Croatia Transition

In the period preceding the attack of Serbs, Bosnian army used the ‘safe area’ as a base to attack the Serbian population. Since April 1995, the Serbs took

By eliminating the economic crisis in their countries and establishing a feeling of national security, they raised national pride and patriotism to amazing levels.

One of the youngest nations of Europe, Yugoslavia was created after World War I as a homeland for several different rival ethnic groups. The country was put together mostly from remnants of the collapsed Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary. Demands for self-determination by Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, and others were ignored. Yugoslavia thus became an uneasy association of peoples conditioned by centuries of ethnic and religious hatreds. World War II aggravated these rivalries, but Communist dictatorship after the war controlled them for 45 years. When the Communist system failed, the old rivalries reasserted themselves; and in the early 1990s the nation was rent by secessionist movements and civil war. Within several years these conflicts

By using direct democracy, it allows freedom of speech, which becomes an extremely valued privilege to people. Another good thing was once the decisions were made they immediately

The Bosnian-Herzegovina genocide or “ethnic cleansing” went on from April 1992 to December 1995 around the end of the Second World War. When Bosnia became its own independent nation on April 5th 1922 it wanted to “cleanse” its country of any non Serbian residents. The killing of Bosnian Muslims during this time was stated by international tribunals to be an ethnic cleansing however the events that took place in July 1995 in Srebrenica was so horrific it was deemed a genocide. The United Nations should have intervened a lot sooner than they did and should have sent more than just peace keepers to protect the human beings that were being slaughtered.

Also, voters and politicians now nominated candidates, rather than the political party leaders in Congress. This and other events led to a more democratic society.

Managed to tap into and help shape an electorate that accepts any variety of attitudes and belief-sets that would have been unthinkable even twenty

For the third engaged activity, I decided to attend a lecture on April 24th by Martin Previsic, a professor at the University of Zagreb who specializes in Croatian history. Previsic’s lecture was titled “The Yugoslav Gulag: The Goli otok (Barren Island) Labor Camp, 1949-1956.” Previsic’s lecture revolved around the time period of the “Tito-Stalin split”, which was an era marked as being the end of mutual relations between the Soviet Union and the former country of Yugoslavia. The spit, initially occurring shortly after WWII in 1948, was caused due to conflicting political interests of Yugoslavia’s leader Josip Tito and the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin. Though they had relations prior, Tito and the Yugoslavian government no longer wanted

The Yugoslav army was made up of Serbs, controlled by Milosevic. Croatia is where the first huge exterminations occurred shortly after they declared their independence from Yugoslavia. This resulted in hundreds of Croat men deceased. In 1992, Bosnia declared their independence from Yugoslavia. Bosnia was a majority Muslim population. Serbs believed that Muslims were an inferior race (Mike). Serbs placed Bosniak Muslims and Croats into concentration camps as a way to “Ethnically Cleanse” the nations. Two of the camps, Omarska and Keraterm, were places where killings, torture and brutal violence was happening. Another camp, Trnopolje, was a camp were mostly women, children, and elderly men were placed. This camp functioned as a staging area for rapes and massive killings. No other country knew about this as the Serbs were keeping it a secret. (REMEMBERING CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN

The Albanians were the majority and the Serbians being the minority. In this situation, the Serbians oppressed the Albanians. In retaliation, the Albanians formed a terrorist group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) which was a terrorist group that fought for the rights of the Albanians. The various actions taken by the KLA caused NATO involvement. Their involvement required a series of air raids and bombings to flush the Serbian people out of Kosovo. However, the story gets much deeper than that.

In long history of Croatia we were in many wars with various countries. One of them was Ottoman Empire. As a part of Venetian Republic, Croats gave their contribution in defending their own land during two Ottoman-Venetian wars: War of Cyprus (1570.-1573.) and Cretan war (1645.-1669.). Venice defended Dalmatia to prevent penetration of the Turks in the Apennine peninsula, protect Christian civilization, and the biggest reason was successful trade that took place in

this, the Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs went in an all-out Civil War. Slobodan Milosevic supplied

At the end of 1991, a ceasefire agreement was created by US between Serbs and Croats fighting in Croatia. The separation of Bosnia from Yugoslavia was recognized by Europe and US in April 1992. UN then imposed economic sanctions and peacekeeping troops that couldn't fight but only stand there. At the end of 1992, the newly elected Bill Clinton, along with NATO, Serbs withdraw weapons from Sarajevo and stop conflict. Surprisingly, Serbs did this. The US then worked to unite the Bosnians and Croatians. However, Serbs were still persecuting the Muslims. Meanwhile, the UN peacekeepers made Safe Havens where fleeing Bosnians could go. However, since they couldn’t fight, these Safe Havens weren't very safe. The Serbs came to one of them and killed

Known as Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II, the Yugoslav Wars (also known as the Wars of Yugoslav Succession, the Yugoslav Civil War, or the War in the Balkans) were a series of wars fought in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Though the entire conflict can be divided up into four distinct wars, they are related due to their common origin and the presence of the same ethnoreligious groups in the multiple wars. These wars have become notorious due to the atrocious war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by all sides.

Operation Oluja is the largest military operation in Croatian history, as well as a decisive turning point in the overall conflict on the territory of former Yugoslavia. With Operation Oluja around 14 % of the total territory of the Republic of Croatia was liberated. Its ending and results marked the collapse of the Greater Serbia idea of uniting all Serbian countries in former Yugoslavia and the creation of Greater Serbia. It changed the strategic force ratio in the region, which directly influenced the bringing of the Serbs to the negotiating table. It took the change of the strategic situation, which had been brought about by Croatian military successes, to create the conditions for the implementation of US-led peacekeeping initiatives of USA, Germany, France, Great Britain and Russia” , as well as for the signing of the Dayton Agreement and a complete cessation of military operations in Croatia and BiH.