Serbia - History
Serbs settled the Balkan Peninsula in the 6th and 7th centuries and adopted Christianity in the 9th century. In 1166, Stefan Nemanja, a Serbian warrior and chief, founded the first Serbian state. By the 14th century, under the rule of Stefan Dušan, it became the most powerful state in the Balkans. After Serbia was defeated in the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, it was absorbed into the Ottoman Empire. Throughout the 19th century its struggle against Ottoman rule intensified, and in 1878 Serbia gained independence after Russia defeated the Ottoman Turks in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878. In the Balkan wars (1912-1913), Serbia, and other Balkan states seized hold of more former Ottoman dominated lands on the peninsula.
World War I began when a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in 1914, which led to Austria's declaration of war against Serbia. Within months, much of Europe was at war. In the war's aftermath, Serbia became part of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (1918). It included the former kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro; Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia and Croatia. King Peter I Karadjordjević of Serbia became the first monarch; his son, Alexander I, succeeded him on Aug. 16, 1921. Croatian demands for a federal state led Alexander to assume dictatorial powers in 1929 and to change the country's name to Yugoslavia. Serbian dominance continued despite his efforts, amid the resentment of other regions. A Macedonian associated with Croatian dissidents assassinated king Alexander Karadjordjević in Marseilles, France, on Oct. 9, 1934, and his cousin, Prince Paul, became regent for the king's son, Prince Peter.
Paul's pro-Axis policy brought Yugoslavia to sign the Axis Pact on March 25, 1941, and opponents overthrew the government two days later. On April 6 the Nazis occupied the country, and the young king and his government fled. Two guerrilla armies-the Chetniks under Draža Mihajlović supporting the monarchy and the Partisans under Tito (Josip Broz) leaning toward the USSR-fought the Nazis for the duration of the war. In 1943, Tito established a provisional government, and in 1945 he won the federal election while monarchists boycotted the vote. The monarchy was abolished and the Communist Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, with Tito as prime minister, was born. Tito ruthlessly eliminated the opposition and broke with the Soviet bloc in 1948. Yugoslavia followed a middle road, combining orthodox Communist control of politics and general overall economic policy with a varying degree of freedom in the arts, travel, and individual enterprise. Tito became president in 1953 and president-for-life under a revised constitution adopted in 1963.
After Tito's death on May 4, 1980, a rotating presidency designed to avoid internal dissension was put into effect, and the feared clash of Yugoslavia's multiple nationalities and regions appeared to have been averted. In 1989, Slobodan Milošević became president of the Serbian Republic. His arch-nationalism and calls for Serbian domination inflamed ethnic tensions and spurred on the breakup of Yugoslavia. In May 1991 Croatia declared independence, and by December so had Slovenia and Bosnia. Slovenia was able to break away with only a period of fighting, but because 12% of Croatia's population was Serbian, Serb-dominated Yugoslavia fought hard against its secession. Bosnia's declaration of independence led to even more brutal fighting. The most ethnically diverse of the Yugoslav republics, Bosnia was 43% Muslim, 31% Serbian, and 17% Croatian. The largely Serbian-led Yugoslav military pounded Bosnia, and with Yugoslavia's help, the Bosnian Serb minority took the offensive against Bosnian Muslims. And vice versa. The war did not end until NATO stepped in, bombing Serb positions in Bosnia in Aug. and Sept. 1995. In Nov. 1995, Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia signed the Dayton Peace Accords, ending the four-year-long war in which 250,000 people died and another 2.7 million became refugees from all the involved sides.
Despite entangling his country in almost continuous war for four years and bringing it to near economic collapse, the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic maintained its effective control over the remainder of Yugoslavia.
In Feb. 1998 the Yugoslav army and Serbian police began fighting against the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), but their scorched-earth tactics were concentrated on ethnic Albanian civilians-Muslims who make up 90% of Kosovo's population.
NATO was first reluctant to intervene because Kosovo-unlike Bosnia in 1992-was legally a province of Yugoslavia, but on March 24, 1999, NATO began launching air strikes. Weeks of daily bombings destroyed significant Serbian military targets but civilians too: Serbia finally agreed to sign a UN-approved peace agreement with NATO on June 3, ending the 11-week war.
In the Sept. 2000 federal elections, Vojislav Koštunica won the presidency, ending the autocratic rule of Milošević, who had dragged Yugoslavia into economic collapse and relegated it to pariah status throughout much of the world. In 2001, Milosevic was turned over to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, charged with 66 war crimes, including genocide and crimes against humanity. His expensive and lengthy trial ended without a verdict when he died in March 2006.
In March 2002, the nation agreed to form a new state, replacing Yugoslavia with a loose federation called Serbia and Montenegro, which went into effect in Feb. 2003. The new arrangement was made to placate Montenegro's restive stirrings for independence and allowed Montenegro to hold a referendum on independence after three years.
The prime minister of the Serbian state, Zoran Djindjić, a reformer who helped bring about the fall of Milošević, was assassinated in March 2003. Extreme nationalists, organized crime, and Serbia's own police and security services were implicated.
On March 17, 2004, Mitrovica, in Kosovo, experienced the worst ethnic violence in the region since the 1999 war. At least 19 people were killed, another 500 were injured, and about 4,000 Serbs lost their homes. NATO sent in an extra 1,000 troops to restore order.
In June 2004, Democratic Party leader Boris Tadic was elected Serbian president, defeating a nationalist candidate. Tadic planned to work toward gaining EU membership for Serbia, but in 2006, the EU suspended its membership talks with Serbia, after the country repeatedly failed to turn over Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian Serb commander wanted on genocide charges for the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims from Srebrenica.
