II.

Background

The SFRY was a Communist nation established by Josip Broz Tito after World War II comprising six formally sovereign states: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Serbia had two autonomous regions within it, Kosovo and Vojvodina. These federated states had a complex spread of ethnic communities across them, with only Slovenia and the province of Kosovo (inhabited by ethnic Albanians) more ethnically homogeneous. The major groups, so-called “state-forming peoples”, were the Serbs (in Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, and Macedonia); the Croats (in Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia); the Muslims, also latterly called “Bosniaks” (in Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia); the Slovenes (in Slovenia); the Montenegrins (in Montenegro); and the Macedonians (in Macedonia). In addition, there were many other ethnic communities, of which the most significant were Albanians (in Serbia—primarily in Kosovo; Macedonia; and Montenegro) and Hungarians (in Serbia—primarily in Vojvodina; Slovenia; and Croatia).

The SFRY’s state structure was intended to resolve the nationalist problems, above all between Serbs and Croats, that had thwarted the first attempt to unite the South Slavs, Royal Yugoslavia, after World War I. Tensions then had led to a bloody intra-Yugoslav war (1941-1945). By the beginning of the 1990s, polarized views had emerged of what the future role of the federation should be. With little genuine support for the federation in any of the states, it effectively ceased to function. In this context the inter-communal fabric of this set of states had begun to disintegrate while, in June 1991, two of the states, Slovenia and Croatia, declared that the federation no longer operated and that they were independent states. Macedonia did likewise in September 1991, as did Bosnia and Herzegovina in March 1992.