The impact of ethnic conflicts in the Balkans in the early 1990s was that it led to the Yugoslav Wars, where the former Republic of Yugoslavia disbanded into several independent nations.
Tensions stemmed from the multi-ethnic composition of the first Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the relative political and demographic supremacy of the Serbs. These tensions were exploited by the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis in World War II, which established a puppet state that encompassed most of present-day Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. This independent State of Croatia was put in charge of a fascist organization, the Ustashe, which carried out a genocidal policy against the Serbian civilians of the territory. The Serbian militia Chetnik counterattacked against the Croats. Both faced and were finally defeated by the movement of communist and anti-fascist partisans, composed of members of all groups in the area, which led to the formation of Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia.
After the fall of the communist bloc, the desire for independence increased in the region, triggering a multilateral conflict in Europe, the largest since the Second World War. In addition, the disintegration of the USSR led to the entry of large-scale Soviet weapons into the Balkan area, with which rebels and paramilitaries were armed.
In the case of areas populated by Albanians, the main cause was the growth of the Albanian population in areas where they were previously a minority. In the case of Kosovo, some Serbs interpreted this growth of Albanian influence as the loss of their ancestral territories.
There were many triggers, but the main ones were the abolition of Kosovo's autonomy by Milosevic, and above all that the Serbs of the Croatian region of Krajina declared their separation from Croatia in March 1991, which led Croatia and Slovenia to declare unilaterally its independence and produce a contagious effect in the rest of the Yugoslav republics. Due to the clash between Serbian nationalism (Slovodan Milosevic) and Croatian nationalism (Franjo Tudman) it became a very violent war. Months later, on January 15, 1992, European countries of the European Union and the international community recognized the independence of Slovenia and Croatia, leading to the end of Yugoslavia, although Serbia and Montenegro continued to use this denomination (without international recognition) until 2003.
The Yugoslav wars ended with much of the former Yugoslavia reduced to poverty, with massive economic disorganization and persistent instability in the territories where the worst struggles took place. These wars were the bloodiest conflicts on European soil since the end of World War II, resulting in some 130,000 to 200,000 deaths.
