More Horrors of War & Possible Ethnic Cleansing May Be Brewing In Europe

Yes, I know that many of us have had our fill of bad news dominating the headlines. Right now, that may be particularly true, given that we are witnessing the outbreak of the biggest war in Europe since the end of World War II in Ukraine.

So yeah, you probably do not want to hear about any more potential bad news. Perhaps especially in Europe, a continent that, to it's credit, had enjoyed relative peace for about half a century, dating from the end of World War II.

However, this should serve as a reminder that, for many of us, while the Russian invasion of Ukraine may be the biggest war that Europe has seen since the end of World War II, it certainly was not the only conflict there. Right at the end of the Cold War, there was warfare and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. People seem to have forgotten that, but yes, it happened, and it was a big deal. It did not completely dominate the headlines quite as much as Russia's invasion of Ukraine is doing, but there were some major headlines nonetheless. This period in history saw the first concentration camps and mass starvation and rapes used as a weapon of war, horrors not seen on such a scale in Europe since the end of Hitler's Nazi Germany. 

It seems that people have largely forgotten. But they should not forget it, because it might not be over with quite yet. Remember that the breakup of the former Yugoslavia erupted into violence in the early to mid-nineties, and again in the later nineties. Serbian President Slobodan Milošević and some high-ranking military leaders were  tried and convicted in the Hague for war crimes, the first European leaders to be convicted of war crimes since the fall of fascism. 

Well, it turns out that those tensions did not simply go away. It hardly seems like we should be surprised by all of this. these tensions began when Yugoslavia was first formed, and made the situation especially volatile once that country broke up towards the end of the Cold War. It seems that the tensions are on the rise again in the region.

Milorad Dodic, the 7th Serb Member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is stoking Serb nationalism. He is denying that genocide happened, and has been rallying Bosnian Serbs to follow him. There are paramilitary troops who are marching under his banner, and the increasingly militant look and feel of this movement is, once again, making people in Bosnia - particularly in Dodic's Republika Srpska, nervous. 

Dodic is a polarizing figure. He seems not only to be denying the genocide that is widely accepted as a fact by the rest of the world, but in fact, celebrating the Serb leaders seen as responsible for the horrors of war and genocide. Many remember the violence of not so long ago, and there are fears that an outbreak of the horrors of three decades ago may be revisited. Reminders still exist there, and the mounting tensions are making a return to another war and even more episodes of genocide possible.