{"id":35290,"date":"2017-11-19T03:00:02","date_gmt":"2017-11-19T02:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/35290-the-1990s-balkan-wars-in-key-dates.html"},"modified":"2017-11-19T03:00:02","modified_gmt":"2017-11-19T02:00:02","slug":"the-1990s-balkan-wars-in-key-dates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/35290-the-1990s-balkan-wars-in-key-dates.html","title":{"rendered":"The 1990s Balkan wars in key dates"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Ahead of the judgement Wednesday of Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic, here is a timeline of the 1990s Balkans conflicts that tore apart the former Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

- Bickering after Tito dies -<\/h3>\n

Communist Yugoslavia, which emerged shortly after the end of World War II, was made up of six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Macedonia.<\/p>\n

Following the death of its autocratic leader Josip Broz Tito in 1980, the Yugoslav federation found itself in crisis, with bickering between ethnic groups and surging nationalist sentiments.<\/p>\n

By the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, inter-ethnic relations in Yugoslavia were at breaking point. The first multiparty elections in the republics in 1990 were won mostly by nationalists.<\/p>\n

The most prosperous republics, Slovenia and Croatia, started advocating a greater decentralisation of Yugoslavia's government.<\/p>\n

But the largest republic, Serbia, led by Slobodan Milosevic, rallied fellow Serbs throughout Yugoslavia in a push for centralised control.<\/p>\n

- Slovenia and Croatia declare independence -<\/h3>\n

On June 25, 1991, the parliaments of Slovenia and Croatia declared independence, which led to the deployment of the Belgrade-controlled Yugoslav army (JNA) towards affected borders and airports.<\/p>\n

After a 10-day conflict, the JNA withdrew from ethnically homogeneous Slovenia.<\/p>\n

But in Croatia, Serbian troops sided with ethnic Serb rebels who opposed independence, launching what would become a four-year war.<\/p>\n

The eastern town of Vukovar was razed to the ground during a siege by Yugoslav forces in autumn 1991, while the medieval Adriatic town of Dubrovnik was severely damaged.<\/p>\n

- Bosnian referendum -<\/h3>\n

In Bosnia, the most ethnically and religiously diverse republic and home to four million people, Muslims and Croats organised an independence referendum.<\/p>\n

The move was fiercely opposed by Belgrade-backed Bosnian Serbs, who made up more than 30 percent of the population.<\/p>\n

While Serbs boycotted the vote, 60 percent of Bosnia's citizens voted for independence.<\/p>\n

- Bosnian war -<\/h3>\n

In April 1992 war broke out between Bosnia's Muslims and Croats, who were on one side, and Bosnian Serbs. Bosnia won international recognition a day later.<\/p>\n

Led by Radovan Karadzic and armed by the JNA, the Serbs declared that territories under their control belonged to an entity called Republika Srpska.<\/p>\n

Soon after, Bosnian Croats turned against the republic's Muslims.<\/p>\n

- Siege of Sarajevo -<\/h3>\n

Bosnian Serb troops immediately started a siege of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo which would last 44 months.<\/p>\n

The city's 350,000 residents struggled to get basic necessities and at least 10,000 were killed by sniping and shelling by Serbs.<\/p>\n

By May 1992 Bosnian Serbs controlled two-thirds of Bosnia.<\/p>\n

- Ethnic cleansing -<\/h3>\n

In August the first images of skeletal prisoners in camps awoke the world to the campaign of ethnic cleansing by Serb forces.<\/p>\n

An estimated 20,000 women, mostly Muslims, were raped.<\/p>\n

- Srebrenica massacre -<\/h3>\n

In July 1995 Bosnian Serb forces took over the UN-protected \"safe area\" of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia and massacred up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys.<\/p>\n

Described by two international courts as genocide, the massacre was the worst mass killing in Europe since the end of World War II.<\/p>\n

- NATO airstrikes, Dayton agreement -<\/h3>\n

In August 1995, after the fall of Srebrenica and the bombing of a Sarajevo market in which 41 people were killed, NATO unleashed airstrikes on Bosnian Serb positions.<\/p>\n

On November 21, 1995, following three weeks of talks in the US city of Dayton, Ohio, the leaders of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia agreed to a peace deal.<\/p>\n

In December 1995 a NATO peacekeeping force was deployed in Bosnia, which had been divided into a Muslim-Croat Federation, covering 51 percent of the territory, and a Serb entity, the Republika Srpska.<\/p>\n

- The Kosovo conflict -<\/h3>\n

War then broke out in 1998 in Serbia's southern province of Kosovo between ethnic Albanian rebels seeking independence and Serbia's armed forces.<\/p>\n

The fighting ended in 1999 after an 11-week bombing campaign by NATO, by which time about 13,000 people had been killed and hundreds of thousands had fled their homes.<\/p>\n

Kosovo declared independence in 2008, a move Serbia refuses to recognise.<\/p>\n

- Legal postscript -<\/h3>\n

The International Criminal Court for the Former Yugoslavia, established in 1993, has continued prosecuting those responsible for war crimes since the end of the conflicts.<\/p>\n

It has indicted 161 people, convicted 83 and acquitted 19. Among those sentenced is Bosnian Serb wartime leader Karadzic, while Milosevic died in prison before being judged.<\/p>\n

The court is scheduled to close down on December 31, and a separate tribunal has been set up to handle remaining appeals and other issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ahead of the judgement Wednesday of Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic, here is a timeline of the 1990s Balkans conflicts that tore apart the former Yugoslavia. - Bickering after Tito dies - Communist Yugoslavia, which emerged shortly after the end of World War II, was made up of six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[],"ji_location":[2567],"class_list":["post-35290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-icty","ji_location-international"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe 1990s Balkan wars in key dates - JusticeInfo.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/35290-the-1990s-balkan-wars-in-key-dates.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The 1990s Balkan wars in key dates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ahead of the judgement Wednesday of Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic, here is a timeline of the 1990s Balkans conflicts that tore apart the former Yugoslavia. - 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