Birth rate 8. Death rate Net migration rate Sex ratio at birth: 1. Infant mortality rate total: 8. Life expectancy at birth total population: Total fertility rate 1. Bosniak Muslim Croatian The World Factbook, the indispensable source for basic information.
Bosnian official Literacy definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: Sanitation facility access improved: urban: Health expenditures 6. Dependency ratios total dependency ratio: Government Croatia Bosnia and Herzegovina Country name conventional long form: Republic of Croatia conventional short form: Croatia local long form: Republika Hrvatska local short form: Hrvatska former: People's Republic of Croatia, Socialist Republic of Croatia etymology: name derives from the Croats, a Slavic tribe who migrated to the Balkans in the 7th century A.
The country's output during that time collapsed, and Croatia missed the early waves of investment in Central and Eastern Europe that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Inflation over the same period remained tame and the currency, the kuna, stable. Croatia experienced an abrupt slowdown in the economy in ; economic growth was stagnant or negative in each year between and , but has picked up since the third quarter of , ending with an average of 2.
Challenges remain including uneven regional development, a difficult investment climate, an inefficient judiciary, and loss of educated young professionals seeking higher salaries elsewhere in the EU. In , Croatia revised its tax code to stimulate growth from domestic consumption and foreign investment.
Income tax reduction began in , and in various business costs were removed from income tax calculations. Cetnik leader Mihailovic was captured and executed as a traitor by the Partisans. The Communist-organized People's Front Narodni Front weakened and suppressed other political parties and won elections.
A new Constitution was unanimously approved by the Assembly on January 31, Autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina were created within Serbia. The authority of individual republics was subordinated to the central government in most substantial matters, and in areas left to republics' authority, they were still monitored by the central government. Government persecution of Serbian Orthodox and Croatian Catholic churches occurred.
Serbian Orthodox Church property was confiscated while schools and convents were closed. Croatina Catholic archbishop Alozije Stepinac openly supported the creation of an independent Croatian state during World War II and opposed harsh policies of Croatian government only weakly. After publicly voicing anticommunist sentiments, Stepinac was arrested and sentenced to 16 years' hard labor in Disappointment with the amount of actual aid from the Soviet Union and Yugoslav efforts to pursue independent foreign relations on a regional level led to a break with the Soviet Union and isolation from neighboring communist states.
The official policy of decentralization led to increasing local autonomy in various regions. The League of Communists of Yugoslavia and the central government still retained most effective control, though less direct than before. Moslems in the Bosnian League of Communists successfully pressured the governing League of Communists party in Belgrade to elevate their official status from that of a national minority to constituent nation by The government granted concessions in response to Croat and Slovene demands regarding allocations from the Federal Investment Fund and increasing the republics' autonomy.
Tito's apparent concessions to nationalist demands were limited, however, as he responded to student demonstrations in Zagreb and Croatian leaders' apparent support by arresting more than students and purging Croatian Communist Party leaders. The Moslems' national status was established in the new Yugoslav constitution after they successfully argue that their status as a nation would dilute conflict between Serbs and Croats in Bosnia.
These autonomous regions were eventually declared parts of 'Serb Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina'. Fighting erupted in Slovenia after the Yugoslav army sent tanks to crush its independence bid. Rising tension in Croatia, where the Serbian minority opposed independence moves, soon turned violent. Serbia and its allies used emergency powers to take control of the collective Yugoslav presidency without Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina attending sessions.
Bosnian Serbs proclaimed their own republic after a referendum against independence from Yugoslavia. EC date from which its 12 members may recognize and set up full diplomatic relations with any of the four former Yugoslav republics which have declared independence.
The first Serb barricades appeared in Sarajevo and were dismantled after a residents' march challenged masked gunmen. The EC recognized Bosnia-Herzegovina as independent. Fighting erupted in Sarajevo as a Serb siege began. Serb forces were reported to have control of about two-thirds of Bosnian territory. A mortar attack on a bread queue in Sarajevo killed at least 20 people and wounded This attack caused international outrage.
Leaders of the three warring factions in Bosnia signed in London the first in a series of abortive ceasefires. The World was shocked by television pictures of emaciated captives in Serb-run detention camps in Bosnia. Croats were reported to control most of the remaining territory not under Serb control, mostly in eastern areas along the Adriatic coastal area of Croatia. London peace talks ended with Bosnian Serbs offering to hand all heavy weapons to the United Nations.
An international conference, chaired by U. N representative Cyrus Vance and E. Bosnian Serb forces captured Bosanski Brod on the Croatian border thereby gaining control of the vital North Bosnian corridor. The U. Security Council decided to establish a war crimes commission to investigate atrocities in Bosnia and Croatia.
Croat forces trying to expand a newly declared ethnic mini-state ransacked the town of Prozor and expelled the Moslem majority. This splintered the alliance between Coats and Moslems against the Serbs. International mediators proposed a new-style Bosnian state with a central government and 10 autonomous regions. Croat-Moslem skirmishing spread in central Bosnia. Each side traded accusations of provocations and forcible subordinate of each other's units.
Security Council authorized a naval blockade of Serbia and Montenegro, the remaining Yugoslav republics, for Belgrade's support of Bosnian Serbs. Foreign ministers and officials from 29 countries met in Geneva to discuss the Yugoslav crisis. Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen announced a proposal to divide Bosnia into 10 provinces, mostly along ethnic lines.
Croat nationalist leader Mate Boban signed the Vance-Owen peace package because it awarded Croats all the territory it sought on the battlefield. The Moslem-led government and the Serbs refused to sign the agreement and the peace process was suspended.
The self-styled parliament of the Bosnian Serbs accepted Vance-Owen peace plan on power sharing in Bosnia. Moslems surrounded a U. Under immense international pressure, the Bosnian government added its signature to the peace plan, leaving Serbs as only side refusing to sign it.
A Bosnian war crimes court sentenced two Bosnian Serbs to death for murder, rape and robbery in the civil war. Aid officials suspended a Srebrenica evacuation after five children and two women died in a crush to board a convoy.
The Security Council authorized the use of force against planes violating the no-fly ban over Bosnia. A full-blown Croat-Moslem war erupted in central and southwest Bosnia. Croat irregulars massacred Moslem villagers in Ahmici, setting off a cycle of attack and reprisal.
Bosnian Croats demanded the withdrawal of Moslem troops from provinces designated for Croat self-rule under a U. Fierce fighting began across central Bosnia between the former allies. Security Council agreed to tighten sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro if Bosnian Serbs did not accept peace plan by April The Serb parliament rejected the plan on April 26 and sanctions come into effect.
Croats laying siege to Moslem-populated east Mostar, started rounding up and expelling Moslems from the entire Herzegovina region. A Bosnian Serb referendum, dismissed by mediators as a sham, voted by 96 percent to reject the peace plan. The Bosnian army launched a counter-offensive against the Croats. The wrested six key towns over the ensuing six months and turned the tide of war against Croats across central Bosnia. A fresh round of talks began with Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic under pressure to accept ethnic partition.
Owen said the Vance-Owen plan was dead, telling a news conference the war has gone too far for an honorable solution. The main body of a man U. Shells killed 12 at a communal tap in the Dobrinja suburb of Sarajevo. A final attempt at peace talks began in Geneva, where Serbs and Croats expressed support for the mediators' proposal to create a new 'union' of three ethnic mini-states.
Izetbegovic agreed to constitutional proposals for the 'union,' pending parliament's approval. The talks turned to borders. Izetbegovic began a fresh boycott of the peace talks, making his return conditional on Serb withdrawal from two strategic mountains over Sarajevo. Mediators announced a tentative accord to place Sarajevo under U. Izetbegovic said he now accepted the partition of Bosnia.
Serb, Croat, and Moslem leaders tentatively agreed to split Bosnia into a union of three ethnic republics. But, the Moslem assembly rejected it as a recipe for Moslem isolation. The Bosnian Moslem parliament rejected the proposed peace deal, demanding the return of land and access to the Adriatic. The Bosnian government cracked down on a crime ring within the Bosnian army.
One hundred forty-six soldiers were arrested under suspicion and one of two ring leaders was killed in a shoot-out in Sarajevo. The Moslem-led army captured the town of Vares in an offensive against Croat forces in central Bosnia. All three combatants pledged to allow safe passage for aid convoys in Bosnia in U. Izetbegovic returned from four days of Geneva peace talks and said little was achieved.
He opposed the split of Sarajevo. EC foreign ministers invited the warring parties and presidents of Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro to Brussels for peace talks on December Mediators Owen and Thorvald Stoltenberg, who took over from Vance, scheduled a new round of top-level peace talks in Geneva. Croatian President Franjo Tudjman said in Geneva that Serbs and Croats had reached agreement on a new Bosnian map which would satisfy Moslem demands for a third of the territory of Bosnia.
The Commander of U. British General Sir Michael Rose, a special forces veteran, was named as his successor. Yugoslavia and Croatia agreed to normalize ties.
Bosnian Serbs and Croats signed a similar pact. Talks between Serbs, Moslems and Croats on ending the war in Bosnia achieved nothing as Bosnia's Muslim-led Government rejected the proposed division of Bosnia. Security Council gave Croatia two weeks to begin pulling its troops out of Bosnia or face possible economic sanctions.
The partition of Croatia began in August , when Krajina region Serbs, who formed a strong local majority there, resisted attempts by the new nationalist Croatian government to impose upon them purely Croat state symbols, including a flag very much like that of the fascist state that had slaughtered so many Serbs in When Croatia declared independence in June , the Serbs in this region and in some other parts of Croatia announced their own desire to remain in Yugoslavia.
The Yugoslav army, rapidly transforming into a Serbian army, supported the Serbs. In the course of the fighting, from August until January , the Serbs took control of about one-third of the territory of Croatia. Some of these regions had a Serbian majority before the war began, but others had not. The pattern of the war in Croatia was the de facto partition of the regions of the republic that had been most mixed ethnically.
In effect, in these six months of war, the mixed areas of Croatia were divided, and the populations forced to divide themselves, rather like the Hindu and Muslim populations of India and Pakistan in , though on a much smaller scale.
The effects of the population transfers have been to render hundreds of thousands of people homeless, refugees, while homogenizing the populations. An index of this homogenization is that by March of , only about , Serbs remained in parts of Croatia under government control, of the more than , in those regions before the war began.
The others had fled to Serb-controlled areas of Croatia and Bosnia, or to Serbia itself. The Bosnian situation was more complicated. Since there was no single majority nation, in independent Bosnia and Hercegovina could not be the nation-state of any single group, unless its citizens chose to define themselves primarily as Bosnians rather than as Muslims, Serbs, and Croats.
This political partition of and by the voters proved fatal to Bosnia as it became increasingly clear that Yugoslavia would disintegrate in the name of the separatist self-determination of the separate Yugoslav peoples. The increasing likelihood that there would be separate, independent Serb and Croat states made an independent Bosnia and Hercegovina an unattractive option for most Serbs and Croats living in that republic, at least outside of Sarajevo.
By joining Serbia and Croatia, respectively, they would become members of ruling, sovereign majorities, rather than of potentially threatened minorities. Further, annexing large areas of Bosnia and Hercegovina had always been elements of the Serbian and Croatian nationalist ideologies.
Reflecting these beliefs, the presidents of Serbia and Croatia met on the border of their republics in March , while Yugoslavia still existed, and agreed on the partition of Bosnia between Serbia and Croatia upon the breakup of Yugoslavia. This agreement was restated by the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs and Croats in a meeting in Austria in May The Serb and Croat political parties in Bosnia and Hercegovina acted on their plans to divide the republic.
As Yugoslavia disintegrated, these parties armed their own people and made plans for the military partition of Bosnia and Hercegovina once Yugoslavia was gone. In terms of public politics, the Serbs and Croats differed, since the Croats stood officially for an independent Bosnia and Hercegovina. However, as noted at the time by Lord Carrington, the European Community's mediator in Yugoslavia, the Croats combined this official stance, in favor of an independent Bosnia and hercegovina, with practical politics aimed at ensuring that this "republic" would have literally no central authority of any kind.
This left it an empty shell, much like the former Yugoslavia after Thus the Croat position amounted to favoring Bosnia's secession from Yugoslavia, making it easier to annex Croat-dominated regions to Croatia.
Bosnia remained peaceful, if extremely tense, as Serbs and Croats fought in Croatia from August until January As the cease-fire held in Croatia, Bosnia's Serbs and Croats began to implement their plans for dividing the republic, proclaiming "autonomous" Serb and Croat territories. March saw increasing tensions and outbreaks of violence.
Croat forces, some from Croatia, attacked Serb settlements in the north of Bosnia and in Hercegovina. Fighting quickly spread. However, since so many of the putative citizens of this supposed state preferred to be Serbs in a greater Serbia or Croats in a greater Croatia rather than "Bosnians" in an independent Bosnia, recognition only ensured that the war would intensify. Having been told that they could not partition Bosnia and Hercegovina through negotiations, the Serbs and Croats proceeded to do it in the field, with bloodshed.
The course of the war has effected the partition of Bosnia and Hercegovina. The campaign of "ethnic cleansing" there since , like those in Croatia in , have been aimed at creating homogenous nation-states. The difference is that while in the s the primary victims were Serbs at the hands of Croats and Muslims, in the s the primary victims are Muslims at the hands of Serbs and Croats.
An estimated , people have been killed thus far. While their ethnic breakdown is unknown, the UNHCR has released figures September on some of the almost 1,, displaced persons in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Mostar in southern Bosnia, is a town where Serbs, Croats and Muslim Bosniaks all lived before the war.
When the Bosnian war broke out in , Croats and Bosniaks first fought the Serbs here and then Croats fought Bosniaks, with the occasional help of the Serbs.
The kiss picture has elicited mixed reactions. Some were enthusiastic, seeing it as symbolic of young people leaving the past behind. Others were more sceptical. Croatia's relationship with Serbs and Serbia has been long and tortuous. The two languages are very close. Croats are mostly Catholics though and Serbs are Orthodox. Croats write with the Latin alphabet. Serbs use both that and Cyrillic. Since , however, relations between Serbs and Croats have been transformed beyond recognition, and for the better.
Yet a new survey of young Croats shows a relatively high level of antipathy towards Serbs. In , just before the war, Serbs were Now they number a third of that proportion, around 4.
Areas such as the former breakaway region of Krajina, from where Serbs fled or were ethnically cleansed in , remain depopulated, as few returned after the war. According to Prof Tvrtko Jakovina, a historian and member of the Croatian president's Foreign Policy Council, many Croats would say privately, "probably we are better off like that".
The reason is that without a substantial minority of Serbs many Croats feel more secure and have less reason to fear a new conflict. But Prof Jakovina notes that, at the same time, Serbs in Croatia now play a significant role.
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