ABSTRACT
The breakdown of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), which began with Milošević's coup within the Serbian party in September 1987 and came to a conclusion with the declarations of “disassociation” by Slovenia and Croatia in June 1991, led directly to 10 years of conflict and impoverishment. During the years 1991–2001, there were two wars and one insurrection: the War of Yugoslav Dissolution 2 (27 June 1991 to 21 November 1995), the War for Kosovo (28 February 1998 to 11 June 1999), and the Albanian Uprising in Macedonia (16 March to 13 August 2001). These conflicts served as the baptism by fire of six new states – Slovenia, Croatia, a divided Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia (since June 2018, called North Macedonia), and, after an interval, albeit without local conflict, Montenegro (in 2006) and, 10 years after the conclusion of fierce fighting, Kosovo (in 2008). Serbia had passed a new constitution in September 1990, declaring itself exempt from the Yugoslav constitution without, however, declaring Serbia's secession from the SFRY. The status of the Albanians in Macedonia was partly resolved through the Ohrid Framework Agreement, which ended the 2001 insurrection, while the status of the Serb-run portion of Bosnia-Herzegovina, created by the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995, known as the Republika Srpska, remains disputed to this day. The latent functions of these wars included the criminalization of the local economies, the stimulation of high rates of inflation (especially in Serbia in the 1990s), and the sowing of levels of hatred, resentment, and trauma that will last until the memories of these conflicts fade away. The first two of these conflicts also produced indictments for war crimes before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague. All three conflicts served to catapult certain prominent figures into high positions in politics (e.g., Janez Janša in Slovenia, Hashim Thaçi in Kosovo, and Ali Ahmeti in what is now North Macedonia).
