The Worst War You Never Learned About, Mapped

It's 1991 and the Soviet Union is fracturing. And down here, another communist party is failing. Yugoslavia, a federation of six countries, is ripping itself apart. Their economy is in ruin and they're replacing communism with nationalism, the kind that thrives on focusing on ethnic and religious [music] differences. By the end of 1991, Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia have

all declared independence. Macedonia is allowed to leave peacefully, but Slovenia and Croatia fight wars to be independent from Yugoslavia. [music] And then you have Serbia, populated primarily by Christian Serbs, and they were not going to let Yugoslavia fully fall apart. Together with Montenegro, they attempt to become the successor state to Yugoslavia. After all, it was

they who held the most power in Yugoslavia and who comprised the majority of the Yugoslav army. They didn't want independent states, they wanted to hold on to their majority, to their power. Another country in this crumbling federation was the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Almost half of this country were Bosnian Muslims, called Bosniaks, and about a

third were Christian Serbs, similar to the Christian Serbs living up here, but living in Bosnia. The other 17% were Croats. For a long time, these groups had lived side by side in relative peace. They had a common ideology, communism, the idea of Yugoslavia. But as all these new countries were being created, no one wanted to end up in a

new controlled by the other side. So it's [music] late 1991 and a largely Croat region declares itself an independent state from Bosnia. It wasn't recognized internationally. While some Croat leaders want to secede from the country entirely, they first agree to cooperate with the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, acting like a state within a state. The next year, Bosnia