved towards independence.
As they had been part of larger entities, ethnic groupings did not live in neatly defined territorial areas, and this led to competing irredentist claims about what should constitute Serbia, Croatia or Bosnia.
The Serbs who dominated the Yugoslav government and army were opposed to independence and aimed to prevent it militarily, hence the wars. These became particularly messy in certain places where other ethnic groups lived in territory claimed by a different faction (for example Serbs in Bosnia) and who were opposed to being a part of a country ruled by a different ethnic group. This is why ethnic cleansing became an ugly feature of the wars
Augustus
…
Religious differences, as is often the case, followed ethnic lines. While they were certainly used as a marker of differentiation, it wasn't in any real sense a religious conflict as the aims were limited and purely ethno-nationalistic in scope.
stvdv
Veteran Member: I Share (not Debate) my POV
These religious ones seem to have a thing with "going against Gods'/Jesus' instruction":
1) Do not judge, so they proselytize
2) Without sin then throw first stone, they throw
However the ethnicity boiled down to Muslims and Christians
In the case of the former Yugoslavia, both groups had the same god and both had respect for jesus (but by different degrees)
I guess we will never know who threw the first stone. It is said the first casually of was is truth.
Augustus
…
Not really. There were a lot more than 2 groups.
You couldn't identify any specific ethnic group purely from knowing if they were Muslim or Christian as there were 2 Muslim ethno-cultural groups and 5+ Christian ones involved in the Yugoslav Wars.
The wars were over independence and self-determination and weren't 'Muslim v Christian'. At one point, 'Christian' Croats fought with 'Muslim' Bosniaks against 'Christian' Serbs; and 'Christian' NATO countries fought with 'Muslim' Kosovan Albanians against 'Christian' Serbs; and 'Christian' Slovenians fought against 'Christian' Serbs, etc.
The problem was that the Serb-dominated Yugoslav Federation didn't want to grant independence to Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, etc and was willing to use force to prevent this, and this was compounded by the fact that, in the event of independence, the irredentist claims of different nations did not reflect the ethno-cultural makeup of the populations living in the lands they claimed were 'theirs': Serbs didn't want to be a disenfranchised minority in Bosnia or Croatia, Kosovan Albanians didn't want to be in Serbia, Croats didn't want to be in Bosnia, etc.
