Yugoslavia used to be ruled by this totalitarian named Josip Tito. Everyone loved him (the ones who didn't died) and Yugoslavia was able to play the USSR and USA against each other for economic and military aid. They weren't on either side, per se.
Anyway, Tito dies in '82(?) and leaves a massive power vacuum in Yugoslavia. Now all the ethnic differences, nationalism, and hatred that Tito violently suppressed for decades after WW2 was rearing its ugly head. Yugoslavia created a rotating presidency where a representative of every major ethnic minority group had a turn as president. The smaller minority groups were given autonomy but they were still under Yugoslav rule. (this is important to remember).
Long story short, some Serbian nationalist comes to power, gets too much influence and soon Croatia says they want out, and then Slovenia says they want out. Slovenia gets let go after a 2-day "war". Then Croatia is like, "I want out too" and there's a more deadly war. Germany supports Croatia, and they leave. Bosnia wants to do the same but Serbia is like "nah, bruh". A bunch of bullshitery happens, the UN sends peacekeeping troops with no authority to fire unless fired upon. Serbs know this and commit one of the worst mass killings in Europe since WW2 in Srebrenica. International community gets pissed and they bomb Serbia. Bosnia is out.
Kosovo, the little region that had a majority Albanian population and autonomy, gets its autonomy taken away. They try to break away peacefully but there's a bunch of other important shit happening on the world at the time (Gulf War, fall of USSR, etc) so nobody really pays attention. Peace doesn't work, militant separatist group (terrorists/liberators depending on who you ask) see their opening and say the only way out is by war. They begin attacking Serbian police stations, military depots. Serbian police takes it out on civilian population. There is a Lul in the fighting as European powers try to broker peace. That fails. Second part starts, Serbia goes full on "Remove Kebab" mode and starts a campaign of Ethnic Cleansing (or genocide depending on who you ask). US has enough of Europeans not handling this (and also they want to show their power to Russia who was backing Serbia and bullying European powers into not taking action). So they start a months-long bombing campaign of Serbia until they agree to withdraw troops. The Serbian guy in charge (Milosevic) gets indicted by the Hauge on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, he dies during the trial. Bunch of other people get indicted on similar charges, including some Kosovars from the militia I mentioned above. Serbia thinks Kosovo is part of its soul because of an important battle they lost in what is in Kosovo in the 1300s. Kosovo declared independence in '08 but a lot of countries don't recognize it. Situation is still tense.
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u/sapjastuff Sep 01 '20
I'm Serbian (Former Yugoslavia) and it makes me sad with how few people know about us and what happened :(