operations in former Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia, operations in former (1991- ). The strategy of ‘ethnic cleansing’, underpinned by ethno-nationalist animosity, was the defining feature of the wars of the Yugoslav succession which erupted after the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991. The purpose of ethnic cleansing was to remove the strategic conditions for potential and actual opposition, whether political, terrorist, guerrilla, or military. Reversing the emphasis of the Mao Tse-tung dictum that the guerrilla is a fish in water, the point of ethnic cleansing was removal of the water. The Serbian campaign was not designed to defeat opposing armed forces as such, but to secure control of territory for a new set of entities that would be free of potentially disloyal communities. To achieve this, ethnic cleansing involved systematic action such as demonstrative killing, including mass murder, rape (see gender and war), mutilation and torture, concentration camps, removal and destruction of property and documentation, and expulsion. The purpose was to induce the population to leave the territory in question. While this was originally a Serbian strategy, in the course of the war similar practices were adopted by Croatian and Bosnian forces. The Serbian campaign involved several types of armed force: the regular army (originally the Yugoslav People's Army, JNA) became formally separated by May 1992 into the OS RSK in Croatia, the VRS in Bosnia Herzegovina, and the VJ in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). This was supplemented by local forces based around some of the old territorial structures and paramilitary groups, such as Arkan's ‘Tigers’, organized by the Serbian Security Service and often recruited from criminal groups, including convicts offered pardons to serve in these units. For the Kosovo campaign in 1998-9, Serbian Interior Ministry Paramilitary Units (MUP) were used. In combat, usually conducted with relatively small units, the JNA and its derivatives provided armour, artillery, and logistics. The other groups generally provided the ‘infantry’ to engage in cleansing operations. In eastern Croatia, for example, one of the defining operations of the war saw the JNA surround and bombard the town of Vukovar for 89 days against around a 1, 500-strong defence force inside the town. This resulted in the total destruction of the town and removal of its population. However, it was paramilitary units that moved into the town to perform ethnic cleansing operations.

Civil war and international operations in former Yugoslavia, 1991-9. Situation in Bosnia, November 1993 (top), showing three-way civil war and UN 'safe areas' and supply routes, and (bottom) the international protectorate in Kosovo, 1999.
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Slovenia was an exception to the states ranged against the Serbian project. It used the General People's Defence Doctrine of the old federation to mobilize its Territorial Defence (TO), backed by a salient media-management campaign, to engage the JNA in a series of armed clashes that could show Slovenia defending itself. The JNA found itself unable to escalate and agreed to a ceasefire after only ten days of fighting in 1991. Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Kosovo Albanians each developed armed forces in the course of the conflict. All had a leading core group (the Croatian MUP, the Bosnian ‘Patriotic League’, and the terrorist nucleus, formed in Switzerland, of the Kosova Liberation Army (UCK) ), loyal to political leadership, around which a large force was formed, embracing various types of local or paramilitary unit. While both the Croatian Army (HV) and the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina (ABiH) were to create the conditions of stalemate in 1991 and 1993 respectively, this was on the basis of particular circumstances: the overstretching of Serbian manpower, despite an enormous advantage in weaponry; large manpower resources, despite weakness in terms of weapons and military training and capability on the part of the Serbian opponents; and the presence of international forces, which, although carrying out different missions in both Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, served to create conditions in which armed forces could be developed (in Bosnia-Herzegovina air and artillery action in 1995 contingently benefited the HV-ABiH campaign). In particular, the HV became the most modern and mobile force among those of the region. Although the HV and its operational arm in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the HVO, fought against the ABiH for most of 1993, by 1995 they had formed an alliance. Based primarily on HV strength, this led to the removal of Serbian control over large parts of Croatia and western Bosnia and Herzegovina. The key operation in this campaign involved the capture of the Kupres Heights in April. This strategic point dominates the Adriatic littoral to the west and central Bosnia to the east. However, when the HV was pulled out of a three-pronged attack on the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Banja Luka in the autumn, the ABiH struggled, succeeding only in capturing the symbolically important town of Prijedor from which it later had to withdraw.

The civil wars provoked international intervention and a debate on the nature and principles of peacekeeping and other operations short of war which continues. In February 1992 the Security Council passed resolution 743, establishing UN protected areas (UNPAs) in Croatia and a protection force: UNPROFOR. In mid-September a separate command for Bosnia-Herzegovina was established: UNPROFOR-2. Through the next three winters the UN attempted to fulfil their mandate of protecting humanitarian aid while avoiding being dragged into the three- or four-sided war. The UN successfully brokered an end to the year-long war between Muslims and Croats in February 1994. Following the Serb destruction of the ‘safe areas’ of Srebrenica and Zepa—which were not safe at all—the international community finally decided to act, with the UN empowering NATO to take action. The Croatian conquest of the Serb Krajina in August 1995 was followed by NATO air attacks which destroyed the Bosnian Serbs' command and control: their prime advantage. On 5 October there was a ceasefire, confirmed by the Dayton Peace Agreement signed on 21 November.

At the end of 1995 a new peace implementation force, I-FOR, arrived in Bosnia including US forces which had been absent during the Bosnian civil war. After a year, on 20 December 1996, this was replaced by a ‘stabilization force’, S-FOR, with the mission of ‘peace-building’. Meanwhile, the West had led the re-equipment and training of the forces of the Muslim-Croat federation, a task which fitted awkwardly with I-FOR's mission to disarm the local factions.

As Bosnia began to recover the war clouds were gathering over Kosovo. During 1998, President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, who had previously avoided indictment as a war criminal because of weak criminal evidence, began expelling Kosovar Albanians from the province in southern Serbia where they formed 90 per cent of the population. This new wave of Serbian ethnic cleansing outraged the rest of the world. After talks at Rambouillet late in February 1999, Milosevic agreed to an international monitoring force, but then reneged on his promise as the ethnic cleansing and atrocities continued. Exasperated, NATO, which had just expanded to embrace three new members, launched bombing raids in March 1999. The declared aim was to protect the Kosovar Albanians, but the raids made their situation worse, as the Serbs immediately struck at them. Whatever military planning had taken place, none had been done to receive a million refugees, who began flooding into Macedonia and Albania faster than before. Rather than forcing Milosevic to back down, the attacks made him more determined and appeared to have stiffened Serb resistance. However, a mixture of military and diplomatic pressure induced him to agree to a Serb withdrawal and an unopposed NATO entry in July. At the time of writing NATO and other forces remain in Kosovo where the remaining Serb population is at risk from revenge attacks by Kosovar Albanians.

— James Gow