Lizard King said:This might seem like a stupid question, but why was there so much brutality?
There are many reasons for this. I'm not a historian or a political analyst, but I'll try to give a brief description. This is the ethnic map of former Yugoslavia according to the 1981 census (Montenegrins are barely distinguishable from Serbs on this map due to color, but it doesn't change much):
In short, the recipe for disaster went along these lines:
- take seven different nationalities, who belong to three different religions and whose ethnic areas of residence are largely intermixed;
- put them all into a single state, ruled by the Communist Party;
- suppress all nationalism, but make the largest nation over-represented in the government, military & police force etc.
- after the death of the charismatic, sociopath alpha-male dictator, whose charisma and power largely held the country together, have incompetent Communist bureaucracy take power;
- absent of Western loans, watch the socialist command economy collapse, increasing despair and frustration among the people;
- have some sweeping changes in the world affect the people, who now all want democracy, capitalism, nation-states, ethnic self-determination etc.
- watch the country erupt in flames in short order.
That's basically it. In Croatia, when people discuss the fall of Yugoslavia, they sometimes resort to mental masturbation on the example of Czechoslovakia. Look at them, they say, they separated without bloodshed!
Well of course they did. The Czechs and Slovaks are culturally very similar, and their ethnic territories are homogeneous and separated. For them it was easy, for us - not so much.
Bosnia today is not unlike Yugoslavia. You have Serbs and Croats who want out, and Muslims who want all of Bosnia for themselves. Of course, the Muslims will never admit this - they'll usually rebrand their nationalism as multiculturalism or some shit like that. When they say We want a multicultural Bosnia, they actually mean Shut up, do as we say, and watch us get deep into the asses of our Saudi sponsors.
The problem is, the international community won't allow a peaceful disintegration of Bosnia because if the Serbs and Croats left, you'd have a Muslim nation-state in Europe that would be financially dominated by its foreign sponsors from Turkey, Saudi Arabia etc. This is the anchor that's keeping the Serbs and Croats in.