Yugoslavia Break-up

            Yugoslavia was the country that occupied the territories which stretched from Central Europe to Balkans and this region had a history of ethnic conflicts. It was a conglomeration of six republics and a couple of provinces. However, these would later break and split into independent and sovereign countries but not until after much bloodshed. This break up took place in the 1990s. These countries included Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro. Serbia took with it two autonomous provinces namely Vojvodina and Kosovo. It is important to note that this breakup was fostered by the civil war and the following genocide by the State of Croatia at the time of the Second World War, the formation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the overestimated idea of Greater Serbia and the when the Balkan adapted its policy of Pan-Slavism (Erlanger, 6).

            The break-up was as a result of economic collapse of the country. In the 1960s the economy of Yugoslavia was doing very fine in modern standards. This was until the economic ministrations of the western for a decade had an effect on the country’s economy. This was then aided by half a decade of boycott, disintegration, war and embargo and this ensured that the country’s economy had gone to the dogs (Oberschall, 990).

NATO and United States intervention

            NATO and the United States intervened in a war that lasted from March to June of the year 1999. This offensive by NATO and the United States was code named Operation Allied Force. Four years earlier NATO had been engaged in another war in the region and this time it was bombing Bosnia and Herzegovina in an offensive code named Operation Deliberate Force. These two offensives were only the Major offensive operation in the history of NATO. NATO’s goals and objectives in the offensive were to bring a stop to all military action in the region and to oversee the end of violence and repression that was abundant in the region. They also wanted Yugoslavia to withdraw all police, military and paramilitary force from Kosovo and the stationing of an international military in Kosovo. NATO also wanted the safe and unconditional return of all displaced people and refugees and for them to have access to humanitarian organizations such as the Red Cross. At the same time the Yugoslav government sent out a statement that it was protecting a minority population of Kosovo known as Serbia from being attacked by the Kosovo Liberation Army (Radan, 231).

            The effect of the war was definitely the thousands of casualties both civilian and military. However, other effects were witnessed especially political effects. NATO agreed that Kosovo would be under the supervision of the United Nations and that Kosovo would not be granted independence and this led to Yugoslavia withdrawal of its forces from Kosovo. However, the independence deal was given a three year referendum and it was obvious to the world that NATO and the United States were favoring the attainment of Kosovo’s independence. Russia played a significant role because it initiated a very strong diplomatic negotiation and also were the leading peace enforcers in the country when they took control over Slatina Airport. With this arrangement, the offensive stopped at eleventh June of the same year. President Slobodan Milosevic would later be charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for war crimes and is now facing live imprisonment in The Hague. The economy of the country was badly affected and this played a great role in the coup that overthrew the Milosevic administration (Erlanger, 6).

Turkey and the Break-up

            Turkey is an Eastern Europe country and thus it bordered the former Yugoslavia. So we will study the impact of the Break up to the countries of Eastern Europe. The region is basically a peaceful region albeit the war that breaks up between the countries that broke up from Yugoslavia. This means that Turkey and the other countries have been affected by the break up because of the lack of peace that the countries had been used to. In political interests, the country has suffered because it has lost one of its important trade partners. The former Yugoslavia with its economic strength was a far better trading partner than all other countries that cropped up after the break up combined. Turkey also considered the former Yugoslavia as an ally and hence it was negatively affected by the fact that the country had collapsed and turkey had lost one of its important allies in the region. This loss of an ally brought about other international issues as well and hence Turkey along the other countries in the region were viewed in a bad light by the world as being countries who could not do anything to salvage a country torn between genocides and civil wars. In other fronts many of the refugees and displaced people in the country fled to the Eastern Europe countries and they brought about problems as well to the countries. Turkey was not spared from this problem either (Clines, 1).

Works Cited

Clines, Francis X (30 March 1999). “NATO Hunting for Serb Forces; U.S. Reports Signs of       ‘Genocide'”. The New York Times, p. A1.

Erlanger, Steven (11 November 1999). “Early Count Hints at Fewer Kosovo Deaths”. The New York     Times, p. A6.

Oberschall, Anthony, ‘The Manipulation of Ethnicity: from Ethnic Conflict to violence and War in        Yugoslavia’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, v.23, no.6, 2000, pp.982-1003.

Radan, Peter, Break-up of Yugoslavia and International Law, Routeledge, Great Britain, 2002.