Sliding Toward Civil War In Yugoslavia

Communism was the cement that bound the six fractious republics of Yugoslavia together. But as former Soviet Bloc countries turn increasingly democratic, that cement is crumbling. Recent anti-government protests against the hard-line Communist government in the province of Serbia have raised the specter of military intervention to stop the wave of secessionist sentiment that is moving Yugoslavia toward civil war. The crisis in Serbia is just one of the the many issues threatening the future of the country.

GOVERNMENT: The uneven development of democracy in Yugoslavia has added to the already considerable nationalist tensions. While many of Yugoslavia’s republics have shifted toward Western-style democracy, the federal government retains a Communist monopoly on political power, even as it has undertaken market-oriented economic reforms. While Serbia retained its Communist hard-liners in voting last December, Slovenia and Croatia held multiparty elections earlier in the year that brought in anti-Communist governments. The two republics, the most prosperous and westernized in Yuroslavia, are also threatening to pull out of the federation unless it can be restructured along looser lines. Many of the restive republics have begun withholding their financial contributions to the federal government.

THE ARMY: The 180,000-strong federal army is made up of recruits from throughout Yugoslavia, but the top officer ranks are 70% Serbian. Moreover, the officers are loyal to the Communist doctrine that once provided them with relatively lavish pay and privilege. The military’s role in the continuing crisis is an issue of great concern, because any effort to forcibly bring the restive republics into line might bring civil war.

ETHNIC TENSIONS: Serbia and Croatia, the country’s two largest republics, are old rivals with different religions, cultures and now, different political systems. Croatia says Serbia, with its desire for a strong federal government, wants to control all of Yugoslavia; the Serbs say they are threatened by an “anti-Serbian coalition”--meaning Croatia and Slovenia--bent on ending Communist rule. The rivalry is also economic. With half its state-owned businesses verging on bankruptcy, Serbia is also economically strapped. Croatia, by contrast, is still relatively prosperous.

Even smaller regions within the republics are potential flashpoints. When Serbia stripped its Kosovo province of its autonomy two years ago, riots exploded among the majority Albanians, leading to a crackdown by the Serbs, who account for just 10% of Kosovo’s 2 million population. In Croatia, gangs of heavily armed Serbs have opposed Croatian authority in enclaves near the border with the republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, where they are numerically strong.

POINTS OF PROTEST: The spark for the latest protests in Belgrade was the deliberately false reporting by the republic’s state-run media of alleged massacres of Serbs living in an area called Pakrac in Croatia. No massacres had taken place, and opposition groups organized a protest. Slobodan Milosevic, the Communist president of Serbia who has manipulated the news media to fuel ethnic tensions, responded by sending tanks into the streets to crush the protest. This only added to the problem, with the protests escalating over the next several days. The Serbian government finally gave in to many of the protesters’ demands releasing most of the demonstrators who had been arrested. The news media officials responsible for the false reports were fired.

BACKGROUND: National rivalries among the Balkan nations have never been resolved. Eight fractious kingdoms and provinces were merged in 1918 after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish Ottoman empires following World War I. Political and ethnic conflicts escalated into civil war by the early 1940s.

Communist partisan Josip Broz Tito emerged to lead the federation after World War II and managed through personal influence and political repression to keep nationalist outbreaks in check. The constitution drafted six years before his death in 1980 bequeathed a rotating system of leadership designed to prevent any of the six republics or two autonomous provinces from dominating. The federation started crumbling in March, 1989, when changes to the constitution--orchestrated by Serbia--revoked Kosovo province’s autonomy.

Personalities:

Slobodan Milosevic: the Serbian Communist Party chief rose to power by engineering the constitutional changes in 1989 that imposed Serbian authority on Kosovo, the historic heartland of the medieval kingdom of Serbia. The move bolstered national pride among Serbs, who account for 9 million of Yugoslavia’s 23 million citizens, but touched off recurring ethnic clashes with Albanians who want their own republic in Kosovo.

Borisav Jovic: the former head of the eight-man federal presidency and a Communist hard-liner. An ally of Milosevic, he quit after failing to persuade the country’s collective leadership to authorize a state of emergency sought by the army. The resignation has paralyzed the federal presidency.

Prime Minister Ante Markovic: a Croat, Markovic is the first strong federal figure to emerge in Yugoslavia since Tito. He is popular for taming hyper-inflation and introducing market-oriented reforms that have eased Yugoslavia’s economic crisis.

Vuk Draskovic, of the unsanctioned and strongly nationalist Serbian Renewal Party is providing a magnet for Serbs disillusioned with communism. Draskovic, a best-selling novelist, was soundly beaten in the Serbian presidential race last December. His recent arrest by Serbian authorities fueled anti-government protests.

How Yugoslavia was formed The Balkan country was born in the aftermath of World War I as a joint kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

After being occupied by the Germans in 1941, it re-emerged as a Communist-style federation of six “people’s republics” with Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Hercegovina added under Tito.

Population and income Serbia: Population in millions: 9.83 Per capita income: $2,492 Vojvodina: Population in millions: 2.51 Per capita income: N/A Kosovo: Population in millions: 1.94 Per capita income: $750 Montenegro: Population in millions: 0.64 Per capita income: $2,111 Croatia: Population in millions: 4.68 Per capita income: $3,886 Slovenia: Population in millions: 1.95 Per capita income: $10,420 Macedonia: Population in millions: 2.11 Per capita income: $1,658 Bosnia-Hercegovina: Population in millions: 4.48 Per capita income: $1,875 Source: Los Angeles Times

Source: Associated Press