UNDERSTANDING YUGOSLAVIA - Croatia and Slovenia - page 1070

ing Hungarians (in the northern province of Vojvodina) and Albanians, concentrated in
Kosovo (descended from the Illyrians, who lived here long before the Greeks and Romans).
Of course, these geographic divisions are extremely general. The groups overlapped a
lot—whichisexactlywhythebreakupofYugoslaviawassocontentious.Oneofthebiggest
causes of this ethnic mixing came in the 16th century. The Ottomans were threatening
to overrun Europe, and the Austrian Habsburgs wanted a buffer zone—a “human shield.”
The Habsburgs encouraged Serbs who were fleeing from Ottoman invasions to settle along
today's Croatian-Bosnian border to defend the realm (known as Vojna Krajina, or “Military
Frontier”).
Imagine being a simple Croat farmer in a remote village. One day your new neighbors
move in: big, tough, highly trained Serb refugees with chips on their shoulders after having
been kicked out of their ancestral homeland. And imagine being one of those Serbs: angry,
frightened, and struggling to make a new life far from home. The cultural clash between
these two groups reverberated for centuries.
Another legacy of the Ottomans—which directly resulted in the strife of the 1990s and
continued tension today—was their occupation of Kosovo. This southern province is con-
sidered the ancestral homeland of the Serbs, whose civilization began here before they
moved their capital north to Belgrade, fleeing the Ottomans after the Battle of Kosovo
Polje.UnderOttomanrule,KosovowasopeneduptosettlementbyMuslimAlbanians,who
quickly came to represent a majority of the population. Centuries later, Kosovo—today 95
percent Albanian—looms large in the Serb consciousness, and their loss of this land still
deeply offends them.
After the Ottoman threat subsided in the late 17th century, some of the Balkan states
(basically today's Slovenia and Croatia) became part of the Austrian Habsburg Empire.
The Ottomans stayed longer in the south and east (today's Bosnia-Herzegovina and Ser-
bia)—making the cultures in these regions even more different. By the mid-19th century,
the Ottoman Empire had become the dysfunctional “Sick Man of Europe,” allowing Serbia
to regain its independence through diplomatic means. Meanwhile, Bosnia-Herzegovina was
taken into the Habsburg fold (frustrating the Serbs, who already had visions of uniting the
South Slav peoples).
Butbeforelong,WorldWarIerupted,afteradisgruntledBosnianSerbnationalist—with
the aim of uniting the South Slavs—killed the Austrian archduke and heir to the Habsburg
throne during a visit to Sarajevo (see here ) . This famously kicked off a chain of events that
causedEurope,andtheworld,todescendintoaGreatWar.Duringthewar,theSerbsfought
valiantly (alongside England, France, and the US) with the Allies, while their Slovene and
Croat cousins—citizens of the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire—were compelled to
takeuparmsagainstthem.ManySerbs,alreadyeyeingahypothetical futureunionofSouth
Slavs, felt betrayed to see their would-be compatriots fighting against them.