Background Information
- The primary ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia include: the Serbs (the
largest), Bosnians, Slovenes, Croats, and Albanians.
- Of the 10 million Serbians living in the former Yugoslavia, 3 million lived
outside the Serbian province.
- This was the direct result of a deliberate policy by Josip Broz Tito, the
half-Croatian/half-Slovene dictator of Yugoslavia after World War II. Tito
made nationalism a crime and formed intra-national borders which made ethnic
enclaves overlap. As the largest ethnic group, Serbs dominated the government.
- Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the core of the former Yugoslavia. Because
90 percent of its population are of Albanian rather than Serb origins, the
region enjoyed a high degree of autonomy in the old Yugoslavia. President
Slobodan Milosevic revoked that autonomy in 1989 in keeping with his nationalist
campaign for a "Greater Serbia."
- In 1989 the Berlin wall collapsed. Eastern Europe was transformed by the
failure of communism, including Yugoslavia.
- In 1990, the northern Yugoslavian province of Slovenia seceded, followed
in 1991 by Croatia.
- Germany rushed to recognize these new nations, followed by the rest of the
Western nations. This helped promote the civil war which followed, since it
legitimized the claims of Yugoslavian ethnic groups to secede from their republic
and form their own ethnic nations.
- In 1991, fighting broke out in Croatia between Serbs and Croats, and broke
out in 1992 in Bosnia.
- On November 21, 1995, Serbs, Croats, and Muslims signed a peace agreement
brokered by the United States in Dayton, Ohio.7
- Following the Dayton-Paris Agreement in 1995, 20,000 US troops arrived in
Bosnia to help keep peace between the warring parties.
- Kosovo Albanians remained relatively unorganized and nonviolent until the
Kosovo Liberation Army (or KLA, formed in 1993) gained strength, press coverage,
and larger numbers starting in 1997.
- From 1991-98, (according to figures from the Serbian Ministry of Interior),
"Albanian terrorists" killed 20 Serb police officers and wounded 62.
- Between 1989 and 1998, "according to conservative estimates from Human Rights
Watch, scores of people (ethnic Albanians in Kosovo) have been killed by the
(Serbian) police, hundreds have been imprisoned on political charges, tens
of thousands have lost jobs in state industries, and 350,000 have emigrated
because of economic and social marginalization."8
- In summer 1998, Serbian President Milosevic launched a brutal offensive
against Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority. The civilian population was attacked,
villages were destroyed, and thousands of Kosovar Albanians were forced to
leave their homes.
- October 1998: Serbian President Milosevic signed a cease-fire agreement
with U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke.
- January 1999: Serb forces attack Kosovo civilians, killing 45 in the village
of Racak alone. Western press coverage described the massacre as a "crime
against humanity."9
- February/March 1999: Peace talks in Rambouillet, France fail to produce
an agreement Serbs will accept.
- March 25, 1999: NATO launches an extensive bombing campaign against the
military of Serbia.
- As pointed out in several of the bills in Congress prior to the launch of
US/NATO military operations that sought to block such actions, Kosovo is a
province in the Republic of Serbia. Bosnia was an independent, sovereign state.10
- Kosovo lies outside the territorial boundaries of NATO. NATO was originally
created in 1949 with 12 members to counter the threat posed by the Soviet
Union to Western Europe. NATO was created as a mutual defence pacts: if one
nation was attacked, all would respond. There are presently 19 member countries
in NATO.
- More information is available at:
- Also refer to the "Related Links" webpage
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