Word: yugoslavia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Yugoslavia, whose name means Land of the South Slavs, the non-Slavic Albanians were at a special disadvantage. The Slovenes had Slovenia, the Croats Croatia, and the Macedonians Macedonia, but the Yugoslav Albanians never had a republic of their own. Instead, they were concentrated in the province of Kosovo in southern Serbia. Worse luck still, that piece of real estate included the site of the famous battlefield where Lazar lost to Murad...
...region have tended to see themselves as descendants of Lazar, defending the eastern frontier of Christendom against the encroachments of Islam. During the 1980s, this classically Balkan imbroglio played a key part in the rise of Milosevic, who in turn has contributed so crucially to the disintegration of Yugoslavia...
...Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia had by and large been willing to remain with Serbia in a loose federation. But when they saw how brutally Milosevic was dealing with Kosovo, they concluded that he was the embodiment of Serb nationalism at its worst. Wanting no part of his Yugoslavia, they headed for the exits...
Dennison Rusinow, an expert on the Balkans at the University of Pittsburgh, believes that had it not been for Milosevic's heavyhandedness in Kosovo five years ago, Yugoslavia might still be intact today. "Kosovo provided the fuse," says Rusinow, "and Milosevic provided the detonator that has now led to explosions across the whole country...
...newly independent neighbors in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia may feel differently. Bosnia's Serbs, who wish to remain part of a greater, Serbian- dominated Yugoslavia, have taken over two-thirds of the republic's territory with the indispensable aid of the federal army and free-lance gunmen from Serbia. In the process, an estimated 1,300 people have died in Bosnia, and hundreds of thousands have left their homes...