YUGOSLAVIA
Recent History
With the death of General Tito in 1987 separatist movements started to develop with the various Yugoslavia states. By 1991 the governments of Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia officially seceded from the country. The Serb dominated national government sent troops to stop this with the breakaway state militias fighting back. The Serbs managed to control Bosnia, but after the new Bosnian governments request for Yugoslav national troops to withdraw was ignored, the Bosnians and other states rose up in outright rebellion against the Serbs. The escalation of violence led to Italian and Hungarian troops crossing into Slovenia and Croatia, mainly to stop the war from spilling over the borders into their territory.
In 1996 a Serb forces was dispatched to Romania to assist the Soviet/Warsaw Pact invasion, which weakened the Serb position in Yugoslavia and encouraged anti-Serb guerillas. With the situation worsening Italian troops fully entered Slovenia and Croatia, which effectively delineated the borders, and in the south the Greeks annexed Macedonia supported by the Albanians who wanted Kosovo. However the Albanian claim was not supported by Italy or Greece, leading Albania to break from the alliance with Greece and Italy and encourage Albanian guerillas to attack Greek forces.
The departure of Italian and Hungarian forces due to the war in the rest of Europe encouraged the Serbs to try and link up with NATO forces. This ultimately failed but the prospect of NATO forces in the Balkans led to a Soviet invasion in 1997 which gained control of much of Bosnia. It also also to the US sending troops to help the Serbs and anti-Soviet partisans. In 2000 Yugoslavia is a war thorn and divided country with numerous factions, both native and foreign vying for control and fighting among themselves. Each of the Yugoslavian states has its own governments, which are basically war councils as they do little else but fight each other. Both the US (CivGov) and the Soviets have troops in the country, with the US backing the Serbs and the Soviets backing the Croatians.
The various Yugoslav armies are in poor shape in 2000. The military situation in Yugoslavia has also been described as a snake pit, due to fluid and interchangeable borders and alliances, and almost no pre-war Yugoslav national army units have survived the war. Small arms come from many sources, both Yugoslavian, NATO, Soviet or others. Heavy weapons, automatic weapons and ammunition are in short supply and have been supplemented by civilian semi-automatics, bolt action rifles and shotguns.
The Yugoslav army and the successor states used Yugoslav T-84’s, and T-72/74’s, T-54/55’s, M-47 and M4 Sherman tanks. Other vehicles include PT-76, BRDM-2, M-8, and M3A1 scout vehicles, and M-80, M-60P and BTR-50/40 APC’s. Artillery includes 122mm and 105mm howitzers, 100mm, 90mm and 76.2 mm anti-tank guns, 120mm and 82mm mortars, 105mm and 57mm recoilless rifles, AT-3 and BOV-AT missiles, 37mm and 20mm AAG and SA-7 SAM.
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