Im not from Europe. Can someone explain what are the Balkans exactly and why there’s “beef” between them?
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Many different peoples lived in the Balkans – different ethnic groups with different religions and different languages. There are a lot of mountains and valleys, so it was easy for each “pocket” to develop and live its own way. Then they fought a lot of wars against each other as the Age of Empires broke up in the early 1900s trying to figure out their borders, which involved many local atrocities. In WW2 they were invaded again and the Nazis empowered fascists in certain ethnic groups to be their local rulers who committed far more atrocities. And then Allied sponsored guerilla armies drove out the Nazis. Hooray! And were ready for revenge and committed lots of atrocities against the local fascist groups (and often their affiliated ethnic groups). Not Hooray. Then the Cold War froze things in place (plus exhaustion from WW2). The Cold War ends, and then Yugoslavia, a major Balkan state that was the location of so many battles and atrocities, fractures in the face of Serbian nationalism and leads to a Yugoslavian civil war involving Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, and later Kosovo. Slovenia was in the civil war briefly, but beat the Serbs in a 10 day war and the Serbs decided to focus on Croatia and Bosnia instead.
There’s your short answer. Long answer:
The Ottoman Empire basically conquered all these areas and ruled them for several hundred years. In the 1800s, the Ottoman Empire was fading, and begin to lose control over the areas in the Balkans (both due to revolutions and foreign invasions, like from the Austria-Hungarian empire). As new nations emerged from this, they fought over who got what (with several wars between Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire right before World War I, which redrew borders.
Then World War I redrew borders yet again. So the area is 1) newly independent, politically, and 2) keeps getting the borders changed through wars fought by newly nationalist states, which often leads to a number of atrocities against the losing / conquered ethnic groups – 3 major wars in just 8 years.
So by the time WW2 rolls around, there’s been plenty of recent bloodshed.
Then when WW2 arrives, it’s another opportunity to settle scores from the prior 25 years. When the Germans show up, it uses these divisions to play sides against the other and quickly conquers Yugoslavia with the help of invasions from Hungary and Italy (which had recently invaded Albania) join, and Romania and Bulgaria allow the Nazis to attack from their territory, so the attack is basically on all sides.
The Nazis then empowered a fascist group based in Croatia, the Ustase. These guys are so fascist that even the Nazis are like “hey, calm it down some.” Anyway, they start to engage in lots of genocide and ethnic cleansing while in charge, primarily against Serbs. They consider Bosnian Muslims “Croatian” so they aren’t targeted the same. They primarily targeted “Serbs, Freemasons, and Jews”. The Ustase and the Nazis were fought by the Partisans led by Tito; after he eventually beat these groups in Yugoslavia, the Allies turned away fleeing Yugoslavians and Ustase, directing them to surrender to the Partisans. The Partisans then killed tens of thousands.
Tito then ruled Yugoslavia until his death. He created a federared and decentralized state, with each part of Yugoslavia (Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia) having substantial autonomy and also military forces (so that if there was a Soviet invasion, they had the supplies and ability to operate independently). But above it all was Tito.
After he died, the rule of the country became factionalized, and the local Serbian leaders under Slobodan Milosevic decided to try and increase Serbian power in Yugoslavia at the expense of everyone else. The other parts of the coutnry grew more and more uneasy, until Milosevic tried to “federalize” – under his control – all the military assets. So the other states realized that if they didn’t try to break away from serb domination now, they might not ever be able to in the future, declared independence, and that kicked off the Yugoslavian civil war / Balkan conflict of the 90s.
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