#2 Resist or Serve! Yugoslavia - 1990 : Prior Instability

The number of participants that took part in the fighting marks the significance of this immerse, international tragedy. Usually wars involve two major protagonists, yet, in the case of the Balkans more than thirteen players took part in it. These participants were: Bosnian Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Serbs, Kosovans, Mecedonians, Montenegrins, Serbians, Slovenians, Vojvodinans, as well as  the North Treaty Atlantic Organization (NATO), the United Nations (UN). Overall it was a very tangled web of interests, that, for many observers seemed to be impenetrable.

Before the disintegration turned into a bloody conflict, the most powerful military organization was Yugoslav People’s Army – called JNA (Jugoslovenska Narodna Armia). It was regular formation, it possessed the usual components of an air force, navy and ground forces. The territorial reserve was called – Territorial Defense Force, it specialized in guerrilla warfare. The JNA was stationed throughout Yugoslavia, in 1990s it was almost utterly self-sufficient in terms of weapon production across the whole spectrum of military hardware, from rifles to battlefield rockets. The Yugoslav weapons industry provided the lucrative source of foreign currency with the international arms trade.

The most powerful nation in Yugoslavia was Serbia, in 1991 the Minister of Defense General Veljko Kadiljevic and his Chief of Staff General Blagoje Adzic were Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia.  In this respect at the end of 1980s JNA gave the military more autonomy from regional political bodies. In 1992 JNA was recognized as the Army of Yugoslavia and the Army of Serbian Republic (B&H), another formation was brought to life as the Armed Forces of the Republic of Serbian Krajina. These new very powerful structures gave Milosevic an unquestionable power, now he could pretend to international negotiators and politician that his hands were clean of the bloodshed, in fact he was all along manipulating events on. From a military perspective the armed forces of Yugoslavia were well-equipped in very respect. It had 180.000 active soldiers (1990), it possessed slightly fewer than 2000 tanks (Soviet T-72, T-54S, T-55S, T-34S, M-4 Shermas)

These powerful units were supported by 128mm rocket system. It superiority was sustained notwithstanding the UN embargo implemented in 1991. Arms embargoes are attempts of international community to reduce the potential for fighting in a specific area. Croatian forces were much more smaller; almost 100.000, luckily, Croatia inherited  some of the largest bases of Yugoslav Navy, the most well-equipped was in Split.

Despite of armed forces, Serbs didn’t possess enough of manpower or equipment to produce a decisive military outcome across all of the region of the Former Yugoslavia.

Military imbalance was a real misery for those civilians of all nationalities caught up. The absence of total victory meant that the cycle of violence, chaos, savagery continued in a slow pace for several years.

Bibliography

1. David Martin, Ally Betrayed: The Uncensored Story of Tito and Mihailovich.
2. "Participation of Former Yugoslav States in the United Nations".
3. Allcock, John B.: Explaining Yugoslavia. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000
4. Cigar, Norman, : Genocide in Bosnia: The Policy of Ethnic-Cleansing. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1995
5. Cohen, Lenard J.: Broken Bonds: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993
6. Fisher, Sharon: Political Change in Post-Communist Slovakia and Croatia: From Nationalist to Europeanist. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006
7. Gutman, Roy.: A Witness to Genocide. The 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning Dispatches on the "Ethnic Cleansing" of Bosnia. New York: Macmillan, 1993
8. Hayden, Robert M.: Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000
9. Owen, David. Balkan Odyssey Harcourt (Harvest Book), 1997
10. Silber, Laura and Allan Little:Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation. New York: Penguin Books, 1997