New names, old rivalries

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.