Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Prospects for the survival of communist-ruled Yugoslavia had been uncertain since the death in 1980 of Tito, who led the communist partisans to victory in 1945. By the late 1980s, the economy was stagnating and the Communist Party was discredited. This allowed a middle-ranking party functionary, Slobodan Milosevic, to come forward as a Serb ultra-nationalist.… He was clearly reaching for a Serbian-ruled Yugoslavia. If he could not attain this, he would settle for a Greater Serbia and seize as much territory as he could. Croatia and Slovenia prepared to resist. Milosevic accused the Croats of plotting genocide against the Serb minority in Croatia. Croatian and Slovenian independence was followed by immediate war. . . . A new term, 'ethnic cleansing,' entered the English language to describe the brutal expulsion of ethnic groups. A cease-fire was finally reached in January 1992. Then the Serbs turned their attention to Bosnia-Herzegovina, and while the world looked on impotently, repeated atrocities were committed. The savagery continued until 1995, when a Croatian offensive regained all the territory the Croats had previously lost, and the Dayton Accords ended the fighting in Bosnia." [Furtado: 1001 Days]