Civilisation is more than great art and literature.
Where basic human rights to life, liberty and
justice are not held to be sacrosanct civilisation
does not exist. Too often it is taken for granted
by those who enjoy its prerogatives. It is fragile;
the events that took place in Yugoslavia revealed
just how fragile. The reversion to barbarism there
was terrifyingly swift and unexpected. For decades
Yugoslavia, with its beautiful coastline, had been
a popular destination for millions of holidaymak-
ers. No one could have predicted the descent into
violence or the horrifying stories broadcast by
the Western media – the shelling of medieval
Dubrovnik; the deaths of thousands of civilians in
the siege of multi-ethnic Sarajevo, whose citizens
had prided themselves on their cosmopolitan tol-
erance; the pictures of skeletal concentration
camp victims and mass graves of the thousands
who had been butchered in cold blood. Millions
of refugees were forced to flee from one region
to another or left Yugoslavia altogether.
But why was this surge of hatred so surprising?
Perhaps because Yugoslavia was seen as a Euro-
pean country and, despite the Nazi atrocities
perpetrated during the Second World War, the
belief in Western racial superiority had persisted.
At the close of the century savagery might well
occur in Africa or in regions of Asia, but surely
not in Europe or the West. This assumption
proved to be a tragic delusion. Wherever law and
order breaks down, wherever an organised lead-
ership encourages murder and arson in order to
secure power, there are always willing volunteers
who, under the cloak of a cause and protected
from retribution, are prepared to commit horren-
dous crimes. They can be found anywhere in the
world – in Europe, Asia, the Americas or Africa.
Who then was responsible for the conflict?
What were the rights and wrongs? The Serbs
claimed that if Yugoslavia broke up then the fron-
tiers of the multi-ethnic republics should be
redrawn so that all Serbs could live in a greater
Serbia. In 1990 almost a third of the Croatian
Republic was inhabited by a Serb majority; more
than a million Serbs also lived in Bosnia-
Herzegovina. Thus Serbs would be divided
between three republics – Serbia, Croatia and
Bosnia-Herzegovina if their existing frontiers were
preserved. Counter-arguments were put forward
by Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Croatia
resisted Serbia’s claims, asserting that individual
groups could not be allowed to redraw the fron-
tiers of the country they lived in and that the
existing state frontiers of the Croatian Republic
were inviolate. Inconsistently though, Croatia
wanted control of the regions of Bosnia-
Herzegovina inhabited by Croats. The geo-
graphical scattering of Croats, Serbs and Muslims
throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina (later simply
referred to as Bosnia) made it impossible to draw
any coherent frontiers on an ethnic basis. The
Bosnian Muslims wanted to retain a federal struc-
ture that allowed multicultural communities to
live in one republic. Only desperation had induced
Chapter 78
THE WARS OF YUGOSLAVIA
A REQUIEM