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The Ten Years' War is a comprehensive reconstruction of the events that shook the Balkans: the responsibilities of Milošević, Tudjman, and Izetbegović, the interminable sieges of Vukovar and Sarajevo, the atrocities of ethnic cleansing, the failures of international diplomacy, the interventions of NATO. In addition to retracing the military events in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia, the authors - Adriano Sofri, Ervin Hladnik-Milharčič, Barbara Gruden, Marco Ventura, Zlatko Dizdarevic, Alessandro Marzo Magno, Marco Cuzzi - piece together the intricate jigsaw puzzle of different ethnic groups and religions, institutional drifts, historical hatreds, hidden interests, and blatant political exploitation that formed the backdrop to the tragedy. A tragedy in the face of which democratic and liberal Europe, as Adriano Sofri writes in the preface, 'has known the failure to help its neighbour, on his street, at his doorstep'.

The Ten Years' War

Author	Alessandro Marzo Magno
Country	Italy
Language	Italian
Publication date	2001
Publisher	Il Saggiatore
Pages	569

Authors

• Alessandro Marzo Magno (Venice, September 1962) is an Italian journalist and writer. After graduating in history from the University of Ca' Foscari in Venice, he started working as an editor for the magazine Diario, as a foreign editor. During this time (for about ten years) he traveled mainly in the Balkans following the events of the wars in Yugoslavia. He currently collaborates with the cultural pages of Il Gazzettino and is the editor of the six-monthly Ligabue Magazine.
• Adriano Sofri (Trieste, 1942) is an Italian writer and journalist.
• Ervin Hladnik-Miharčič (Lubiana, 1954) is a Slovenian journalist, translator and war correspondent.
• Barbara Gruden is an Italian journalist and writer.
• Marco Ventura is an Italian law professor at the University of Siena.
• Zlatko Dizdarevic is a journalist, writer and Bosnian diplomat. He graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Sarajevo and also attended journalism schools in Paris and Lille.
• Marco Cuzzi is an Italian historian . Currently, he is an associate professor of Contemporary History at the University of Milan.

Contents

This volume is both a reportage and a rigorous historical reconstruction of the five wars that raged in the years 1991-2001. It is enriched by biographical profiles of the great protagonists. It is a book written as a multi-voice testimony completed by an appendix who witnessed these events in person.

Book structure

• Preface - Adriano Sofri

• Introduction - Ervin Hladnik-Milharčič
• Part 1. Slovenia- Barbara Gruden

• Part 2. Croatia 1991 - Marco Ventura
• Part 3. Bosnia - Zlatko Dizdarević
• Part 4. Croatia - Alessandro Marzo Magno
• Part 5. Kosovo - Marco Ventura
• Part 6. Macedonia - Alessandro Marzo Magno
• Epilogue - Ervin Hladnik-Milharčič
• Appendix - Marco Cuzzi and Barbara Gruden

Part 1 Slovenia

When Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito died in 1980, underlying ethnic, religious, and economic tensions within Yugoslavia were quick to rise to the surface. In 1989 Slobodan Milosevic, Chairman of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Serbia since 1986, became president of Serbia, the largest and most populous of the six Yugoslav republics.

In April of the next year, Slovenia held its first democratic multi-party elections, won by the DEMOS coalition. On 23 December 1990, Slovenia held a referendum on independence which passed with 88% of the vote. The Slovenian government expected the federal government in Belgrade to use military force to rein in Slovenia's moves toward independence, and they were right. Immediately after the Slovenian elections, the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) announced that a new defence doctrine would apply across the country. On the diplomatic front, neither the European Community nor the United States were willing to recognise the independence of Slovenia and strongly advocated the continuation of a unified Yugoslavia. Slovenia unexpectedly declared independence on 25 June 1991.

On the morning of the 26 of June, the war between Slovenia and the JNA broke out. The initial stages of the war were not decisive as both the Slovenian Territorial Defense and the Yugoslav National Army struggled to gain the advantage. However, the situation changed on July 2 when Slovenia launched an aggressive offensive. Finally, the conflict ended on July 4. The Slovenian military emerged victorious as it defeated the Yugoslav forces. On July 7, representatives from Slovenia, Yugoslavia, and the European Community met at the Brioni Islands. A ceasefire agreement, known as the Brioni Accords was signed between Slovenia and Yugoslavia. This officially ended the war. The recognition of the sovereignty of Slovenia and its official independence were the important components of the Brioni Agreement.

Part 2 Croatia 1991

Following the death of Yugoslav leader Tito in 1980, nationalist sentiments grew in Croatia and other Yugoslav republics.

In 1990 Croatia held its first multi-party election since World War II. Franjo Tudjman, leader of the HDZ party, was elected by appealing to Croatian nationalist sentiments. Once elected, he declared Croatia the home of the Croat people and designated all other ethnic groups as minorities residing in Croatia. The Serbian National Council, with representatives in the Serb-dominated regions of Croatia, responded by declaring the sovereignty of the Serbian people. Local skirmishes, such as the Serbian attacks towards Croatian police units in Pakrac and Plitvice (March 1991), escalated to full-scale war when the Yugoslav general Ratko Mladic led JNA forces and local Serbs in an attack against a small town in the Krajina region. Soon after, the battle of Borovo Selo (May 1991), being one of the first armed clashes of the Croatian War, took place. In the midst of the war, on 25 June 1991, Croatia declared its Independence. In November of the same year, the JNA attacked Vukovar, on the Serbian border, killing hundreds of Croat civilians and soldiers taken from the hospital. A third of Croatia was occupied by Serbs, displacing hundreds of thousands of Croats.

Part 3 Bosnia

As the rise of Greater Serb expansions began to gain traction in February of 1992 a referendum on independence was held in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and 99.7% of voters voted “Yes”. The Bosnian Serb leadership boycotted the referendum to prevent independence but independence was officially declared on 1 March 1992 and internationally recognised by  April 1992.

Shortly after the referendum, Serb forces seized the city of Sarajevo which would lead to a 4 year-long campaign of terror and persecution. From May 1992, Bosnian-Serb Forces under the command of General Ratko Mladić used shelling and sniping to target civilian areas of the city and key institutions, killing, wounding, and inflicting terror upon the civilian population. During this time, almost all of Sarajevo’s cultural, religious, and residential buildings were either partially or completely destroyed.

From January to March 1993, the Bosnian-Serb Forces attacked the Cerska area in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Thousands of Muslims fled to the UN Safe Areas of Srebrenica and Žepa in hopes of finding safety.  Thereafter, Bosnian Serb Forces began to focus particular attention on capturing the strategically located Srebrenica and Žepa enclave and expelling the Bosnian Muslim population that had fled there in the wake of the 1992 and 1993 ethnic cleansing campaigns in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina.

On 8 March 1995, Radovan Karadžić (the political leader of the Bosnian-Serbs), ordered the Serb Forces to eliminate the Muslim enclaves of Srebrenica and Žepa, escalating the strategic objectives of 12 May 1992. On 2 July 1995, Bosnian Serb Forces attacked the Srebrenica enclave. This attack on the enclave continued until 11 July 1995, when Ratko Mladić and the Bosnian Serb Forces entered Srebrenica. Subsequently, those Bosnian Serb Forces terrorised Bosnian Muslims, who were forcibly transferred to areas outside the enclave many of whom fled in a huge column through the woods towards Tuzla (a free territory). The vast majority of this group consisted of civilians. Over 7,000 Bosnian Muslim prisoners captured in the area around Srebrenica were summarily executed from 13 July to 19 July 1995. From August 1995 to November 1995, Bosnian Serb Forces participated in an organised and comprehensive effort to conceal the killings and executions of the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica by digging up and reburying, in isolated locations, bodies exhumed from mass graves. Bodies are still being identified using complex DNA techniques today. 8372 people were killed at Srebrenica with more than a thousand of the victim’s bodies still sadly unaccounted for.

The fighting ended after a NATO bombing campaign forced Bosnian Serbs to the negotiating table, and a peace agreement, the Dayton Accords, was signed in 1995.

Part 4 Croatia 1995

In the summer of 1995, the Croatian military undertook two major offensives to regain all but a pocket of its territory known as Eastern Slavonia. In a major exodus, tens of thousands of Serbs fled the Croatian advance to Serb-held areas in Bosnia and Herzegovina and further to Serbia. The war in Croatia effectively ended in the fall of 1995. Croatia eventually re-asserted its authority over the entire territory, with Eastern Slavonia reverting to its rule in January 1998 following a peaceful transition under UN administration.

Part 5 Kosovo

Kosovo was an autonomous province within Serbia. During former President Josip Tito’s tenure, it was given significant abilities of self-government. But with the ascendance of Slobodan Milošević as President of Serbia, Kosovars saw that their rights were eroded, especially the right to self-government. Soon, Kosovo declared its independence following suit of the other republics.

Nevertheless, Serbia considered the territory of Kosovo to be a part of its historical homeland. Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the Serbian forces waged a bitter battle. Soon enough, Serbia and Kosovo were involved in intense ethnic cleansing. Serbia, in particular, pushed around 250,000 Kosovars off their territory. As a result, Kosovo sought the NATO intervention to secure independence. In 1998, NATO launched air strikes in support of Kosovo. The main difference between this war and the earlier ones was the fact that Russia was stronger and was in a position to help its friend Serbia. But, the political leadership in Russia was not in favour of supporting Slobodan Milošević in his war against the West.

As a turn of events, the United Kingdom wanted to send NATO ground troops in support of Kosovo, and in case NATO refused, it planned to send its Army to act as peacekeepers. This acted as a threat to Serbia in general and to Slobodan Milošević in particular. Finally, the war ended with the signing of the Kumanovo Agreement in June 1999.

Part 6 Macedonia

The last of the six republics of the Yugoslav Federation, Macedonia, declared its independence in the fall of 1991 and enjoyed a peaceful separation. The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (nowadays North Macedonia), populated by a majority of ethnic Macedonians and a large Albanian minority, remained at peace through the Yugoslav wars of the early 1990s.

However, at the beginning of January 2001, the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) militant group clashed with the republic’s security forces with the aim of obtaining autonomy or independence for the Albanian-populated areas in the country. The sporadic armed conflict lasted for several months in 2001, ending with a peace deal, the Ohrid Agreement, that envisaged a political agreement on power-sharing, the disarmament of the Albanian militia, and the deployment of a NATO monitoring force.

See Also

• Yugoslav wars
• Breakup of Yugoslavia
• Bosnian Genocide
• International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Further readings

• Burg, Steven, and Shoup Paul (2015). The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention. London: Routledge;
• Pirjevec, Jože (2001). Le guerre jugoslave. 1991-1999. Torino: Einaudi;
• Rumiz, Paolo (2019). Maschere per un massacro. Milano: Feltrinelli;
• Sekulić Tajana (2002). Violenza etnica. I Balcani tra etnonazionalismi e democrazia. Roma: Carrocci;