Page 210 - The History of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps 1962–2021

THE HISTORY OF THE ROYAL ARMY VETERINARY CORPS 1962 – 2021
gious communities) shifted and groaned. The Jewish community, numbering approximately one thousand people, had maintained a historic place as the peacemakers and mediators within the mixed religious neighbourhoods. But this latest unrest was super-fuelled by poverty and Yugosla- via’s range of ethnic groups who were attracted to the spirit of nationalism. By the early 1990s, with no effective authority at the federal level, the country’s foundations were looking ominously shaky. The Federal Presidency consisted of the representatives of the six republics, two provinces and the Yugoslav People’s Army. In addition to that, the Communist leadership was divided along national lines. All was set for a perfect storm.
The multinational, multi-ethnic Federation of Yugoslavia began to disintegrate with the death of the veteran President Marshal Tito (1980), this process culminating in the moment when the republics of Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence in 1991. The Federal Government, dominated by Serbia, rejected the declaration; war commenced later in the year.
It was only after the division of Yugoslavia and the fall of Communism, that Bosnia-Herze- govina sought international recognition as an independent State. Following an internationally supervised referendum, a state of independence was achieved on 6th April 1992.
However, victory was only to bring short-term celebration. The newly independent Republic was an anathema to the neighbouring republics of Serbia and Croatia. The desire to create an ethnically pure Greater Serbia and Greater Croatia could only be achieved at Bosnia’s expense and, it transpired, at great human cost.
Initially, the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) sought to preserve the unity of the whole of Yugoslavia by crushing the secessionist governments, However, the Serbian government of Slobodan Miloševic, which evoked Serbian nationalist rhetoric, was willing to use the Yugoslav cause to preserve the unity of Serbs in one State. As a result, the JNA began to lose Slovenes, Croats, Kosovar Albanians, Bosnians, and ethnic Macedonians, and effectively became a Serb army.
According to a 1994 United Nations report, the Serb side did not aim to restore Yugoslavia but maintained a desire to create a ‘Greater Serbia’ from parts of Croatia and Bosnia. There were other movements also with a connection with the wars – “Greater Albania”, from Kosovo, although it was abandoned following international diplomacy and “Greater Croatia”, from parts of Herzegovina,
until the Washington Agreement ended it in 1994. The Dayton Accords, brokered by the United States at the end of 1995, brought an end to the fighting but left the country divided into two ‘entities’ – a ‘Federation of Bosnia – Herzegovina’ in which only Bosnians and Croats had full consti- tutional rights, and a ‘Republika Srpska’ (Serb Republic) in which only Serbs had full rights. The two were precariously linked by a central government. The situation was unstable and volatile and, despite a massive NATO military presence, most refugees were still unable to return to their homes and the country unable to repair its
infrastructure and re-discover economic growth.
The Yugoslav Wars were in most respects a series of separate but related ethnic conflicts, wars of independence and insurgencies fought savagely over a decade (1991 to 2001), ultimately leading to the break-up of the Yugoslav State. Most of the wars ended through peace accords, involving full inter- national recognition of new States, but all resulted in massive loss of life and economic devastation. Many key individual participants in the conflict were subsequently charged with War Crimes. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established by the UN to prosecute these crimes which, according to the International Centre for Transitional Justice, caused the death of one hundred and forty thousand people. The Centre estimated that in the conflicts in the former Yugoslav republics at least one hundred and thirty thousand people were killed.
Today the trauma of that recent history remains obvious, evidenced both by the bullet holes peppering the city buildings and by the sometimes downcast attitude that can unexpectedly rise to the surface in Bosnian friends and colleagues. After the devastating effects of the war in the 1990s there appeared to be a renewed appreciation amongst Bosnians for family and, understandably, a widespread mistrust of government.1
Op GRAPPLE:
Operation GRAPPLE was the codeword used to cover UK Defence Operations in support of the UN peacekeeping missions in the former Yugoslavia – authorised by UNSCR 776 of September 1992 – including the deployment of British Forces in Bosnia and Croatia from October 1992 until December 1995, as part of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR).
UNPROFOR eventually handed over the
1 Wikipedia.
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