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Thank you for the video. I stand corrected: there is no evidence (at least, not on this video) that the Serb refugee convoy was harassed during their journey to Serbia. The film, however, does seem to be a bit one-sided. I could respond with films detailing Serbian atrocities, but what's the point? I think we can all agree that international investigative commissions have concluded the bulk of the atrocities were committed by Serbs. Starting the Greater Serbia Wars in 1989 (or before), and losing, had its consequences.

Support is available regarding Serb atrocities in Kosovo at Kosovo and the Left: Serbian Atrocities and U.S. Intervention, By Roger Lippman, Seattle, April, 1999.

Below is a summary helpful to the more casual observer or those with short memories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_wars. If you have specific corrections to any of the commentaries, it might be useful to know what they are. I recognize there is much bitterness because things didn't go as well as planned, with Kosovo being the latest example, but other countries have coped with their losses and become model democracies as well as outstanding world citizens. Why pursue policies that will alienate the Hungarian and other ethnic groups in Vojvodina, which is still part of the Republic of Serbia?

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The Yugoslav Wars were a series of violent conflicts in the territory of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) that took place between 1991 and 2001. They comprised two sets of successive wars affecting all of the six former Yugoslav republics. Alternative terms in use include the “War in the Balkans”, or “War in (the former) Yugoslavia”, “Wars of Yugoslav Secession”, and the “Third Balkan War” (a short-lived term coined by British journalist Misha Glenny, alluding to the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913).

They were characterized by bitter ethnic conflicts between the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, mostly between Serbs on the one side and Croats, Bosniaks or Albanians on the other; but also between Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia and Macedonians and Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia. The conflict had its roots in various underlying political, economic and cultural problems, as well as long-standing ethnic and religious tensions.

The civil wars ended with much of the former Yugoslavia reduced to poverty, massive economic disruption and persistent instability across the territories where the worst fighting occurred. The wars were the bloodiest conflicts on European soil since the end of World War II. They were also the first conflicts since World War II to have been formally judged genocidal in character and many key individual participants were subsequently charged with war crimes. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established by the United Nations to prosecute these crimes.

The Yugoslav civil wars can be split in three groups of several distinct conflicts:

Wars during the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia:
War in Slovenia (1991)
Croatian War of Independence (1991-1995)
Bosnian War (1992-1995)

Wars in Albanian-populated areas:
Kosovo War (1996-1999)
Southern Serbia conflict (2000-2001)
Macedonia conflict (2001)

The Early Conflicts (1991-1995)

In the years leading up to the Yugoslav wars, relations among the republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had been deteriorating. Slovenia and Croatia desired greater autonomy within a Yugoslav confederation, while Serbia sought to strengthen federal authority. As it became clearer that there was no solution agreeable to all parties, Slovenia and Croatia moved toward secession. By that time there was no effective authority at the federal level. Federal Presidency consisted of the representatives of all 6 republics and 2 provinces and JNA (Yugoslav People's Army). Communist leadership was divided along national lines. The final breakdown occurred at the 14th Congress of the Communist Party when Croat and Sloven delegates left in protest because the pro-integration majority in the Congress rejected their proposed amendments.

The first of these conflicts, known as the Ten-Day War or “The War” in Slovenia, was initiated by the secession of Slovenia from the federation on 25 June 1991. The federal government ordered the federal Yugoslav People's Army to secure border crossings in Slovenia. Slovenian police and Territorial Defense blockaded barracks and roads, leading to standoffs and limited skirmishes around the republic. After several dozen deaths, the limited conflict was stopped through negotiation at Brioni on 9 July 1991, when Slovenia and Croatia agreed to a three-month moratorium on secession. The Federal army completely withdrew from Slovenia by 26 October 1991.

The second in this series of conflicts, the Croatian War of Independence, began when Serbs in Croatia who were opposed to Croatian independence announced their secession from Croatia. The move was in part triggered by a provision in the new Croatian Constitution that replaced the explicit reference to Serbs in Croatia as a “constituent nation” with a generic reference to all other nations, and was interpreted by Serbs as being reclassified as a “national minority”. This was coupled with a history of distrust between the two ethnic groups dating back to at least both World Wars and the inter-war period. The federally-controlled Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) was ideologically unitarist, and predominantly staffed by Serbs in its officer corp, thus it also opposed Croatian independence and sided with the Croatian Serb rebels. Since the JNA had disarmed the Territorial Units of the two northernmost republics, the fledgling Croatian state had to form its military from scratch and was further hindered by an arms embargo imposed by the U.N. on the whole of Yugoslavia. The Croatian Serb rebels were unaffected by said embargo as they had the support of and access to supplies of the JNA. The border regions faced direct attacks from forces within Serbia and Montenegro, and saw the destruction of Vukovar and the shelling of UNESCO world heritage site Dubrovnik.

Meanwhile, control over central Croatia was seized by Croatian Serb forces in conjunction with the JNA Corpus from Bosnia & Herzegovina, under the leadership of Ratko Mladic. These attacks were marked by the killings of captured soldiers and heavy civilian casualties (Ovcara; Škabrnja), and were the subject of war crimes indictments by the ICTY for elements of the Serb political & military leadership. In January 1992, the Vance peace plan proclaimed UN controlled (UNPA) zones for Serbs in territory claimed by the rebel Serbs as the Republic of Serbian Krajina and brought an end to major military operations, though sporadic artillery attacks on Croatian cities and occasional intrusions of Croatian forces into UNPA zones continued until 1995.

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Further consequences are described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Federal_Republic_of_Yugoslavia:

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the end of World War II (1945) until it was formally dissolved in 1992 (de facto dissolved in 1991 with no leaders representing it) amid the Yugoslav wars. It was a socialist state that comprised the area of the present-day independent states of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia and the self declared, partially recognized Kosovo.

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You all know what happened in Kosovo, but here is a summary for Montenegro that can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montenegro: Based on the results of the referendum held on May 21, 2006, Montenegro declared independence on June 3, 2006 making it the newest fully recognized country in the world. On June 28, 2006, it became the 192nd member state of the United Nations, and on May 11, 2007, the 47th member state of the Council of Europe.