Just now in Holland...

[DFW]

54. Once the country of Yugoslavia has been declared a non-entity

Both Serbia and Croatia were accusing each other of having invaded Bosnia, and when Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, the Serbs were considered invaders by the Kosovars as well.

Whether a civil war or not was really semantic, anyway. It was a brutal armed conflict with huge casualties, destruction of cities, and enormous displacement of civilian population. "Ethnic cleansing" became a household word during this conflict, as both Serbs and Croats sought to eradicate each other's populations in both Bosnia and their own territories. We absorbed a few hundred thousand here, and many stayed on. One gets a real idea how close this all was when one visits the area. My wife and I visited Dubrovnik about 6 years ago. Bombing damage from Serbian artillery wasn't completely repaired, and one could still see the hills in Serbia across the bay, from which they were shooting their artillery into Dubrovnik, a historical site since for about six and a half centuries.