When Elephants Fight by Eric Walters Page A

II.
1945–1981
    At the conclusion of this war, and the defeat of Nazi Germany, all of Europe was reformed. During the reformation, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia came under the control of the leader of the resistance movement, Joseph Tito. Tito, whose father was Croatian and his mother Slovenian, brought together six republics, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Slovenia and Montenegro, and two provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina, to form the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. Under his iron rule, he was able to keep ethnic differencesand national sentiments in check and created a pan-Slavic country.
    The conclusion of World War II was also the beginning of a further conflict, which was called the Cold War. This pitted the forces of Western Europe and capitalism and democracy, unofficially led by the United States, against Eastern Europe and communism, led by the Soviet Union. These two armed forces became NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the Warsaw Pact, respectively. While the two forces never engaged in armed conflict, they engaged in an ideological war around the world. Although Yugoslavia was communist, Tito maintained independence from Soviet domination. He was able to maintain this country, while also limiting the outside influences of both Western Europe (democracy and capitalism) and Eastern Europe (communism). With his death in 1981, the country began to unravel.
1991–2007
    The ethnic interests and national sentiments continued to rise within the different republics. With the end of the Cold War between the East and West, the desire for independence by the different republics, which had been escalating for the previous decade, came to a boil.
    In 1991 two of the republics, Slovenia and Croatia, voted to leave Yugoslavia. There was opposition to the attempts of these two regions to leave the Federation. Slovenia was 90 percent Slovenian with the remaining 10 percent representing many other groups, including a small minority of Serbians, and the separation was accomplished with a minimum of violence.
    This was not the case with Croatia, where there was more ethnic diversity, including 12 percent of the population being Serbian—the dominant ethnic group within the Federation. Croatia became involved in a substantial war, with the minority of Serbs within the Croatian Republic being supported by the armed forces of Yugoslavia, who were primarily Serbian. There was a war lasting over four years with minority Serbians either fleeing or being evicted by force from Croatia, and the Serbian army exercising its force and power in the ongoing war, trying to bring Croatia back into the Federation and drive Croats from territory they believed belonged to a greater Serbia.
    In January, 1992, the Republic of Macedonia became the third republic to declare its independence from the Federation.
    In April, 1992, a vote was held in Bosnia-Herzegovina to determine if they should become the fourthrepublic to leave the Federation. The members of the country who were Serbian boycotted the election, refusing to vote. Those who did participate in the referendum overwhelmingly voted to leave, and independence was declared.
    Of all the republics of the Yugoslavian Federation, Bosnia-Herzegovina was the most ethnically and religiously diverse. While there are different accounts of the breakdown of the population, there was no group that formed a clear majority. Of the close to four million people in the newly declared country, 48 percent were Bosniaks, 37 percent Serbs and 14 percent Croats. These groups, for the most part, belonged to different religious groups, with the Serbs being Orthodox, the Croats Catholic and the Bosniaks mainly Muslim. To further complicate the situation, these groups, which had previously lived in relative peace, were not limited to different geographic areas of the republic but were living side by side throughout the country.
    Bosnia-Herzegovina had declared independence