Tanks in Serbia

When Josip Broz Tito died in 1980 after controlling Yugoslavia for 35 years, the country suffered a vacuum of leadership. Economic hardship compounded the governmental weakness, giving rise to latent ethnic conflicts within the fractured nation. Bloody disputes broke out between Serbian and Croatian nationalists in 1991. Here, ethnic Serbs greet an armoured division of the Yugoslav People’s Army, which had been sent to curb the ethnic fighting. The situation escalated, however, leading to a civil war when Croatia and Slovenia seceded from Yugoslavia.

REUTERS/THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE

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Ethnic Conflict; Europe; Yugoslavia

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