The settlement of the First World War in the
Balkans established a larger Romania and the new Serbian-dominated
Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (which became Yugoslavia in
1929), subsuming Montenegro. Greece gained Bulgaria's Aegean coastline
but, driven by the same nationalist ardour that marked its participation
in the Balkan Wars and the First World War, suffered a catastrophic
defeat in Anatolia. Bulgaria occupied Macedonia but again failed to
retain it and lost the Thracian coast and some small territories to the
new Yugoslav state. In the aftermath of the war Albania barely
functioned as an organised state.
The nationalist passions that erupted in the
Balkan Wars flared again during the Second World War when the
Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia collapsed during the invasion and
occupation by Nazi Germany and its Bulgarian, Hungarian and Italian
allies in 1941. Fighting continued against the invaders but also among
the various Yugoslav national groups. Serbian units were formed both to
assist the invaders and to oppose them. Croatian and Slovene forces
generally supported the invaders. The largest groups -- the Serbian
Chetniks, the Croatian Ustashe and the Communist Partisans -- at one
time or another all cooperated with the invaders. They also fought among
themselves. Much of the internecine fighting took place in
Bosnia-Herzegovina and in the Serbian inhabited Krajina region of
Croatia, both of which were nominally controlled by the Ustashe, but
which became bloody battlegrounds where Chetnik, Ustashe and partisan
forces fought with and against German and Italian occupation troops and
against each other. The Slavic Muslim population of Bosnia and
Herzegovina was caught in the middle. Some Muslims supported the
Ustashe, who regarded them as Islamic Croats, while others fought for
the partisans. Loyalties of many Yugoslavs often depended upon local
issues. The eventual winners in this multi-sided contest were the
partisans, led by the Communist Josip Broz Tito. After the war Tito
banned any analysis of these complicated events that did not present an
overtly pro-partisan bias. While he was alive his Communist government
appeared to have succeeded in containing the noxious nationalism that
poisoned the region from 1912-1918 and again during the Second World
War.
After Tito's death in 1980, however, the
system he created declined. The disintegration of the Communist regimes
in Eastern Europe in 1989 undermined the legitimacy of the ruling
Communist ideology in Yugoslavia. Nationalism re-emerged. As in 1941
Yugoslavia collapsed along ethnic lines. Again, much of the fighting
occurred in Bosnia and in the largely Serbian Krajina region of Croatia.
Bosnia became the epicentre of the conflicts. This time the Slavic
Muslims, now called Bosniaks, played an important role in the fighting.
Not surprisingly Croat forces assumed Ustashe trappings, while those of
the Serbs emulated their Chetnik forebears. In 1993 and 1994 Bosniaks,
Croats and Serbs fought against each other in Bosnia. Not even the
Bosniaks were united, as the forces of Fikret Abdich in Bihach in
north-western Bosnia fought a separate war. At times they collaborated
with Serbian units, even attempting to establish an independent 'Western
Bosnia'. Only through a NATO imposed alliance between the Bosniaks and
Croats were the Serbs eventually defeated in Bosnia in the summer of
1995. The three sides then negotiated a fragile peace in Dayton, Ohio in
November of that same year.
The Dayton Accords did not bring conflict to
an end in the former Yugoslavia. Between 1997 and 1999 Albanians
revolted against Serbian rule in Kosovo. In 2000 and 2001 the Albanian
minority in Macedonia revolted against the country's Slavic ruler. In
2006 Montenegro, after 88 years of political association with Serbia,
regained its independence. In 2008 Kosovo unilaterally declared its
independence from Serbia. Ironically this left Serbia, the initiator of
much of the fighting that brought about the end of Yugoslavia, with
little more territory than it had in 1912 before the outbreak of the
First Balkan War.
All three Balkan conflicts had some traits in
common. During each of them the major combatants experienced periods of
both victory and defeat. During each of them military and political
alliances proved to be fragile. Allies became enemies. None of the
conflicts achieved decisive results.
Yet the experiences of each Balkan state in
these conflicts also differed significantly. During the Second World War
Albania and Greece underwent German and Italian occupation and
simultaneous civil war. Bulgaria once again took Macedonia but did not
participate in major fighting. Romania suffered catastrophic losses
fighting alongside Nazi Germany in Soviet Russia and then fighting for
the Soviets in Hungary. All of these states largely avoided involvement
in the Yugoslav Wars of the late 20th century.
