The Breakup of Yugoslavia: Map of the Former Yugoslavia, 1991–2008

After the Second World War, the communist partisan leader Josip Broz Tito rebuilt Yugoslavia as a federation of six republics, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia, with two autonomous provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina, inside Serbia. Press 1990 to see it. Its peoples, Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), Slovenes, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Albanians, Hungarians and others, were mixed across the republics, especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina; the 1991 census map in the gallery shows how much. Tito broke with Stalin in 1948 and kept Yugoslavia independent of both Cold War blocs, holding the country together through the communist party, the army and his own authority.

After Tito died on 4 May 1980, power passed to a rotating collective presidency, while the economy sank into debt, inflation and unemployment. Nationalism filled the vacuum. In Serbia Slobodan Milošević rose to power from 1987 by appealing to Serb grievances, especially in Kosovo, whose Albanian majority wanted more rights. In 1989 Serbia stripped Kosovo and Vojvodina of their autonomy and installed loyal leaders in Montenegro, giving Milošević four of the eight votes in the federal presidency. In January 1990 the League of Communists of Yugoslavia split along republican lines, and in the first free elections that year nationalist and reformist parties won in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia.

After referendums, Slovenia and Croatia both declared independence on 25 June 1991. The Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) moved against Slovenia, but after the Ten-Day War it withdrew under the Brioni Agreement of 7 July; Slovenia, with almost no Serb minority, was allowed to go. Croatia, with a Serb minority of about 12%, was different. Serbs in the Krajina and Slavonia, backed by the JNA and Belgrade, rose against the Croatian government and proclaimed their own Republic of Serbian Krajina, which held more than a quarter of Croatia. The town of Vukovar on the Danube fell on 18 November 1991 after a three-month siege, and the old city of Dubrovnik was shelled. A ceasefire in January 1992 brought UN peacekeepers, and the European Community recognised Slovenia and Croatia on 15 January 1992. Macedonia voted for independence in September 1991 and left peacefully.

Bosnia and Herzegovina was the most mixed republic: in 1991 about 44% of its people were Bosniaks, 31% Serbs and 17% Croats. After a referendum boycotted by most Serbs, it declared independence on 3 March 1992 and was recognised by the European Community and the United States in April. Bosnian Serb forces led by Radovan Karadžić and General Ratko Mladić, supported by Serbia, seized up to 70% of the country at the height of the war and expelled or killed non-Serbs in a campaign of "ethnic cleansing". The siege of Sarajevo, which began in April 1992 and lasted almost four years, was the longest siege of a capital city in modern warfare; snipers and shells killed between about 11,000 and 14,000 people, more than 5,000 of them civilians.

In 1993–1994 Bosnian Croat and Bosniak forces also fought each other, and Mostar's Ottoman Old Bridge was destroyed in November 1993, until the US-brokered Washington Agreement of March 1994 joined them in a federation. In July 1995 Bosnian Serb forces overran the UN "safe area" of Srebrenica and killed more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice both ruled the killings genocide. After a second mortar attack on Sarajevo's Markale market, NATO bombed Bosnian Serb positions in August–September 1995, while a Croatian and Bosniak offensive retook much of western Bosnia.

In Croatia, the Croatian army overran most of the Serb-held Krajina in Operation Storm on 4–7 August 1995, and about 200,000 Serbs fled. Peace talks at an American air base in Dayton, Ohio, led by the US diplomat Richard Holbrooke and attended by Milošević, Croatian president Franjo Tuđman and Bosnian president Alija Izetbegović, produced the Dayton Agreement, initialled on 21 November and signed in Paris on 14 December 1995. It kept Bosnia and Herzegovina as one state divided into two entities, the Bosniak–Croat Federation (51% of the land) and the Republika Srpska (49%), under international supervision. Eastern Slavonia was peacefully returned to Croatia by 1998. In all, the Bosnian War killed about 100,000 people.

Kosovo's Albanians had resisted peacefully through the 1990s, but from 1996–1998 the Kosovo Liberation Army began attacking Serbian police, and Serbian forces answered with a brutal counter-insurgency. After peace talks at Rambouillet failed, NATO began bombing the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on 24 March 1999 without UN Security Council approval. Serbian forces drove out hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians; more than 80% of Kosovo's population was displaced. After 78 days, Milošević agreed to withdraw, and UN Security Council Resolution 1244 placed Kosovo under UN administration with a NATO-led force. Many Kosovo Serbs and Roma then fled in turn.

Milošević was overthrown in 2000 and sent to The Hague, where he died during his trial in 2006; Karadžić and Mladić were later convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia became Serbia and Montenegro in 2003, and Montenegro voted for independence in May 2006, leaving Serbia alone. Kosovo declared independence on 17 February 2008; it is recognised by many countries, including the United States and most EU members, but not by Serbia, Russia or China. Macedonia, whose name was disputed by Greece, became North Macedonia in 2019. Slovenia joined the European Union in 2004 and Croatia in 2013. Use the buttons from 1990 to 2008 to watch one country become seven.