History in a Nutshell

 

In a few words, it's all incredibly complicated.

Worth reading:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17632399

There were two wars - in 1912 and in 1913 - which stripped the Ottoman Empire of the bulk of its European territory. 

Whilst Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and Serbia had achieved independence under Ottoman rule, they formed the Balkan League in 1912 and attacked the Ottoman Empire that year - Balkan War 1.

The second Balkan War in 1913 occurred when Bulgaria attacked the Ottoman Empire due to its disappointment in losing Macedonia in the first war.

Prior to this, in 1908 Habsburg-ruled Austria-Hungary annexed the province of Bosnia and Herzegovina that was held by the Ottoman Empire. This annoyed Serbia which then launched a coup in 1909 with the help of the Military League, a group of Greek officers.

I DID say it was complicated ...

This was followed in 1912 by a treaty being signed between Serbia and Bulgaria and a pact between Serbia and Montenegro. The Treaty of Bucharest was signed which partitioned Macedonia, made changes to the Balkan borders and established the independent state of Albania. The winners were Serbia, Montenegro and Greece who all gained territory at the expense of Romania and to a smaller extent Bulgaria. 

So ended Ottoman rule in the Balkans. 

However, the situation was inherently unstable. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 sparked WWI and after the war, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was formed comprising several kingdoms of which Serbia was the largest.

This was all undone in WWII when Germany invaded Yugoslavia and territory divided amongst Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria.

In 1945, Tito became the official premier of Yugoslavia and later President from 1953 until his death in 1980. Whilst Tito was an autocrat, for the most part, Yugoslavia was relatively stable during this time as well as economic growth and vast improvements in the standards of living.

However, post-Tito, with the crumbling of the Soviet Union, the rise of Slobodan Milošević as President in Serbia in 1989 and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia became a hotbed of ethnic tensions. In 1991, Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia all wanted independence, paving the way for the Yugoslav Wars which were marked by ethnic cleansing, genocide and other war crimes.

Basically what happened was the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army entered into conflict with Croatia and Slovenia, killing thousands. 

There was a brief pause instituted by the UN in 1992 but Bosnia soon followed due to conflict between Bosnian Muslims ('Bozniaks'), Serbs and Croats which unleashed an appalling wave of genocide pursued by the leader of the Serb Democratic Party, Radovan Karadžić, as he sought to purge non-Serb citizens with tens of thousands of Bozniaks and Croats being killed or driven from their homes. The unrest continued and the capital Sarajevo was shelled and besieged; Bozniaks were expelled in towns such as Višegrad; and Bosnian Serbs perpetrated a massacre of more than 7000 Bozniak men in Srebrenica.

UN intervention failed and in 1995, NATO (finally, after much dithering by the US!!) began a bombing campaign that lasted 10 weeks and ended the Bosnian War; the Dayton Peace Agreement followed.

The next area of conflict was Kosovo which was the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church as well as being the site of Serbian victory over the Turks in 1912. Tensions grew and in 1998 the Kosovan army rebelled against Serbian rule only to have the Serbs crush these insurgents and persecute ethnic Kosovan Albanians. Again NATO  intervened with a 78-day long campaign against Serbian military targets (including the Serbian capital Belgrade) resulting in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people into Albania, North Macedonia and Montenegro. Kosovo came under UN administration until 2008 when it declared independence from Serbia (although Serbia has not recognised this).

Meanwhile, back in 1912 (when the Ottoman Empire collapsed after the Balkan wars) Albania also declared its independence but it was invaded by the Italians in 1939 and then it became a Nazi German protectorate; a communist People’s Republic was formed and the country found itself isolated from the global community during this time. In 1991, the People’s Republic was disbanded and replaced by the democratic Republic of Albania.

Finally it was Macedonia's turn! There had been a huge movement of Kosovan Albanian refugees fleeing from Kosovo across the border into Macedonia. Ethnic tensions mounted, especially in the predominantly ethnic Albanian regions of the country, which bordered Albania to the west and Kosovo to the north. 

Macedonian had declared independence in 1991 and the population of ethnic Macedonian majority and a large Albanian minority lived generally in peace until 2001 when conflict broke between the two due to bans on the use of the Albanian flag and language. NATO began surveillance of the border but sporadic armed conflict continued for 7 months until the Ohrid Framework Agreement was signed in August 2001, although skirmishes continue from time to time.