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The Yugoslav wars were a series of violent conflicts in the territory of the former Yugoslavia that went
on in the 1990s. They comprised two series of successive wars affecting all of the six
former Yugoslav republics.
Conflicts in the west
The wars in Slovenia and Croatia
were initially fought in the name of forcibly keeping Yugoslavia united. They soon became overtly nationalist in character, with
a clash between the Serbian and Croatian nationalist
ideologies personified by Presidents Slobodan
Milošević and Franjo Tuđman of Serbia and Croatia respectively. The Serb-Croat
conflict was greatly complicated in Bosnia by the presence of the large Muslim (Bosniak) population, which caused it to
develop into a three-way conflict that was by far the bloodiest of the Yugoslav wars.
The Yugoslav wars in the west were ended by the military defeat of Serbia/Yugoslavia in Slovenia and Croatia, and the signing
of the Dayton Agreement for Bosnia.
Conflicts in the east and south
In Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia proper, the conflicts were typified by
racial and political tension between Slav governments and Albanian national
minorities which sought autonomy or independence.
The war in Kosovo ended with NATO intervention, but further conflicts happened in
2004 and a new unrest in
Kosovo. Internationally-overseen negotiations settled issues in Macedonia and southern Serbia.
See also
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