Conflict in the Balkans: A Geographical Problem

The maps below show the region that was once united under the name Yugoslavia. In the early 1990s, Yugoslavia disintegrated into several separate republics: Slovenia; Croatia; Macedonia; Bosnia-Herzogovina; and a nation that kept the name Yugoslavia, but was made up of four smaller regions: Serbia, Vojvodina, Kosovo, and Montenegro. During the breakup, vicious fighting erupted, as Serbs and Croatians, and then Serbs and Bosnians, battled for territory. Although the issues behind the conflict are complicated, geography can help explain them.

Characteristics of Place

The foremost place characteristic of the Yugoslav republics is the diversity of their people. When the breakup started in 1991, the largest group in Yugoslavia was the Serbs, followed by the Croats, the Slovenes, the Macedonians, and the Montenegrins. These groups along with fifteen other minority groups formed a population of less than 24 million, living in an area smaller than Colorado.

Other differences derived not from ethnicity but from religion. About 34 percent of the people were Serbian Orthodox Christian, 26 percent were Roman Catholic Christian, 11 percent belonged to other Christian faiths, 10 percent were Muslim, and the rest belonged to other religions.

To outsiders, the differences between these many ethnic and religious groups appear to be minor. After all, 80 percent of all Yugoslavians are descended from people called the South Slavs, who moved into the region centuries ago. And the two largest ethnic groups, the Serbs and the Croats, speak the same language. But the feuds among the groups go back for centuries. One writer noted in 1914 that the region's Roman Catholics, Muslims, and Orthodox Christians "hate one another from birth to death, senselessly and profoundly." As recently as the 1940s, massacres of ethnic groups by other ethnic groups resulted in a loss fo 1,750,000 people, over one tenth of the population. Such mass murder is not easily forgotten.

Can a Geographical Solution Work?

At first glance, the solution to the problem in the republics that formerly made up Yugoslavia seems simple: divide up the land, depending upon where the ethnic groups live, and create separate states for them. This is a geographical solution to a geographical problem. Unfortunately, the different groups often live side by side rather than in distinct ethnic regions. For example, 25 percent of all Serbs live outside Serbia. Though dividing the land along ethnic lines is not practical, that has not stopped diplomats from pursuing just such a geographical solution. One peace plan called for ten separate ethnic regions to be created within the borders of the little republic of Bosnia-Herzogovina. Needless to say, the plan did not work.

Actually, the Serbs have already attempted to apply a geographical solution. They remember that in the massacres of the 1940s, some 350,000 Serbs were killed. Fearing more massacres when the breakup of Yugoslavia came, the Serbs fought in Croatia and Bosnia to carve out a safe homeland for the Serbs there. To accomplish this, they resorted to a practice they called "ethnic cleansing." It involved driving non-Serbs out of certain areas by violent means. World public opinion was outraged at the terrible suffering caused by this push to create distinct Serb regions where none had ever existed.

As Yugoslavia disintegrated and the hardship on all sides increased, people in the West began to ask why the United States and its European allies could not just mount a massive invasion of the little country and set up stable regional governments. After all, they said, the allies had just demonstrated how they could work together by forcing Iraq to give up Kuwait in the Gulf War of 1991. Defense planners, however, pointed out that waging a war in the flat, open deserts of Kuwait and Iraq was very different from waging a war in the Balkan region. In the former Yugoslavia, three quarters of the land is covered by mountains and hills, and broken by deep gorges and swift rivers. One cynical observer in the United States Department of Defense quipped: "We do deserts--we don't do mountains." Thus the biggest obstacle to the geographical solution is geography itself.

Questions:

1. What characteristics of place explains the conflict in the former Yugoslav republics?
2. Why is it difficult to set up political regions based on the location of different ethnic groups in the Yugoslav republics?
3. What characteristic of place prevents outside powers from imposing a geographical solution on the Yugoslav republics?
4. Using the maps below, explain why the Serbs fought against the Croats and Bosnians.
5. If a geographical solution to the fighting in the Yugoslav republics will not work, what kind of solution will? Explain.