The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

cember 15, 1991, after the Croatian cities of Sisak, Zadar, Dubrovnik and
Osijek had already been shelled by the artillery of the Yugoslav People’s
Army under Serbian leadership. A month before the recognition, on November
19, 1991, Vukovar was completely destroyed and then taken by
this army. Many thousands of casualties resulted. The dissolution of the
Soviet Union and the temporary uncertainty in Russia made it easier for
the western countries to recognize the independence of the attacked
states, Slovenia and Croatia. They could thus become UN members, and
UN troops entered the crisis region (the Pink Zone), which prevented
further bloodshed and destruction there.
The fact that the war then broke out in Bosnia-Herzegovina was due not
to this recognition, but to the same unresolved issues which had also
led to the war in Slovenia and Croatia. There, the Yugoslav People’s
Army, the Serbian paramilitary units and the outraged, panicky Serbian
people tried to drive out people of other nationalities by torture and murder,
simply because they had cast their votes for the independence of
Bosnia-Herzegovina in a referendum.
There also is a legend that Nato triggered the war in Kosovo. It would
have been naïve to think that Nato air raids could have solved the Balkan
problems. It was, however at that moment an opportunity to stop the
war and to end the killing. The Nato intervention was a step by which
the international community demonstrated that bestialities happening
there were not of no importance. If this step had been carried out ten
years earlier, the lives of hundreds of thousands would have been saved.
If the Yugoslav problem had been recognized early and taken seriously,
had the European countries taken a common position with a well
thought-out, serious policy of prevention oriented towards the future of
this region, there might have been neither the war nor the Nato intervention.
If the international community had been able to oppose Adolf
Hitler in 1938, there might have been no Second World War, with its
millions of dead.
After 1945, the USA never cared much about southern and Eastern
Europe, except in connection with its main problem, Russia. It was considered
a marginal region, for which no major commitment was neces-
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