Circa
7000B.C.:
Settlements
of hunters
populate the Balkan
Peninsula,
south of the Danube River.
RIGHT:
Sculpture from Lepenski Vir, a settlement of
hunters
along the Danube in the
6th century, B.C. |
|
Circa
1200 B.C.:
The
Illyrians,
Albanian ancestors, arrive in the
region,
according to
archaeological
evidence.
Albanians
in Kosovo
today
use this
ancestral claim to say
they arrived
before the Serbs. |
500-700
AD: Migrations of Southern
Slavs, Slovenes, Croatians,
Serbians and Bulgarians enter the Balkans
from
the north. The Slovenes arrive
first; the others follow in the
600s.
|
Circa
600: Bulgaria and Macedonia are settled. Since
the Macedonian language resembles Bulgarian more than Serbian, both Serbs
and
Bulgarians claim the "proper" nationality of Macedonia today.
RIGHT:
Gamzigrad, a Roman
fortress built by emperor
Galerius at the place of his birth,
Romuliana. |
|
The
800s: Croatians in the Balkans fall
under
nominal
control
of the Holy
Roman
Emperor.
Western
Frankish
missionaries
soon arrive,
starting
Croatia's
transformation
into a Catholic
country.
Meanwhile, the
Serbs,
closer to Byzantium,
become
Orthodox Christians. |
879:
The Pope recognizes a Croatian state. |
1054:
The Roman
Catholic
Pope in
Rome and the Greek Patriarch
in
Constantinople
finally
split over issues
of
doctrinal
authority, dividing the
church,
a fact that bears heavily on relations between Orthodox
Serbs
and Catholic
Croats
today. |
|
1172:
Stephan Nemanja of Raska
overthrows Byzantine rule
and
unites
with the
less-developed
principality
of
Zeta
to form the first Serbian state.
LEFT:
"The White
Angel",
a 12th
century fresco found in
the
Mileseva Monastery. |
1300:
By this time,
the
orthodox
Serbs
have
developed
a
rich medieval
kingdom,
with a traveling court,
a literature and an
opulent
artistic
tradition. |
1345:
Turkish soldiers
enter
the Balkans
as mercenaries for
the Byzantine Empire's
wars
against Bulgaria, Serbia and
the
Crusader
states,
which
grew up in Greece after Frankish
and
Venetian
knights
sacked
Constantinople in 1204.
Later, the Turks
return
to conquer
the region. |
|
1389:
The Turks
defeat
a
Serbian
army in Kosovo. The
battlefield
and local Serbian
onasteries
are still hallowed
ground
to Serbs, who refuse
honor
Albanian
claims
to the area.
LEFT:
Mosaic in Istanbul's
Saint
Sophia church created
in
the 13th century. |
1453:
The Turks
capture
Constantinople,
and the Byzantine
Empire
falls to
Ottoman
rule. |
1526:
A Turkish
army
destroys
a
Hungarian host at Mohacs, killing
King Louis II and most
of
the Hungarian nobles. Ferdinand
Hapsburg adds
Hungary,
Bohemia
and Croatia
to
his empire. The Catholic Hapsburgs
remain the most
powerful
ruling
house
in Central
Europe until 1918. |
1683:
The Turkish
army
ranges
north
to besiege Vienna. Their
Balkan
subjects
consider
the
regime
oppressive
and
cruel.
RIGHT:
Durdevi Stupovi
Monastery
built by Serbia's
first
royal familiy, the Nemanja
Dynasty. |
|
1690:
A failed Serbian revolt prompts
70,000
Serbs
tomigrate from
Turkish-dominated
Serbia
to Hapsburg
Croatia.
Their
descendants
become
the
"Krajina"
Serbs who remain in
Croatia
along
the Bosnian
border
today, a situation that
severely
complicates
relations
between the two
countries. |
1743:
Dimitrije Obradovic, the
man
who would start Serbia's cultural
revolution, is born.
After
a brief stint in a monastary,
he
travels
to Western
Europe. Shocked
that
Serbs
had no secular modern
literature,
he writes
the
grammars
and dictionaries
that
will make a modern
Serbian
language possible. |
|
1804:
The Serbian population
of
the Belgrade region, with
sporadic
Russian support,
starts
an insurrection against
their
Turkish masters that
lasts
until 1815, the year
Napoleon
is defeated at
Waterloo.
With Napoleon out of
the
way, the Turks worry that
Russia
might again intervene
and
make Serbia autonomous. |
1817:
Karageorge (or "Black George,"
the leader of the
1804
insurrection) returns to
Serbia
and is murdered by
Milos
Obrenovic. Milos has
the
rebel's head stuffed and
sent
to Istanbul.
RIGHT:
Mosque door. |
|
1831:
A census reveals that about
one-third of the Balkan
population
is Muslim, either Turk
or
Albanian.
Although
the
Turkish
Ottoman Empire is
receding,
the Balkan
population
remembers
its Muslim
overlords with hatred,
a
sentiment that
persists
today
in
Serb and, to a lesser extent, Croat
attitudes toward the
Bosnian
Muslims. |
1844:
A year after Ilija
Garasanin
becomes
Minister
of Internal
Affairs
for
the Serbian state, he issues a
secret
memo called the
"Nacertanije,"
or Program,
outlining
his plans to seize Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Montenegro
and northern
Albania,
all Turkish
possessions
with Serbian
inhabitants.
He predicts war
with
the Austro-Hungarian
Empire.
Today, Serb
leaders
look to
Garasanin's ideas to fuel
dreams of a Greater Serbia. |
1878:
The Austro-Hungarian Empire
takes
control of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
annexes
the province in
1908
and
holds
onto it until 1918. |
1892:
Josip Broz Tito is born
in
Croatia to a Croat mother
and
a Slovene father. |
 |
1906:
The Pig War, an
economic
showdown between
Austria-Hungary
and Serbia,
begins
and lasts until
1911.
In an
attempt to crush Serbia's
economy,
Austria-Hungary
refuses
to buy any
livestock
from Serbia.
Serbians quickly
open
new trade with
Egypt,
Greece,
Turkey and Germany,and their economy booms. The
Pig
War contributes to the
tension
between Serbia
and
Austria-Hungary
that starts in World War I. |
1908:
The Austro-Hungarian
Empire
annexes the Turkish
provinces
of Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
Bulgaria
declares
its
independence
from Turkey. |
1912:
Serbia, Montenegro, Greece
and
Bulgaria
cooperate
to attack the Turks and
throw
them
out of
Macedonia
and much of Thrace
in the First Balkan War. |
Jun-Jul
1913: Greece,
Serbia
and Romania
fight
the Second
Balkan
War with
Bulgaria
over
the
spoils of the First
Balkan
War. Victorious
Serbia increases
its territory by 82 percent,
a
great stride toward Garasanin's
vision of a Greater
Serbia. Serbian attention now turns north
to
Austrian-ruled Bosnia and Croatia . |
|
1914:
Serbian nationalist
Gavrilo
Princip assassinates
Austro-Hungarian
Empire
leader
Archduke Franz
Ferdinand,
igniting a storm of
conflict
that swiftly becomes
World
War I. Serbian forces
are
defeated on the battlefield
by
1915.
LEFT:
WWI Soldier. |
1918-1939:
In the interwar
period,
Balkan economies
founder.
Fascist movements
rise
in Hungary, Bulgaria and
Romania. |
1921:
The constitution for the
Kingdom
of Yugoslavia (the
first
time the name is officially
used)
unites Serbia, Croatia
and
Slovenia. But troubles
begin
when the Serbian
majority
refuses to consider
Croatian
proposals for
federalism
and autonomy. |
1928:
A Serbian Radical Party
delegate
pulls a revolver
during
a debate on the floor of
the
Skupstina (the Yugoslav
parliament),
fatally wounding
three
Croatian deputies,
including
Stjepan Radic, the
leader
of the Croatian
independence
movement. |
1929:
King Alexander,
frustrated
in his attempt to rule
by
consensus, dismisses
parliament,
setting up a
nominal
royal dictatorship in
which
Serbs retain most
power.
Resentment grows
among
other ethnic groups. |
|
1941:
Nazi Germany invades Yugoslavia and is welcomed by
the Croatians, who set up
a
puppet government run
by
the fascist
Ustasha.
The
Ustasha
attempts
to drive Serbs from Croatia
by forced conversion, deportation
or
execution. They
are
credited with calling this process
of ethnic repression
"cleansing."
Some Muslims join
Ustasha groups to
massacre
Serbs. Serbs fight back
fiercely in "Chetnik"guerrilla groups and
Communist
bands against the
Ustasha,
each other and the
Nazis
until the end of World
War
II. |
October
1941: Chetnick
leader Col.
Draza Mihailovic meets
with
Communist leader Josip Broz
Tito, but
they
cannot
agree
on who is in charge. The
two competing resistance
groups
battle each
other
as
well
as the Germans. |
1943:
Tito has 50,000 to 60,000 troops in the field,
fighting
the Germans, the
Ustasha
and the
Serb
Chetniks. |
1944:
Aided by the Red Army
and
the British, Tito's forces
help
push the withdrawing
German
army out of
Yugoslavia.
At the end of the
war
in 1945, Tito's Communist
partisans,
former guerilla
fighters
and activists with
little
or no administrative
experience,
are the only
effective
force left to rule the
country. |
1945:
After the war, Tito and
his
Communist partisans take
power
without the backing of
Russian
troops. |
|
1948:
Soviet leader Josef
Stalin
proposes a union
between
Yugoslavia and
Bulgaria,
but Tito balks. Tito's regime emerges as
Communist,
but not as a
Soviet
satellite. For more than 40 years, Tito and successors
squelch
ethnic disturbances
and
keep the Communist
Republic
of Yugoslavia
(Serbia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Croatia,
Slovenia and
Montenegro)
intact.
LEFT:
Stalin |
1971:
A nationalist-democratic movement rises in Croatia,
threatening
the Yugoslav
union's
integrity and the
Communist
monopoly. Only
Tito's
personal intervention,
threats and the imprisonment
of several nationalists
suppress
the movement. |
1980:
Tito dies, and power passes
to an unstable collective
presidency that rotates
among leaders
selected
by the assemblies of
Yugoslavia's
six
republics
and two
autonomous regions.
This
is widely considered a mistake
in hindsight, because
a
group of relatively obscure
leaders,
without clear
legitimacy,
compete on behalf
of
their respective republican
constituencies. |
|
1981:
Students at the Albanian
university
in Kosovo protest
bad
conditions and suffer a
brutal
crackdown by Serbian
police.
Many such examples
of
ethnic tensions recur
through
the present.
LEFT:
Tito |
1985:
The Serbian Academy of
Sciences writes a memo
condemning
Tito and the Party state for three decades of
"anti-Serb policies" that left Serbia poorer than the north.
The memo
also denounces "genocidal" anti-Serb policies in Kosovo, arguing
that the Albanian
majority represses
the
Serb minority. Their
proposed
solution: a Serb
state. |
1986:
Slobodan Milosevic, a
prominent
Serbian politician,
becomes
head of the Serbian
Communist
Party. |
1987:
Slobodan Milosevic
makes
a powerful
nationalistic
speech in
Kosovo
that effectively steals the
nationalist agenda for the
Communists
from democrats. With
massive popular support, he cracks down on opposition,
purges
the party of
reformist
rivals and abridges
autonomy
in the regions
of
Kosovo and Vojvodina. |
|
1989:
Communist regimes
throughout
Eastern Europe
and
the Balkans crumble within weeks of each other.
Slobodan
Milosevic
renames
the Serbian
Communist Party
and
turns it into a
nationalist
organization.
Croats and
Slovenes
become more
unwilling
to stay part of a
Yugoslav
state
dominated
by Milosevic
and
his nationalistic
Serb
majority.
LEFT:
Serbian demonstrators hold
a painting of Solbodan
Milosevic. |
January
1990: The League
of Communists
(essentially the Yugoslav Communist Party) splits along ethnic lines.
Several
dozen
people
die in
riots
in Kosovo that are put
down
by the Serb-dominated
Yugoslav
army. Other
ethnic
groups,
convinced the military
would
be used to eliminate
dissent,
are now more bent on
secession.
|
April
1990: In Slovenian
elections,
a Center-Right
coalition
wins a dramatic
victory
and immediately sets to
work on a new constitution that would allow Slovenia to secede. In Croatia,
nationalist
Franjo
Tudjman (who
was
jailed
by Tito in the early 1970s)
and his conservative nationalists, the Croatian Democratic Union, win a
majority. |
June
1990: A referendum
shows
that Serbs favor
retaining
a single-party state and
cracking down
on
autonomy
movements in the Serbian
provinces
of Kosovo
and
Vojvodina. The finding fuels
Slovene
and
Croat efforts
to
break
with Serbia.
RIGHT:
Croatia's President
Franjo
Tudjman. |
|
August
1990: The
Krajina
Serbs
(see 1690 entry), a Serbian
minority
on Croatian
territory,
start
campaigning
for
autonomy,
arguing that if Croatia
can leave Yugoslavia,
they
can leave Croatia. Local Serb
militias
mobilize
and set
up
roadblocks to stop
official
Croatian
interference
in a
referendum
they plan to hold. Milosevic
announces that if Yugoslavia disintegrates, some
border
changes will be
required
to keep all Serbs
under
one nation. |
March
1991: Serbs in
Croatian
Krajina
declare
themselves
autonomous
and are
recognized
by
Milosevic's
Serbia. |
May
1991: Serbs
refuse
to
accept
a Croat president
under
the terms of
Yugoslavia's
rotating
presidency. |
June
1991: Both Croatia
and Slovenia
proclaim
their
independence
from Yugoslavia. Both sides ignore parts
of the constitution when
the legality of their move is
debated.
After some
scuffling
between
Yugoslav
army units
(now
entirely Serb) and
Slovenian
militia, the
army
withdraws
and
allows
Slovenia
to
secede. |
August
1991: The war
escalates
in Croatia.
First,
Croatian
militias and local Serbs fight guerrilla battles.
Then
Serbian army units start campaigns
to control strategic Vukovar
and Dubrovnik. In Vukovar, Serbian artillery fire
drives
Croatians from the city,
but
in Dubrovnik, the
Croatians
hold on. Two
hallmarks
of the Serb military become
apparent: the use of
terror to drive a civilian
population
away, and the use of
heavy artillery and tanks to make
up for a
lack
of infantry. During
this campaign, the EEC recognizes Croatia and
Slovenia. |
|
September
1991: By this
time,
the UN
has
authorized
a 14,000-man
peacekeeping force for the region and imposed
an economic embargo
on
Serbia
and Montenegro.
|
March
1992: A Bosnian
majority,
with a significant
Serb
majority dissenting, votes for independence in a plebescite.
As soon
as
the votes
are counted, Serbs set up
roadblocks around major cities,
cutting
them off from
the
mostly Serbian
countryside.
Serbs begin
to
leave
the cities, and a
Bosnian
Serb parliament
is
set up. Throughout
the
44-month
civil war,
the
Serbian
government
and
Slobodan Milosevic
back
Bosnian
Serbs,
but
they do
not
control
them. |
April
1992: Bosnian
Serb
forces
begin to seize as much territory
as they can, most of it in
eastern Bosnia,with an eye to a future union with Serbia.
Serbian
paramilitary "Chetnik"
units
attack Bosnian Muslim villagers,
driving them out of
the
area. Many become
refugees
in the cities of Zepa,Srebrenica, Tuzla
and
Sarajevo.
Around this time,
the
siege of Sarajevo begins,
with
Serbs shelling the city
and
using snipers to pick off
the
residents and defenders. |
|
August
1992: With about
two-thirds of Bosnia now in
Serb
hands, all sides make
allegations
of "ethnic
cleansing."
There is evidence that
all
parties
are guilty, but
most
accounts hold Serbs
responsible
for the
majority.
Reports
say
Serbs
routinely rape
Muslim
women, imprison
the
men in concentration
camps
or execute
hundreds
at a
time,
throwing
their bodies
into
mass graves.
LEFT:
Refugees. |
January
1993: Fighting
continues
as peace talks
begin
in Geneva. The
negotiations
are based
on
the U.S.
Vance-Owen
plan
to
separate the
warring
ethnic groups
by partitioning Bosnia.
But
the plan is unpopular with the
United States
and
the Bosnian
Muslims, since it requires
no Serb withdrawals.
At
this point, Serbs control
about
70 percent of the
country. |
June
1993: Bosnian
Serb
President
Radovan
Karadzic
proposes
several
partition deals
that
would leave Serbs
between
50 and 52
percent
of Bosnia;
the Bosnian
government
rejects
them. Instead,
the
Muslims hold out
in
UN-declared "safe"
cities
(Sarajevo,
Tuzla, Bihac, Zepa, Srebrenica
and
Gorazde) and arm
their
troops with
smuggled
weapons. The
Western
press almost
unanimously
criticizes
Serbs
for aggression
and
war crimes.
A
stalemate
develops.
|
February
1994: A mortar
round kills 68 people in a Sarajevo marketplace.
The
incident draws
international outrage.
The
U.S., the European Union and
NATO all demand that the Serbs
stop shelling Sarajevo. The Serbs comply, but their
artillery
attacks on other
safe
cities
draw no official
criticism. |
|
March
1994: The stalemate
starts
to
erode.
Croatian and
Muslim
Bosnians agree
on
a framework
for a federated Bosnia.
With
that detail
settled,
the two parties turn to the
Serbs in
both
Krajina and
Bosnia.
Later, allied Bosnian Croats
and Muslims start
small
operations against
Serb-held
Bosnia.
LEFT:
Woman and her son hide from a sniper. |
May
1994: After France
and
the
U.S. argue over tactics (the U.S. wants to pressure the Serbs harder, but
France
is
reluctant to endanger its peacekeepers on the
ground),
NATO air
strikes
hit
some Serb
positions.
Serbs
respond
by
taking UN peacekeepers
hostage,
and the UN
backs
off, losing
face. |
July
1995: Serb forces,
dismissing
UN conditions,
overrun
two of the safe cities, Srebrenica
and Zepa, and are
accused
of committing some of
the worst "ethnic
cleansing"
of the war.
Later,
they increase
attacks
on Bihac.
Serb
General Ratko
Mladic
reportedly
oversees
the massacre
of
up to 8,000
Bosnian
Muslims.
Later
on, he and
Radovan
Karadzic are indicted
by the
UN
War Crimes
Tribunal.
Britain, France and the
United States
plan
for military
retaliation should Serbs
attack safe havens again. |
August
1995: Joint Bosnian
Muslim
and Bosnian Croat
forces,
with Croatian help,
counterattack
in force at
Bihac.
Their offensive
routs
Serb forces, throwing them out of Krajina and Western Bosnia.
In
his book on the
Balkans,
U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke
recounts
how he
took
the Croatian Defense
Minister
aside and said, "We can't
say so publicly, but please
take Sanski Most, Prijedor
and Bosanski Novi. And
do it quickly, before the Serbs
regroup." |
 |
About
130,000 Serb refugees
are
forced to flee the
lands
they had
called their own for
hundreds
of years,
opening
the Muslims
and
Croats up to
Serb
allegations of "ethnic cleansing."
LEFT:
A boy plays next
to
a Serbian trench used
extensively
during the war. |
August
30 - September
14,1995 After angry Serbs start shelling
Sarajevo again, NATO
starts Operation Deliberate
Force, launching
750
separate air strike sorties
over
Bosnian Serb positions.
Artillery
fire from the NATO
Rapid
Reaction force hits
Serb
field
guns around Sarajevo.
Badly
hurt by the attacks and
the
Muslim-Croat offensive,
Serbs
withdraw their heavy
weapons
from around
Sarajevo
toward the end of
September,
then open up
routes
for relief supplies to the city. |
November
1995: After 21
days of
tense negotiations in Ohio, the warring parties create the
ayton
Accords. In principle,
the
accords would divide
Bosnia
into a Muslim-Croat federation with 51 percent of
the territory
and a Serbian republic with 49 percent, both supervised
by
a central government. |
|
December
1995: The
presidents
of Bosnia, Serbia
and
Croatia sign the Dayton
treaty
and end three-and-a-half
years
of war. The conflict
killed
200,000 people and
forced
2 million from their
homes.
NATO prepares to
send
50,000 troops, including
20,000
U.S. soldiers, to
Bosnia
to keep the peace.
LEFT:
A man visits the graves
of
his two sons, two of the
10,000
people who were
killed
in the siege on
Sarajevo.
|
July,
1996: International
investigators
uncover mass
graves
near the town of
Srebrenica.
At least 3,000 (by some
accounts as many as
8,000)
Muslims, mostly
unarmed
men, were allegedly massacred
by Serbs during
the
war. |
|
Now:
Bosnia is relatively
quiet.
The former warring
populations
are separated by
NATO
forces that include
6,900
U.S. soldiers. Officials
are
still counting the dead,
looking
for the missing and
rebuilding
the damage. After a
Yugoslav
crackdown on the
ethnic
Albanian rebels in the
southern
Serbian province of
Kosovo,
NATO forces began
airstrikes
to force the
Yugoslavians
to stop.
Massive
floods of refugees
from
Kosovo stream into
neighboring
Macedonia,
Montenegro
and Albania.
LEFT:
Armed Serb villager. |
