Within in this paper, the two cases of Bosnia and Kosovo along with the conflict resolution and reconstruction efforts in relation to U.S. interests will be briefly analyzed. .
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Bosnia and Kosovo: How Did It Happen?.
To have a rudimentary understanding of how and why such a bloody and costly conflict could erupt in Southern Europe in modern times, one must turn the pages back 600 or so years to the height of the Ottoman Empire and their conquests that reached deep into the Balkans. It was in 1389 at the Battle of Kosovo Polje that set the modern ethnic divisions and strife in motion. Christian Serbs and Croats were defeated by Muslim Ottoman Turks and claimed the entire region as a sovereign conquest. In the late 15th century, the majority Orthodox populated Bosnia and Herzegovina also fell to the Ottoman Turks. Gradually ethnic Albanians and to a lesser extent Serbs became converted to Islam. However, the majority of Albanians and Serbs were still Orthodox Christians, and due to Turkish military victories, began centralizing in and around the city of Belgrade. This "Great Migration- of Serbs in the late 17th century left Kosovo under populated and was resettled by Christian and Muslim Albanians attracted by fertile land . Fast forward to the 20th century and almost all 100 years of it punctuated with nearly continuous fighting, beginning with the Balkan War of 1912 and the World Wars. It was in the post WWII period where things begin to become truly unstable. The country of Yugoslavia consisted of the republics of Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia - Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Macedonia and was under the Communist rule of Jossip Broz Tito who ruled the state with iron fist policies and favored status of ethnic Albanians and pro-Kosovar stance caused larger rifts to form between ethnic groups. With the fall of communism and the death of Marshall Tito in the 1980's, the fazade of forced tolerance through totalitarian politics came to an end.
