The shattering of the Yugoslav federation has definitely recreated a set of ethnic problems but the main issue has come from the conflict between the Croatians and the Serbs.
The failure of different international interventions, in order to stop the ethnic conflict, resulted from a lack of historical knowledge. However it is sure that a definite cause of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia was the resurgence of ideas advocated by nationalist movements at the time of the Second World War(60).
The turning point occurred one year after the death of Tito in 1981 when Kosovo was troubled by demonstrations of the Albanians demanding an independency of Kosovo. These troubles were an opportunity for the leader Milosevic and his supporters to enhance the Serb national programme and to promote the new Serb political movement that arrived in power in Vojvodina, Montenegro and Kosovo(61).
Macedonia was the only Republic having succeeded in coming out peacefully and it was helped by the international community due to its geopolitical situation and in order to avoid a spread of the war. Unfortunately Macedonia was affected by an ethnic modification that would offer new tensions in Southern Balkans.
Both Kosovo and Macedonia saw their conflicts coming from the breakup of Yugoslavia and from several international interventions.
60 Michel Roux, La Yougoslavie de 1918 à 1991, dans Michel Foucher, Fragments d’Europe, Fayard, Paris 1993.
61 The principal resistance came from Slovenia wanting to keep its relationships with Germany and Austria and seeing Milosevic as a threat.