When, if ever, will there be permanent peace in the Balkans?
The History of Ethnic Tensions in the Balkans
For more than a millennia, the Balkans have been a general headache for the world - from the 800's CE when the Croatians became Catholic and the Serbs became Eastern Orthodox up to the present with the policy of "ethnic cleansing" so prevalent in the Balkans. The Balkans area has been called the "long fuse to the powder keg" for World War I, as one of the sparks that set off the Great War was the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip.
The current difficulties in the Balkans stem from ethnic differences within a state that wants no part of being a state. These ethnic and cultural differences are centuries old and seem to just get wider and more pronounced with each passing year.
The Serbs and Croats have been at odds since the 800's when Croatia was made a Catholic country, but Serbia - located closer to Byzantium - became Eastern Orthodox instead. And then in the 1500's, the Turks took control of Serbia while Catholic Ferdinand, a Hapsburg and King of Spain, added Croatia to the Hapsburg Empire, as well as Hungary and Bohemia.
In the late 1600's the Serbs, unwilling to remain under Turkish rule any longer, attempted a revolt. They failed and some 70,000 Serbs migrated to the Hapsburg-controlled Croatia. Their descendants, the Krajina Serbs, would remain in Croatia - along the Bosnian border - a fact that severely stresses relations between the two countries to this day.
Over the next few hundred years, as the Ottoman Empire lost its hold over the Balkans, the long fuse to the powder keg was lit. Ethnic and cultural differences between Serbs and Austro-Hungarians seem to widen ever further as each group fought for supremacy in the Balkans.
Finally, the fuse reached the powder keg in 1914 when Serbian nationalist Gavrillo Princip assassinated the Austro-Hungarian Archduke, Franz Ferdinand in one of the main sparks that would begin the Great War, eventually to be known as World War I. The Serbian forces were defeated in battle the next year.
In the 20 years or so following the Great War, a fascist movement was rising in the Balkans, in Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. During that time, Yugoslavia was formed in an attempt to unite Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia - an attempt that would ultimately fail.
When the Serbs refused to accept or even really consider the Croatian proposals for federalism and autonomy, the Skupstina (Yugoslav parliament) seemed almost destined for difficulty and eventual failure. Eventually, frustrated by the nonsuccess of a consensus rule, King Alexander dismissed parliament and set up a kind of royal dictatorship in which the Serbs retained the majority of the power. This unfair division of power bred resentment and dissention in other ethnic groups in Yugoslavia.
That dissention was in large part responsible for the open arms with which the Croatians in Yugoslavia greeted the Nazis during the Second World War. The Croatians set up a token government to be run by the fascist Ustasha - those credited with the origin of the term "ethnic cleansing," because of their attempts to "cleanse" Croatia of the Serb presence by means of forced conversion, deportation, or execution. The Serbs fought back against this process of cleansing with guerilla groups known as Chetniks.
At the same time, a Communist party was rising in Yugoslavia, led by Josip Broz Tito. The Chetniks battled fiercely against the Ustasha, the Communists, and the Nazis until the end of WWII. Likewise, the Communists also fought the Ustasha and the Nazis, as well as the other Yugoslav resistance group, the Chetniks.
At the end of the war in 1945, Tito's Communists were left in control of the country - former fighters and activists with no experience in government. Nevertheless, Tito's Communist regime continues for the next 40 years in the Communist Republic of Yugoslavia - the current day Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, and Montenegro.
Throughout the next 40 years while the Communist party was in control in Yugoslavia, anti-Serb policies were the norm. The Croatian majority worked to exorcise the Serbs from their land through nearly genocidal methods. The policies of ethnic cleansing returned to strength, though they had never truly been laid to rest.
The ethnic tensions that had been stewing for centuries finally came to a head in the Croatia - Serbia area when the very different nations of people were forced to belong to the same state - Yugoslavia.
At this point in the evolution of the Balkans, the different ethnic groups seem intent on eradicating each other, as evidenced by the rampant ethnic cleansing. The ethnic cleansing methods hearken back to the days of Nazi Germany with the revival of concentration camps, now littered across the Balkans.
Is a Permanent Peace Possible?
With the history of the Balkans - the ethnic tensions, the wars, element of "stable crisis" - many people wonder if there is a chance of a lasting peace ever succeeding. It is indeed possible for there to be a surviving harmony in the Balkans, but several conditions would have to be met first, and these are conditions that do not appear to be in the foreseeable future of the area.
First of all, the different ethnic groups - Serbs, Croats, Muslims, etc. - would need to be separated. Much like naughty schoolchildren who never stop fighting on the playground, the only way to stop the conflict is to move the key factors as far from one another as is possible. In this case, each separate nation of people needs to be reunited with themselves and given their own state, autonomous from any other.
Continuing the schoolchildren analogy, the next step is to take away the toys that the children are using to hurt the others. In this case, the "toys" in question are the methods of forced conversion, deportation, and execution used to cleanse the area of whatever ethnicity does not "belong" there.
The final step is actually two parts - a system of both positive and negative reinforcement. When the schoolchildren start fights and pick on the others, they have to go stand in the corner or lose their recess period, but if they play nicely with the other children, they get additional privileges. When any of the nations commit an atrocity of ethnic cleansing or aggression against one of the others, penalties are imposed. However, when one group makes overtures of goodwill to another - peace talks, self-enforcing of treaties, etc. then that group receives more global privileges, in the UN, for example. After a suitable amount of time to prove that the nation has matured enough to deal with the global community as a whole without acting like a petulant child, the system of positive and negative reinforcement would be retracted, allowing the nation a chance to prove their maturity.
The solution is somewhat simplistic in explanation, and would
undoubtedly prove to be humiliating to the pride of the national leaders, but that humiliation may very well spur on "good behavior" in an effort cease the positive-negative reinforcement system sooner.