The Death Of Yugoslavia
For more than three decades, under administrations of both parties, it has been the policy of the United States to support the independence, territorial integrity, and unity of Yugoslavia. President Tito's death comes at a particularly troubled time in international relations. I reaffirm today that America will continue its longstanding policy of support for Yugoslavia and do what it must to provide that support. I pledge again that this Government will not tolerate terrorist acts directed against Yugoslavia or its representatives here.
The Death of Yugoslavia
The Death of Yugoslavia is award-winning tour featuring the complete timeline of birth and death of Yugoslavia. By visiting four locations, we explore Yugoslavia in the Cold War, between the nuclear missiles of both Warsaw and NATO pact. We explore Tito and how his actions have led to the formation of a prosperous non-aligned country. We explore the rise of nationalism after the fall of communism. And finally, we witness the Yugoslavian War. And all of it in the breathtaking locations, unwilling monuments to the existence of a country which died more than 20 years ago, but still vivid in the minds of its former citizens.
Slobodan Milosevic died recently in his prison cell, tried for war crimes by the NATO states that killed his nation, Yugoslavia, with the bombers and troops they sent to back reactionary separatist forces. Questions continue to surround the circumstances of his death.
Finally, a study in central Serbia showed that the rate of decline in deaths resulting from infectious diseases diminished significantly in the period 1987 to 1990 compared with the decline in previous years, attributable to the economic crisis of the 1980s.19 And a study in Belgrade showed an increase in all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality among both women and men from 1975 to 1989.20
Unlike contemporary civil wars in poorly developed nations, in which infectious diseases have been the leading cause of civilian death, in Bosnia, war-related trauma was the leading cause. Between April 1992 and March 1993, 57% of all mortality in Sarajevo was caused by war injuries compared with 4% to 11% in Somalia between April 1992 and January 1993.26 In Sarajevo in April 1993, the crude monthly mortality rate was 2.9 per 1000, compared with 0.8 per 1000 in 1991. The incidence of infectious diseases, of course, increased in Bosnia owing to an inability to maintain water supplies and sewerage systems. Perinatal mortality and spontaneous abortions increased, and average birthweight decreased as a result of the inability to maintain prenatal services. Immunization levels declined among children, but no epidemics or evidence of mass starvation occurred.
Despite the deterioration of public health, trauma rather than infectious diseases remained the major cause of death,27 a direct consequence of the policy of ethnic cleansing that justified gang rapes by soldiers,28 the killing of noncombatants, and their forced transfer from one area to another. While all the warring parties engaged in such behavior, UN observers agreed that Bosnian Serbs caused the vast majority of deaths, as well as most of the forced movement of populations, rapes, and destruction of homes and cultural monuments.29
What evidence exists from previous European wars indicates that as a proportion of all war-related deaths, civilian deaths (defined as caused by wounds resulting from military equipment) have increased dramatically since the beginning of the 20th century. It is believed that occurrences of such deaths were low in 18th- and 19th-century European wars. In World War I, civilians accounted for 19% of all deaths; in the Spanish Civil War, 50%; in World War II, 48%; in the Korean War, 34%; in the Vietnam War, 48%.30 In the Third Balkan War, the contribution of civilian deaths to the total may have been substantially more than 50%, as the data from Sarajevo suggest. Indeed, in Croatia in 1991 and 1992, the proportion was 64%.31 Such high and increasing rates are associated both with the increasing lethality of weapons and with a change in the morality of warfare, which became especially obvious during World War II. Civilians have increasingly been the targets of warfare to both terrorize and demoralize the population and to obliterate the enemy (whether combatant or noncombatant) from the face of the earth.
After minimal fighting early in the war, Slovenia was left to its own devices. In Croatia, however, Serbs had held about a quarter of the territory and caused horrific damage and loss of life until expelled by Croatian troops in 1995. The Serbs fled to Serbia while hundreds of thousands of Croatian refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina fled to Croatia. Hundreds of thousands of Kosovars also fled to Macedonia and Albania in 1999,37 and many Serbs living in Kosovo fled to central Serbia. Thus, compounding the death and destruction caused by the fighting were large population movements. All of this caused severe disruption throughout the former Yugoslavia, with the exception of Slovenia.
The death of Yugoslavia had many witnesses. The most prominent signatures ofthe coroner's report are those of the European Community and the United States.Both Western Europe and American were long-time friends of the deceased,midwifing its birth in the aftermath of one war and helping it through another,protecting it against its rapacious Soviet neighbor, paying the bills for itsprofligacy, and encouraging it on the path to democracy. In Yugoslavia'sterminal ilness the Western countries did what they could to nurse the patientback to health. The Europeans, in the person of Jacques Delors, offered anenormous economic carrot condition on the country's staying together, while theDutch, in the EC presidency, played the role of hectoring father-confessor,urging the invalid to become a better European in order to save its soul. TheUnited States brought to bear the weight of its traditionally good relations,its great power status, and its moral authority to keep the country on theunited and democratic path so hopefully begun by Markovic government in 1989.All in the end was to no avail; like everyone else, the Western countries wereno more than witnesses at Yugoslavia's funeral.
Could it have been different? Were there things the West could have done toavoid the breakup and the bloodshed? Conversely, should we have seen earlierthat Yugoslavia was finished and tried to provide a peaceful burial? Don'tlook for objectivity from me on these questions. I was part of our policy; Ibelieved, and still believe, that it was the right one. I leave it to the Ph.D.candidates to argue the details. In a general sense, I am convinced thefailures do not lie with the Western witnesses to Yugoslavia's death. Thefailures lie within the corpse itself.
Slovenia would almost certainly have tried to stay in Yugoslavia if Serbia hadhad a less aggressive leader; as recently as two years ago Milan Kucan wonelection as Slovene president on a proYugoslav platform. Tudjman, anti-Yugoslavas he is, was floating proposals for a Yugoslav confederation even after thewar broke out, and Milosevic was torpedoing them one after another. As the ECstepped in, Milosevic bobbed and weaved, blocking political agreements andbringing Montenegro to heel when [its president] Bulatovic wavered. Innocentbystanders like Gligorov and Izetbegovic, who sought doggedly to broker aYugoslav settlement, never had a chance against Milosevic's combination ofaggressiveness and intransigence. Historians can argue about the role of theindividual in history. I have no doubt that if Milosevic's parents hadcommitted suicide before his birth rather than after, I would not be writing acable about the death of Yugoslavia. Milosevic, more than anyone else, is itsgravedigger.
While Tito was no nationalist, his methods ironically made the rise of virulentnationalism inevitable. Both elements of Tito's "brotherhood and unity" wereenforced with a police state apparatus. Nationalists routinely went to jail;Tudjman and Izetbegovic, now the presidents of independent republics, both didtime in Tito's prisons. In the decentralized and weak Yugoslavia bequeathed byTito after his death, nationalism, suppressed since the war, awoke like amilitant Rip Van Winkle. Unfortunately, it awoke in a Yugoslavia which had nothad enough democracy to blunt nationalism's antidemocratic character. Moreover,the people who used nationalism most aggressively--Milosevic and Tudjman--hadboth been schooled in Tito's communist authoritarianism. In distinction fromthe less militant nationalism of Izetbegovic and Kucan, they took readily toall the techniques of communist control--mass parties, control of the press,centralization of the economy, and the like. In sum, Tito bears no lessresponsibility for the destruction of Yugoslavia than for its re-creation inthe ashes of World War II.
As insurrection grew and civil war escalated, they strung up bodies along the streets, desecrating the dead as a warning to the living. In Nazi-occupied Serbia, the German occupation regime instituted one of its harshest reprisal policies in Europe, executing 100 civilians for every German killed by the resistance. Tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and suspected Communists were put to death in mere months, after which the remaining Jews were systematically deported to German camps and killed.
A third subset of armed opposition is even more difficult to pin down. Whereas the Chetniks, Crusaders, and Ballists were fighting for a different political vision for the region, other smaller groups seemed to be fighting against the Communists, but without a defined idea of what should replace them. We find within this category Slavic-speaking Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Sandžak, who fought in defense of Islam, as well as Turkish-speaking Muslims in Macedonian cities, who allegedly formed a clandestine movement called Yücel with support of the Turkish consul in Skopje. The Yugoslav courts sentenced three Yücel leaders to death in January 1947 after convicting them of charges of organizing unrest, espionage, preparing terrorist acts, and encouraging Muslims to resist the new Communist regime. 041b061a72