The Yugoslav Wars

lol where you live breh

All I know it's something like this.

Bring back Herceg Bosna

It's only fair desu

The Yugoslav wars, were at their core, wars of succession. You can trace the origins of the war back to the treaties ending World War I dividing regions along linguistic lines, but the problems really start with the 1974 Yugoslavian constitution. There was significant confusion between republican and national authority. Yugoslavia was at this point made up of six republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia) and two autonomous regions: Kosovo and Vojvodina. No one can quite figure out how the country is supposed to operate. The only thing holding the nation together is the will and charisma of Tito. Once Tito dies in 1980, Yugoslavia quickly unravels. With Tito out of the picture, something needed to fill that power vacuum and ambitious local politicians would try to do just that. The leaders of the republics either wanted to form sovereign nations, or keep the "prestige" of the Yugoslav name and unite willing nations under their leadership.

Like most things, this starts with money. Yugoslavia's economy was largely propped up by loans from Western banks, particularly France and Germany. Post-Tito, the lenders come to collect and Yugoslavia finds itself in a massive debt crisis; by 1982 they owe $18.2 billion in accrued debt. With that economic unrest comes civil unrest. Albanian demonstrators and Serbian nationalists strain the stability of the national government and place pressure through their actions from 1981 onward. Of particular note is the SANU Memorandum of 1986, which stokes nationalist flames by charging Serbian oppression from the Slovene/Croat majority, reviving the Kosovo Question and declared decentralization the death of Yugoslavia.

If you want a book to start off with, I'd highly recommend Misha Glenny's The Balkans.

Haha thanks for linking my videos :)

Why did the Serbians go mental on Bosnians though?
I know they had squabbles with the Croats historically but it kinda felt like they went super villian on them

Around the same time as the Albanian demonstrations, there were student uprisings at the University of Pristina that were quickly crushed, further entrenching the idea of independence. Protests, skirmishes, and accusations quickly pile up from 1986 onward. On May 28, 1986, a local Serbian politician named Slobodan Milosevic rises to prominence after being elected head of the Serbian League of Communists. He quickly gains power through paramilitary maneuvers through 1988. At the end of the year, the Yugoslav national government resigns thanks to the national debt now rising to $21 billion. Once he becomes President of Serbia, Milosevic ratchets up his feud with Croatian president Franjo Tudman. Like Milosevic, Tudman was a hardcore nationalist with a nostalgic love for the Utatse, the WW2 Croatian puppet regime. The Serbians seized on Tudman's leanings and were broadcast propaganda and biased documentaries with strong racial and nationalist streaks regularly, with the result of putting the fear of revived Chetniks and Ustase.

This escalates to the point where in 1992, Yugoslavia formally dissolves and war begins in earnest. The Gulf War kept Western eyes preoccupied, paying little attention to the growing tensions in fractured Yugoslavia. The UN only took notice after Yugoslavia's dissolution. As the decade continued, incredibly restrictive rules of engagement prevented UNPROFOR from making any serious effort to intervene in further splits in the region such as the violence between Croats and Muslims. UNPROFOR was largely seen as ineffective and notoriously corrupt at local levels.

Good question! The Serbians were operating on strong nationalistic policies, meaning the Bosnians, particularly Bosnian Muslims, were primary targets. Muslim populations near peacekeeping forces were given priority and Sarajevo was hit hard due to being a multicultural city.

The collapse of Yugoslavia was a four war clusterfuck (five, if you count the Macedonian insurgency in 2001) that led to some bugfuck insane things happening (Srebrenica, Sarajevo, US "accidentally" bombing the Chinese embassy). I don't have the patience to piece all this together from memory and my old notes so here, take a Wikipedia timeline as a concession: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_breakup_of_Yugoslavia

One last anecdote to cap off the insanity of the Yugoslav wars: Arkan. Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic was a career criminal, a serial bank robber and two-time prison escapee wanted by Interpol from the 1970's onward before getting the bright idea of being a paramilitary in 1990. Instead of recruiting from veterans like a normal person would, Raznatovic hits up the local soccer hooligans. Members of the Red Star Belgrade fan club Delije Sever become the core members of the Serb Volunteer Guard, or "Arkan's Tigers". They act as Serbia's shock troops; noted for their exceptional violence and committing a host of war crimes. Arkan's forces took a prominent role in the siege of Vukovar in 1991. Arkan himself would be assassinated in 2000 before he could be tried for war crimes.

Meme war by Meme peoples with meme identities

That's some stinky bait. :p

Make more please.

>US "accidentally" bombing the Chinese embassy
I've always wondered about this. The lasting meme is that it was an ''accident'' with quotation marks, but what the fuck did the Yanks actually accomplish by it if it was intentional?

>Especially the utterly retarded UN rules of engagement.

On that note, just heard this anecdote the other day.

>A UN detachment picks up 3 buses of Bosniak refugees fleeing the villages around Banja Luka to get to Jajce.
>get to the Serb/Croatian border in the evening and the serbs won't let them through.
>The "negotiations" continue for a few hours until the UN detachment drives away to a local hotel for food and beds.
>The buses stay at the crossing.
>The serbs proceed to rape the women and grills over the night.
>In the morning, the UN detachment comes back and they're all allowed to continue on their way.

what the fuck

Will admit I'm a bit rusty on the subject. Do remember however that the VRS was thinking twice when engaging French UN peacekeepers following the Vrbanja Bridge incident.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vrbanja_Bridge

Coincidentally, our current Chief of Defence was part of the battle.

Pic related is my feelings to it.

Disrupting Chinese support of Serbia? China backed Serbia diplomatically during the war but I've never heard anything about providing material support. Besides, China had closer relations to Albania than anyone else in the region.

>Kid gets sniped in Syria
>the only viral photo of him is the one where it looks like the UN forces are farting on him

>genociding
You realize that all in all only 30,000 bosniak civilians were killed in 3 years of war?
It's fucking nothing, not even 1% of bosniak population. How is that a genocide at all?

That's not Syria silly.

>30,000 civilians
>fucking nothing
>How is that a genocide at all?
Genocide; noun. - An attempt at extermination through acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, racial, ethnic or religious group as such.

>in whole or in part
So every military conflict and every murder ever commited are genocide since "in part" has no meaning whatsoever.

quite the non-argument you have there.

More proof that albania is the future