Word: slovenia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Yugoslavia also provides an example of how badly the international community has been fumbling in managing self-determination. The U.S. and the European Community tried to keep the so-called nation together long after that had become impossible. Then they split over whether to recognize the independence of Slovenia and Croatia. The U.N. sent peacekeeping forces far too late and, by making clear that it would not allow its soldiers to become involved in any fighting, effectively signaled Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic that nobody would seriously try to stop his efforts to create a Greater Serbia...
...prospect of Serbian domination under the intolerant Milosevic helped speed the secession of Slovenia and Croatia, whose own fanatically nationalist leader fueled fears among the Serb minority there. It was as the savior of the Serbs who live outside Serbia's borders -- nearly one-third of the community -- that Milosevic entered the fray. His strategy has been simple -- and effective. He stirs up Serbs with talk of imminent genocide, then sets his proxies loose to "protect" them, with fatal consequences for Croats and Muslims. Yet he insists that his aim is not the creation of a Greater Serbia, only...
...Yugoslavia, whose name means Land of the South Slavs, the non-Slavic Albanians were at a special disadvantage. The Slovenes had Slovenia, the Croats Croatia, and the Macedonians Macedonia, but the Yugoslav Albanians never had a republic of their own. Instead, they were concentrated in the province of Kosovo in southern Serbia. Worse luck still, that piece of real estate included the site of the famous battlefield where Lazar lost to Murad...
Until then, the leaders of Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia had by and large been willing to remain with Serbia in a loose federation. But when they saw how brutally Milosevic was dealing with Kosovo, they concluded that he was the embodiment of Serb nationalism at its worst. Wanting no part of his Yugoslavia, they headed for the exits...
...Slovenia departed first, and the federal government's attempt to hold it by , force was cut short by a feisty military defense and the fact that Slovenia had no Serb minority to justify Belgrade's interference. That successful bid for freedom emboldened Croatia, where Serbs are a widely dispersed minority. President Franjo Tudjman's inflammatory and nationalistic rhetoric also stirred Serb fears of a reprise of the genocidal campaign against them by Croat fascists during World War II. Now Bosnia, largely Muslim and Croat but with a 1.4 million Serb ethnic component, has seceded, and Serbia sees the pattern repeating...