Yugoslavia and its former republics have been a major area of tension and warfare in the 1990s

Question

First discuss the historical, ethnic, linguistic, and religious background of Yugoslavia, and then examine the conflicts of the 1990s, including the reasons for their occurrence and what has been done to settle them.

Answer 1

At the end of World War One, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottomans ended their control of the Balkans, and Yugoslavia was created. Yugoslavia included several different ethnic groups (Slovenians Croatians, Serbs, Bosnians, etc.) whose members were Muslim, Eastern Orthodox Christians, or Roman Catholics. Yugoslavia was controlled by a Serbian king, and was marked by internal tensions. Tensions and conflict increased in the decades that followed. By 1990, the tension increased to the point of major conflict, and Yugoslavia broke up along ethnic lines into its component nation-sates in the succeeding years. The term "balkanization" derives from this experience and describes the geopolitical processes of small-scale independence movements based on ethnic fault lines.