The Conflict Of The Civil Republic Of Yugoslavia

Throughout the past degree programmes, I continuously developed fundamental skills required to any serious historical research: how to collect, evaluate the primary and secondary sources in a critical manner and to derive a logical argument from them. The primary outcomes of this training were research essays that I did for assessment. One example is "Understanding the gendercide of the Yugoslavian civil war, 1991-1995", which was produced for the seminar on contemporary nationalism and gender politics. This one critically reviewed major analytic frameworks on mass war rape, namely biological, feminist, strategic interpretations, and pointed out all of them had failed to take account of the historical process that ‘ethnicised’ of women's body

The Israel-Palestine conflict is one of the most long-term, pressing, and largely confounding social, political, and national quandaries of our age. Since we have been moving with surprising velocity into the vast horizons of globalization, the conflict has built up tremendous momentum and has called into question the adequacy of our current attempts at coming to a peaceful resolution that can simultaneously and successfully address both sides of the struggle. The purpose of this paper has been to understand the prospect of a two-state nation solution for Israel and Palestine. The discussion arises a retrospective view of the context behind the present analysis. We begin with a discourse that informs the reader of the historical narrative between the Jewish inhabitants of Israel and the Palestinians who also seek to live in the lands which comprise Israel. At the forefront of the discussion are some key issues such as trends in Israeli settlement expansion over time, the manner in which these settlements create political challenges towards the prospect of a two-state solution, and the fragmentation of power within Palestinian political parties which inhibit the opportunity for proper negotiations amongst the two parties. Finally, we delve into a discussion on nationalism, it’s importance in the discussion of a two-state solution, and the challenges posed when trying to formulate US Foreign Policy towards the matter.

The essay States, by Edward Said, describes the trouble for Palestinians to find their identity due to the loss of their homeland. He also describes the situation of the Palestinians and the isolation that they feel through photographs that he had taken. Said has many different pictures throughout this essay and each of them play a part in supporting the main point of this essay. Said believes that, without a homeland, the Palestinians cannot have an identity and the Palestinians should not be content with being exiles forever. So the purpose of the pictures is to support and further strengthen this idea. The photographer wants the viewer to understand the struggle that the Palestinians are going through.

The country of Palestine has a unique history that distinguishes it from other nations. In 1948, Israel became an independent nation, covering a large portion of another country called Palestine. Eventually, as time continued, Israel seized the rest of Palestine by 1967. This dominance resulted in the Palestinians lack of a homeland. Due to this, various altercations between both groups of people, the Israelis and the Palestinians, arose. The prospects for a peaceful settlement between both, Israelis and Palestinians, are minimal.

Since the end of World War Two, no conflict in Europe was as barbarous as the Civil War that took place in Bosnia, formerly known as Yugoslavia. In 1992, Bosnians officially declared their independence from Yugoslavia erupting the whole territory into a brutal conflict that left nearly 100,000 dead and 2.2 million displaced people. This disastrous ethnic cleansing involved the breakup of Yugoslavia into six smaller states including: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Macedonia. Upon this division of Yugoslavia, the Bosnians and Croats were able to gain independence from the Serbs through international backing and militaristic strategic advantages from organizations such as the UN and NATO. The main cause of the Bosnian

Throughout Edward W. Said’s essay, “States”, he discusses the past of the Palestinians and expresses the struggles that arose and still occur. Palestinian nationalism was once an independent force in the Middle East. Yet, when the Palestinian’s homeland came to an end, destruction and dispossession began. Various wars emerged leaving the Palestinians to suffer. During this time period of violence, Palestine was being destroyed. In the process, Israel began to take over. Said tries to get readers to see what people don’t see about the hardships that came with being Palestinian. He writes about the destruction of their culture, land, value, homes, and their way of living due to violence.

According to the Cornell University Law School’s ‘Legal Information Institute’, self-determination ‘denotes the legal right of people to decide their own destiny in the international order’. As a major concept of international law, self-determination gives people the right to control their own fates under certain fundamental criteria, and can be claimed by a minority that bases its lifestyle on an ethnic identity that is distinguishable from regular society, with a strong desire for cultural preservation. It has been considered to be a framework with the ability to guide legislative reforms within Australia, with an underlying ‘rights- based’ approach to Indigenous Issues. Self-determination is considered to be an important aspect of the legal system in regards to Indigenous Peoples, as it provides them a process of choice, to guarantee the practice of Indigenous social, cultural and economic needs.

When we look at international law we can see that there is definitely a right of self-determination as defined in 2 covenants (the ICCPR and ICESCR). In both of these covenants in article 1 people “have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”. We can then divide this right, there is the internal self-determination and the rights of the people in the state along with external self-determination which is where a claim directly affects the territory of a state. The Kimeshian case is a case of external self-determination driven by issues of internal self-determination.

The year 1948 witnessed the national independence for Israelis and “Al-Nakbah the disaster” (Sa'di 177) for Palestinian Arabs. Jewish Holocaust, Zionist movement, British interference, Arab awakening, religious conflict and disputes over territory built up into this catastrophic war. In consequence, on the one hand, millions of Palestinian Arabs fled into neighboring Arab countries, refugee camps and western countries (Mattar 395). On the other hand, militarization and securitization in Israel disrupted the normal life of its citizens (Éigeartaigh and Getty 18).

All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.(Bill of Rights)

On July 28 of 1914, a small spark ignited the greatest conflict man-kind had ever seen. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austrian-Hungarian duel monarchy that led to it. It was an event that changed borders, destroyed countries, and ended the lives of millions of people. On that day, Austria-Hungary officially declared war on Serbia as an act of revenge, though had ambitions to take control of Serbian lands. This small event would have big consequences, not only on the nations involved in the war, but on the people of those nations who had to sacrifice so much. During the period immediately following the declaration of war on Serbia, the quality of a person’s life began to drop very rapidly. Pre-industrial warfare is difficult to endure, but when weapons are so deadly that they have the ability to kill thousands in a day, the new warfare is unbearable. Though some in the aftermath of the war would claim that a sense of patriotism or racial superiority drove people to support the war, it is very clear that the general population of the time were overwhelmingly opposed to the start and continuation of the fighting. It was the propaganda of governments that pushed people into supporting the war, though once the devastation was understood, that positivity morphed into terror.

Often termed as Europe's deadliest since World War II, the Yugoslavia War has been infamous for the war crimes, which include ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and rape. These wars supplemented and aided the weathering of the Yugoslav state, when its constituent republics declared independence, but the issues of ethnic minorities in the new countries (chiefly Serbs, Croats and Albanians) were still unsettled at the time the republics were accepted internationally. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established by the United Nations to prosecute these crimes. According to the International Centre for Transitional Justice, the Yugoslavia War led to the deaths of 140,000 people.

In 1992 Bosnia and Herzegovina had one the biggest genocide to come after WWII, in turn killing over 800,000 civilians. The war consisted of two factions, the Croats and Serbs, both wanting territory in Bosnia. Soon Radovan Karadžić, former Bosnian Serb president, created a special army to support the Serbs, soon the Serbs started the new policy for “ethnic cleansing” many areas of non-Serb. For it was later that it was to be decided that is was complete and utter genocide towards the innocent.

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.

The land of Kosovo has been plagued with tension for hundreds of years being claimed by several surrounding countries. The two biggest contenders, Albanians in Kosovo and Serbia have been fighting for the land, which culminated in a full war from 1998-1999. The war brought international attention to the war crimes committed by both sides, and proved that the two countries had years to go before coming to a solution. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) led by Kosovo Albanians, and the Serbian militia led by President Slobodan Milošević committed heinous crimes against their enemies. Crimes range from ethnic cleansing to rape and destruction of whole villages. The violence created a serious refugee problem that is still relevant today.