Europe | Shadows of the past

The war in Ukraine has awakened memories in the Balkans

There are parallels and contrasts

Yugoslavian soldiers and Serb paramilitaries, including Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic, walk past bombed buildings riddled with bullet holes and streets filled with rubble after a three-month battle between the Croatian armed forces and the Yugoslavian Federal Army in Vukovar. The Yugoslavian Federal Army completely destroyed the Croatian city, killing thousands of civilians, while the Serbian Volunteer Guard, formed by Raznatovic, was responsible for massive ethnic cleansing campaigns against Bosnian Croats. (Photo by Antoine GYORI/Sygma via Getty Images)

Oct 6th 2022|VUKOVAR

Outsiders today have mostly forgotten the Balkan wars of the 1990s. As communism collapsed in Europe, the despotic glue that held together Yugoslavia, a multi-ethnic state, dissolved. The country fell apart. Unscrupulous political entrepreneurs won or cemented power by stirring up ethnic paranoia. Battles were fought over which group controlled which land. Atrocities multiplied. By the time the fighting was over in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, some 4m people had fled their homes and 140,000 were dead. To former Yugoslavs, says Ivan Krastev, a political scientist, the world’s amnesia “is kind of an insult”.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Shadows of the past”