Word: serb
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Bosnia flares like a midsummer forest fire, defying the West's wavering attempts to contain it. On Friday, July 21, the NATO allies announced a bold new plan to deter Serb aggression. In the days that followed this call to arms, Ratko Mladic, the commander of the rebel Bosnian Serbs, seized and "ethnically cleansed" one "safe area," Zepa, and intensified a brutal assault on another, Bihac. Meanwhile, an eventuality that the U.N. and NATO had dearly hoped to prevent--a widening of the Balkan war--seemed by Friday to have occurred, as Croatia joined the fighting. Not a very good...
After Zepa fell, Mladic increased his merciless pressure on Bihac, an isolated U.N. safe area in the northwest. Coordinating efforts with Serb rebels from neighboring Croatia and antigovernment Muslim irregulars, he attacked the so-called Bihac pocket, a cluster of towns and villages that shelters more than 160,000 people, mostly Muslims. He and his allies, totaling about 25,000 men, rolled up a third of the pocket and drew to within two or three miles of the main U.N. camp at Coralici, where 1,300 poorly armed Bangladeshi peacekeepers are holed...
...Those Serb attacks, in turn, triggered a counteroffensive by Croatia, across the border from Bihac. Up to 10,000 Croat troops attacked south and west of Bihac, cutting a main supply route between the two Serb strongholds of Knin in Croatia and Banja Luka in Bosnia. Artillery fire sent 5,000 Serb civilians fleeing from the town of Bosansko Grahovo, which the Croats captured on Friday. Croat forces followed up by taking nearby Glamoc and shelling Strmica. Karadzic confirmed that his army had "withdrawn to reserve positions" and ordered full mobilization in the 70% of Bosnia already in his grasp...
...stirring of Croatia is one of the most important events of the war in years. One-third of the country was seized by rebel Croatian Serbs in 1991. Ever since, President Franjo Tudjman has been preparing openly for a campaign aimed at recapturing that land, and the Croatian armed forces have been rebuilding and training with new weapons. In May they took back Western Slavonia, and it has been assumed that a major Croat offensive would begin this summer. The action last week seemed to be the overture. By week's end, young men had disappeared from the streets...
...Croatia enters the war at full throttle, the Balkan equation will change entirely. It will be a Serb vs. Croat conflict; the Bosnian Muslims will become the Croats' rivalrous junior partners; and the border between Bosnia and Croatia may all but disappear. There are six armies in the field along that border: those of the Croats, the Bosnian Croats and the Bosnian Muslims, all of whom are allied; and those of the Bosnian Serbs, the Croatian Serbs and some renegade Bosnian Muslims, all of whom are also allied. If the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia begin to lose battles...