The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

The war against the people
In deference to its nationalistic supporters abroad, the new Croatian leadership
reintroduced the state and national symbols which had been used,
too, by the fascist Croatian state. This was grist for the mill of Serbian nationalism.
With support from Serbia, the Croatian Serbs in the area along
the Bosnian and Serbian borders, in the Krajina, reacted with a rebellion,
declaring their autonomy and declined loyalty to the new Croatian government.
They took control of the state and police apparatus and the weap -
ons of the territorial units. Paramilitary units adorned with Četnik
etnik symbols
drove the Catholic population out with armed attacks. They were housed
in hotels on the Adriatic coast, from which the last tourists were just
departing. It was said that “the world is abandoning us”.
After the years of propaganda, the Serbian aggression was approved of
by most Serbs, and there were both emotional and material reasons for
that. At stake was the permanent gain or loss of areas which had been
annexed to Serbian territory in earlier wars, but where Serb losses had
been very heavy. A Serbia or Yugoslavia without the two highly devel -
oped republics of Slovenia and Croatia, and particularly without its pearl,
the Adriatic coast, was something that people could imagine only as a
small, truncated state – and nationalists couldn’t imagine it at all.
In the spirit of their national programmes, the new governments in Slovenia
and Croatia strove to secede from Yugoslavia as soon as possible
and to declare their independence. The Serbian movement had already
completed its preparations for war, which broke out in the summer of
1991: Serbia and the Yugoslav People’s Army attacked Slovenia and
then Croatia. From the spring of 1992 until August 1995, it was waged
against Bosnia-Herzegovina. After seven years, in 1999, the last act of
the war took place in Kosovo.
Power and interests
When Miloševic´ broached the possibility of war in 1989, Serbia had greatly
superior military power, compared to its potential opponents. Since its
national movement was fully developed, the Serbian leadership expected
to be able, together with the Yugoslavian People’s Army, to
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