title: George S. Patton

text: Gay and others were only slightly injured, but Patton hit his head on the glass partition that separated the front and back seat. He began bleeding from a gash to the head, and complained that he was paralyzed and having trouble breathing. Taken to a hospital in Heidelberg, Patton was discovered to have a compression fracture and dislocation of the cervical third and fourth vertebrae, resulting in a broken neck and cervical spinal cord injury that rendered him paralyzed from the neck down.


title: George S. Patton

text: Patton spent most of the next 12 days in spinal traction to decrease the pressure on his spine. All non-medical visitors except Patton's wife Beatrice, who had flown from the U.S., were forbidden. Patton, who had been told he had no chance to ever again ride a horse or resume normal life, at one point commented, "This is a hell of a way to die." He died in his sleep of pulmonary edema and congestive heart failure at about 6:00pm on December 21, 1945, at the age of 60. The 1986 film "The Last Days of Patton" tells the story of his last few months.


title: George S. Patton

text: On December 24, Patton was buried at the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial in the Hamm district of Luxembourg City, alongside some wartime casualties of the Third Army, in accordance with his request to "be buried with [his] men." While he was initially buried in the middle of a plot like every other service member, the large number of visitors to his grave damaged the cemetery grounds, and his remains were moved to their current location at the front of the grave plots.


title: George S. Patton

text: Patton's colorful personality, hard-driving leadership style, and success as a commander, combined with his frequent political missteps, produced a mixed and often contradictory image. Patton's great oratory skill is seen as integral to his ability to inspire troops under his command. Historian Terry Brighton concluded that Patton was "arrogant, publicity-seeking and personally flawed, but ... among the greatest generals of the war". Patton's impact on armored warfare and leadership were substantial, with the U.S. Army adopting many of Patton's aggressive strategies for its training programs following his death. Many military officers claim inspiration from his legacy. The first American tank designed after the war became the M46 Patton.


title: George S. Patton

text: Several actors have portrayed Patton on screen, the most famous being George C. Scott in the 1970 film "Patton", for which he won (and refused) the Academy Award for Best Actor. He would reprise the role in 1986 in the made-for-television film "The Last Days of Patton". Other actors who have portrayed Patton include Stephen McNally in the 1957 episode "The Patton Prayer" of the ABC religion anthology series, "Crossroads", John Larch in the 1963 film "Miracle of the White Stallions", Kirk Douglas in the 1966 film "Is Paris Burning?", George Kennedy in the 1978 film "Brass Target", Darren McGavin in the 1979 miniseries "Ike", Robert Prentiss in the 1988 film "Pancho Barnes", Mitchell Ryan in the 1989 film "", Lawrence Dobkin in a 1989 episode of the miniseries "War and Remembrance", Edward Asner in the 1997 film "The Long Way Home", Gerald McRaney in the 2004 miniseries "", Dan Higgins in a 2006 episode of the miniseries "Man, Moment, Machine", Kelsey Grammer in the 2008 film "An American Carol", and Ed Harris in "Resistance" (2020).


title: George S. Patton

text: Patton cultivated a flashy, distinctive image in the belief that this would inspire his troops. He carried an ivory-gripped, engraved, silver-plated Colt Single Action Army .45 caliber revolver on his right hip, and frequently wore an ivory-gripped Smith & Wesson Model 27 .357 Magnum on his left hip. He was usually seen wearing a highly polished helmet, riding pants, and high cavalry boots. Patton also cultivated a stern expression he called his "war face". He was known to oversee training maneuvers from atop a tank painted red, white and blue. His jeep bore oversized rank placards on the front and back, as well as a klaxon horn which would loudly announce his approach from afar. He proposed a new uniform for the emerging Tank Corps, featuring polished buttons, a gold helmet, and thick, dark padded suits; the proposal was derided in the media as "the Green Hornet", and it was rejected by the Army.


title: George S. Patton

text: The historian Alan Axelrod wrote that "for Patton, leadership was never simply about making plans and giving orders, it was about transforming oneself into a symbol". Patton intentionally expressed a conspicuous desire for glory, atypical of the officer corps of the day which emphasized blending in with troops on the battlefield. He was an admirer of Admiral Horatio Nelson for his actions in leading the Battle of Trafalgar in a full dress uniform. Patton had a preoccupation with bravery, wearing his rank insignia conspicuously in combat, and at one point during World War II, he rode atop a tank into a German-controlled village seeking to inspire courage in his men.


title: George S. Patton

text: Patton was a staunch fatalist, and he believed in reincarnation. He believed that he might have been a military leader killed in action in Napoleon's army or a Roman legionary in a previous life.


title: George S. Patton

text: Patton developed an ability to deliver charismatic speeches. He used profanity heavily in his speech, which generally was enjoyed by troops under his command, but it offended other generals, including Bradley. The most famous of his speeches were a series he delivered to the Third Army prior to Operation Overlord. When speaking, he was known for his bluntness and witticism; he once said, "The two most dangerous weapons the Germans have are our own armored halftrack and jeep. The halftrack because the boys in it go all heroic, thinking they are in a tank. The jeep because we have so many God-awful drivers." During the Battle of the Bulge, he famously remarked that the Allies should "let the sons-of-bitches [Germans] go all the way to Paris, then we'll cut them off and round them up." He also suggested facetiously that his Third Army could "drive the British back into the sea for another Dunkirk."


title: George S. Patton

text: As media scrutiny on Patton increased, his bluntness stirred controversy. These began in North Africa when some reporters worried that he was becoming too close to former Vichy officials with Axis sympathies. His public image was more seriously damaged after word of the slapping incidents broke. Another controversy occurred prior to Operation Overlord when Patton spoke at a British welcoming club at Knutsford in England, and said, in part, "since it is the evident destiny of the British and Americans, and of course, the Russians, to rule the world, the better we know each other, the better job we will do." The next day news accounts misquoted Patton by leaving off the Russians.


title: George S. Patton

text: On a visit home after the war he again made headlines when he attempted to honor several wounded veterans in a speech by calling them "the real heroes" of the war, unintentionally offending the families of soldiers who had been killed in action. His final media blowup occurred in September 1945, when goaded by reporters about denazification, he said "[d]enazification would be like removing all the Republicans and all the Democrats who were in office, who had held office or were quasi-Democrats or Republicans and that would take some time." This caused Eisenhower to relieve Patton from command of the Third Army.


title: George S. Patton

text: As a leader, Patton was known to be highly critical, correcting subordinates mercilessly for the slightest infractions, but also being quick to praise their accomplishments. Although he garnered a reputation as a general who was both impatient and impulsive and had little tolerance for officers who had failed to succeed, he fired only one general during World War II, Orlando Ward, and only after two warnings, whereas Bradley sacked several generals during the war. Patton reportedly had the utmost respect for the men serving in his command, particularly the wounded. Many of his directives showed special trouble to care for the enlisted men under his command, and he was well known for arranging extra supplies for battlefield soldiers, including blankets and extra socks, galoshes, and other items normally in short supply at the front.


title: George S. Patton

text: Patton remained outspoken but unabashed in his feelings of racism throughout his life. His attitudes were likely cultivated from his upbringing and family roots in the Confederate South. Privately he wrote of black soldiers:


title: George S. Patton

text: Individually they were good soldiers, but I expressed my belief at the time, and have never found the necessity of changing it, that a colored soldier cannot think fast enough to fight in armor.


title: George S. Patton

text: I don't give a damn who the man is. He can be a Nigger or a Jew, but if he has the stuff and does his duty, he can have anything I've got. By God! I love him.


title: George S. Patton

text: Men, you are the first Negro tankers ever to fight in the American Army. I would never have asked for you if you weren't good. I have nothing but the best in my army. I don't care what color you are, so long as you go up there and kill those Kraut sonsabitches! Everyone has their eyes on you and is expecting great things from you. Most of all, your race is looking forward to you. Don't let them down and, damn you, don't let me down!


title: George S. Patton

text: In spite of his views, Patton called heavily on the black troops under his command. Historian Hugh Cole notes that Patton was the first to integrate black and white soldiers into the same rifle companies.


title: George S. Patton

text: In addition to all that, the one man Patton spent the most time with during World War II was his aide and personal valet, Sergeant Major William George Meeks, an African-American career soldier, and personal confidant and friend of General Patton.


title: George S. Patton

text: The difficulty in understanding the Russian is that we do not take cognizance of the fact that he is not a European, but an Asiatic, and therefore thinks deviously. We can no more understand a Russian than a Chinaman or a Japanese, and from what I have seen of them, I have no particular desire to understand them, except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them. In addition to his other Asiatic characteristics, the Russian has no regard for human life and is an all out son of bitch, barbarian, and chronic drunk.


title: George S. Patton

text: Patton expressed antisemitic views. In his journal, Patton referred to the Jewish survivors in displaced persons camps which he oversaw, as "the greatest stinking mass of humanity", "lower than animals": "Of course, I have seen them since the beginning and marveled that beings alleged to be made in the form of God can look the way they do or act the way they act."


title: George S. Patton

text: On February 1, 1945, Eisenhower wrote a memo ranking the military capabilities of his subordinate American generals in Europe. General Bradley and the Army Air Forces General Carl Spaatz shared the number one position, Walter Bedell Smith was ranked number three, and Patton number four. Eisenhower revealed his reasoning in a 1946 review of the book "Patton and His Third Army": "George Patton was the most brilliant commander of an Army in the open field that our or any other service produced. But his army was part of a whole organization and his operations part of a great campaign." Eisenhower believed that other generals such as Bradley should be given the credit for planning the successful Allied campaigns across Europe in which Patton was merely "a brilliant executor".


title: George S. Patton

text: Notwithstanding Eisenhower's estimation of Patton's abilities as a strategic planner, his overall view of Patton's military value in achieving Allied victory in Europe is revealed in his refusal to even consider sending Patton home after the slapping incidents of 1943, after which he privately remarked, "Patton is indispensable to the war effort—one of the guarantors of our victory." As Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy told Eisenhower: "Lincoln's remark after they got after Grant comes to mind when I think of Patton—'I can't spare this man, he fights'." After Patton's death, Eisenhower would write his own tribute:


title: George S. Patton

text: He was one of those men born to be a soldier, an ideal combat leader ... It is no exaggeration to say that Patton's name struck terror at the hearts of the enemy.


title: George S. Patton

text: Historian Carlo D'Este insisted that Bradley disliked Patton both personally and professionally, but Bradley's biographer Jim DeFelice noted that the evidence indicates otherwise. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appeared to greatly esteem Patton and his abilities, stating "he is our greatest fighting general, and sheer joy". On the other hand, Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman, appears to have taken an instant dislike to Patton, at one point comparing both him and Douglas MacArthur to George Armstrong Custer.


title: George S. Patton

text: For the most part, British commanders did not hold Patton in high regard. General Sir Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS)—the professional head of the British Army—noted in January 1943 that


title: George S. Patton

text: I had heard of him, but I must confess that his swashbuckling personality exceeded my expectation. I did not form any high opinion of him, nor had I any reason to alter this view at any later date. A dashing, courageous, wild, and unbalanced leader, good for operations requiring thrust and push, but at a loss in any operation requiring skill and judgment.


title: George S. Patton

text: One possible exception was Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery who appears to have admired Patton's ability to command troops in the field, if not his strategic judgment. Other Allied commanders were more impressed, the Free French in particular. General Henri Giraud was incredulous when he heard of Patton's dismissal by Eisenhower in late 1945, and invited him to Paris to be decorated by French President, Charles de Gaulle, at a state banquet. At the banquet, President de Gaulle gave a speech placing Patton's achievements alongside those of Napoleon. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was apparently an admirer, stating that the Red Army could neither have planned nor executed Patton's rapid armored advance across France.


title: George S. Patton

text: While Allied leaders expressed mixed feelings on Patton's capabilities, the German High Command was noted to have more respect for him than for any other Allied commander after 1943. Adolf Hitler reportedly called him "that crazy cowboy general". Many German field commanders were generous in their praise of Patton's leadership following the war, and many of its highest commanders also held his abilities in high regard. Erwin Rommel credited Patton with executing "the most astonishing achievement in mobile warfare". "Generaloberst" Alfred Jodl, chief of staff of the German Army, stated that Patton "was the American Guderian. He was very bold and preferred large movements. He took big risks and won big successes." "Generalfeldmarschall" Albert Kesselring said that


title: George S. Patton

text: Patton had developed tank warfare into an art, and understood how to handle tanks brilliantly in the field. I feel compelled, therefore, to compare him with "Generalfeldmarschall" Rommel, who likewise had mastered the art of tank warfare. Both of them had a kind of second sight in regard to this type of warfare.


title: George S. Patton

text: Referring to the escape of the Afrika Korps after the Battle of El Alamein, Fritz Bayerlein opined that "I do not think that General Patton would let us get away so easily." In an interview conducted for "Stars and Stripes" just after his capture, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt stated simply of Patton, "He is your best."


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Göbekli Tepe (, "Potbelly Hill"; known as "Girê Mirazan" or "Xirabreşkê" in Kurdish) is a Neolithic archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. Dated to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, between 9500 and 8000 BCE, the site comprises a number of large circular structures supported by massive stone pillars – the world's oldest known megaliths. Many of these pillars are richly decorated with figurative anthropomorphic details, clothing, and reliefs of wild animals, providing archaeologists rare insights into prehistoric religion and the particular iconography of the period. The -high, tell also includes many smaller rectangular buildings, quarries, and stone-cut cisterns from the Neolithic, as well as some traces of activity from later periods.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: The site was first used at the dawn of the Southwest Asian Neolithic period, which marked the appearance of the oldest permanent human settlements anywhere in the world. Prehistorians link this Neolithic Revolution to the advent of agriculture, but disagree on whether farming caused people to settle down or vice versa. Göbekli Tepe, a monumental complex built on the top of a rocky mountaintop, with no clear evidence of agricultural cultivation produced to date, has played a prominent role in this debate. The site's original excavator, German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, described it as the "world's first temple": a sanctuary used by groups of nomadic hunter-gatherers from a wide area, with few or no permanent inhabitants. Other archaeologists have challenged this interpretation, arguing that the evidence for a lack of agriculture and a resident population was far from conclusive. Recent research has also led the current excavators of Göbekli Tepe to revise or abandon many of the conclusions underpinning Schmidt's interpretation.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: First noted in a survey in 1963, Schmidt recognised the site as prehistoric in 1994 and began excavations there the following year. After his death in 2014, work continued as a joint project of Istanbul University, Şanlıurfa Museum, and the German Archaeological Institute, under the overall direction of Turkish prehistorian Necmi Karul. Göbekli Tepe was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018, recognising its outstanding universal value as "one of the first manifestations of human-made monumental architecture". , less than 5% of the site had been excavated.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Göbekli Tepe was built and occupied during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN)—the earliest division of the Neolithic period in Southwest Asia—which is dated to between 9600 and 7000 BCE. Beginning at the end of the last Ice Age, the PPN marks "the beginnings of village life", producing the earliest evidence for permanent human settlements in the world. Archaeologists have long associated the appearance of these settlements with the Neolithic Revolution—the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture—but disagree on whether the adoption of farming caused people to settle down, or settling down caused people to adopt farming. Despite the name, the Neolithic Revolution in Southwest Asia was "drawn out and locally variable". Elements of village life appeared as early as 10,000 years before the Neolithic in places, and the transition to agriculture took thousands of years, with different paces and trajectories in different regions. The Pre-Pottery Neolithic is divided into two subperiods: the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, to which the early phases of Göbekli Tepe belong, is dated to between 9600 and 8800 BCE; the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, to which the late phases of Göbekli Tepe belong, is dated to between 8800 and 7000 BCE. It was preceded by the Epipalaeolithic and succeeded by the Late Neolithic.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Evidence indicates that the inhabitants were hunter-gatherers who supplemented their diet with early forms of domesticated cereal and lived in villages for at least part of the year. Tools such as grinding stones and mortar & pestle, found at Göbekli Tepe, were analyzed and suggest considerable cereal processing. Archaeozoological evidence hints at "large-scale hunting of gazelle between midsummer and autumn."


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: PPN villages consisted mainly of clusters of stone or mud brick houses, but sometimes also substantial monuments and large buildings. These include the tower and walls at Tell es-Sultan (Jericho), as well as large, roughly contemporaneous circular buildings at Göbekli Tepe, Nevalı Çori, Çayönü, Wadi Feynan 16, Jerf el-Ahmar, Tell 'Abr 3, and Tepe Asiab. Archaeologists typically associate these structures with communal activities which, together with the communal effort needed to build them, helped to maintain social interactions in PPN communities as they grew in size.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: The T-shaped pillar tradition seen at Göbekli Tepe is unique to the Urfa region, but is found at the majority of PPN sites there. These include Nevalı Çori, Hamzan Tepe, Karahan Tepe, Harbetsuvan Tepesi, Sefer Tepe, and Taslı Tepe. Other stone stelae—without the characteristic T shape—have been documented at contemporary sites further afield, including Çayönü, Qermez Dere, and Gusir Höyük.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Göbekli Tepe is located in the Taş Tepeler ('Stone Hills'), in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains. It overlooks the Harran plain and the headwaters of the Balikh River, a tributary of the Euphrates. The site is a tell (artificial mound) situated on a flat limestone plateau. In the north, the plateau is connected to the neighbouring mountains by a narrow promontory. In all other directions, the ridge descends steeply into slopes and steep cliffs. On top of the ridge there is considerable evidence of human impact, in addition to the construction of the tell.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Excavations have taken place at the southern slope of the tell, south, and west of a mulberry that marks an Islamic pilgrimage, but archaeological finds come from the entire plateau. The team has also found many remains of tools. At the western escarpment, a small cave has been discovered in which a small relief depicting a bovid was found. It is the only relief found in this cave.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Like most PPN sites in the Urfa region, Göbekli Tepe was built on a high point on the edge of the mountains, giving it both a wide view over the plain beneath, and good visibility from the plain. This location also gave the builders good access to raw material: the soft limestone bedrock from which the complex was built, and the flint to make the tools to work the limestone.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: At the time when Göbekli Tepe was occupied, the climate of the area was warmer and wetter than it is today. It was surrounded by an open steppe grassland, with abundant wild cereals, including einkorn, wheat, and barley, and herds of grazing animals such as wild sheep, wild goat, gazelle, and equids. Large herds of goitered gazelle may have passed by the site in seasonal migrations. There is no evidence of substantial woodlands nearby; 90% of the charcoal recovered at the site was from pistachio or almond trees. Archaeologists disagree on whether the site provided ready access to drinking water. Schmidt maintained that there was "no access to water in the immediate vicinity", based on the fact that, whilst there are many karstic springs and small streams in the Germuş, the closest today are several kilometres away. However, in the wetter climate of the time, the local water table may have been higher, activating springs closer to the site that are dormant today. Schmidt also noted the presence of several cisterns carved into the bedrock under the site, holding at least of water, and subsequent excavation has uncovered a possible rainwater harvesting system.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Radiocarbon dating shows that the earliest exposed structures at Göbekli Tepe were built between 9500 and 9000 BCE, towards the end of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) period. The site was significantly expanded in the early 9th millennium BCE and remained in use until around 8000 BCE, or perhaps slightly later (the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, PPNB). There is evidence that smaller groups returned to live amongst the ruins after the Neolithic structures were abandoned.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Schmidt originally dated the site to the PPN based on the types of stone tools found there, considering a PPNA date "most probable". Establishing its absolute chronology took longer due to methodological challenges. Though the first two radiocarbon dates were published in 1998, these and other samples from the of the structure dated to the late 10th and early 9th millennium – 500 to 1000 years later than expected for a PPNA site. Schmidt's team explained the discrepancy in light of their theory that this material was brought to the site from elsewhere when it was abandoned, and so was not representative of the actual use of the structures. They instead turned to a novel method of dating organic material preserved in the plaster on the structure's walls, which resulted in dates more consistent with a PPNA occupation, in the middle or even early 10th-millennium BCE. Subsequent research led to a significant revision of Schmidt's chronology, including the abandonment of the theory that the fill of the structures was brought from elsewhere, and a recognition that direct dates on plaster are affected by the old wood effect. Together with new radiocarbon dates, this has established the site's absolute chronology as falling in the period 9500 to 8000 BCE – the late PPNA and PPNB.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Göbekli Tepe follows a geometric pattern. The pattern is an equilateral triangle that connects enclosures A, B, and D. A 2020 study of "Geometry and Architectural Planning at Göbekli Tepe" suggests that enclosures A, B, and D are all one complex, and within this complex there is a "hierarchy" with enclosure D at the top, rejecting the idea that each enclosure was built and functioned individually as less likely.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: At the western edge of the hill, a lionlike figure was found. In this area, flint and limestone fragments occur more frequently. It was, therefore, suggested that this could have been some kind of sculpture workshop. It is unclear, on the other hand, how to classify three phallic depictions from the surface of the southern plateau. They are near the quarries of classical times, making their dating difficult.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Apart from the tell, there is an incised platform with two sockets that could have held pillars and a surrounding flat bench. This platform corresponds to the complexes from Layer III at the tell. Continuing the naming pattern, it is called "complex E". Owing to its similarity to the cult-buildings at Nevalı Çori it has also been called "Temple of the Rock". Its floor has been carefully hewn out of the bedrock and smoothed, reminiscent of the terrazzo floors of the younger complexes at Göbekli Tepe. Immediately northwest of this area are two cistern-like pits that are believed to be part of complex E. One of these pits has a table-high pin as well as a staircase with five steps.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: At this early stage of the site's history, circular compounds or "temene" first appear. They range from in diameter. Their most notable feature is the presence of T-shaped limestone pillars evenly set within thick interior walls composed of unworked stone. Four such circular structures have been unearthed so far. Geophysical surveys indicate that there are 16 more, enclosing up to eight pillars each, amounting to nearly 200 pillars in all. The slabs were transported from bedrock pits located approximately from the hilltop, with workers using flint points to cut through the limestone bedrock. The pillars are the oldest known megaliths in the world.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Two taller pillars stand facing one another at the centre of each circle. Whether the circles were provided with a roof is uncertain. Stone benches designed for sitting are found in the interior. Many of the pillars are decorated with abstract, enigmatic pictograms and carved animal reliefs. The pictograms may represent commonly understood sacred symbols, as known from Neolithic cave paintings elsewhere. The reliefs depict mammals such as lions, bulls, boars, foxes, gazelle, and donkeys; snakes and other reptiles; arthropods such as insects and arachnids; and birds, particularly vultures. At the time the edifice was constructed, the surrounding country was likely to have been forested and capable of sustaining this variety of wildlife, before millennia of human settlement and cultivation led to the near–Dust Bowl conditions prevalent today. Vultures also feature prominently in the iconography of Çatalhöyük and Jericho.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Few humanoid figures have appeared in the art at Göbekli Tepe. Some of the T-shaped pillars have human arms carved on their lower half, however, suggesting to site excavator Schmidt that they are intended to represent the bodies of stylized humans (or perhaps deities). Loincloths appear on the lower half of a few pillars. The horizontal stone slab on top is thought by Schmidt to symbolize shoulders, which suggests that the figures were left headless. Whether they were intended to serve as surrogate worshippers, symbolize venerated ancestors, or represent supernatural, anthropomorphic beings is not known.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Some of the floors in this, the oldest, layer are made of terrazzo (burnt lime); others are bedrock from which pedestals to hold the large pair of central pillars were carved in high relief. Radiocarbon dating places the construction of these early circles around 9000 BCE. Carbon dating suggests that (for reasons unknown) the enclosures were backfilled during the Stone Age.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: The creation of the circular enclosures in layer III later gave way to the construction of small rectangular rooms in layer II. Rectangular buildings make more efficient use of space compared with circular structures. They often are associated with the emergence of the Neolithic, but the T-shaped pillars, the main feature of the older enclosures, also are present here, indicating that the buildings of Layer II continued to serve the same function in the culture, presumably as sanctuaries. Layer II is assigned to Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB). The several adjoining rectangular, doorless, and windowless rooms have floors of polished lime reminiscent of Roman terrazzo floors. Carbon dating has yielded dates between 8800 and 8000 BCE. Several T-pillars up to 1.5 meters tall occupy the center of the rooms. A pair decorated with fierce-looking lions is the rationale for the name "lion pillar building" by which their enclosure is known.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: A stone pillar resembling totem pole designs was discovered at Göbekli Tepe, Layer II in 2010. It is 1.92 metres high and is superficially reminiscent of the totem poles in North America. The pole features three figures, the uppermost depicting a predator, probably a bear, and below it a human-like shape. Because the statue is damaged, the interpretation is not entirely clear. Fragments of a similar pole also were discovered about 20 years ago in another site in Turkey at Nevalı Çori. Also, an older layer at Göbekli features some related sculptures portraying animals on human heads.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Layer I is the uppermost part of the hill. It is the shallowest but accounts for the longest stretch of time. It consists of loose sediments caused by erosion and the virtually-uninterrupted use of the hill for agricultural purposes since it ceased to operate as a ceremonial center.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Around the beginning of the 8th millennium BCE, Göbekli Tepe lost its importance. The advent of agriculture and animal husbandry brought new realities to human life in the area, and the "Stone-age zoo" (Schmidt's phrase applied particularly to Layer III, Enclosure D) apparently lost whatever significance it had had for the region's older, foraging communities. However, the complex was not simply abandoned and forgotten to be gradually destroyed by the elements. Instead, each enclosure was deliberately buried under as much as of refuse, creating a tell consisting mainly of small limestone fragments, stone vessels, and stone tools. Many animal and human bones have been identified in the fill. The site was deliberately backfilled sometime after 8000 BCE: the buildings were buried under debris, mostly flint gravel, stone tools, and animal bones. In addition to Byblos points (weapon heads, such as arrowheads etc.) and numerous Nemrik points, Helwan-points, and Aswad-points dominate the backfill's lithic inventory.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Before any burials were found, Schmidt speculated that graves could have been located in niches behind the walls of the circular building. In 2017, a human crania with incisions was discovered at the site, interpreted as a manifestation of the widespread Neolithic skull cult. Special preparation of human crania in the form of plastered human skulls is known from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period at sites such as 'Ain Mallaha, Tell es-Sultan (also known as Jericho), and Yiftahel.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: The plateau Göbekli Tepe is situated on has been shaped by erosion and quarrying from the Neolithic onwards. There are four and channels on the southern part of the plateau, interpreted as the remains of an ancient quarry from which rectangular blocks were taken. These are possibly related to a square building in the neighbourhood, of which only the foundation is preserved. Presumably, this is the remains of a Roman watchtower that was part of the "Limes Arabicus", though this is conjecture. Most structures on the plateau seem to be the result of Neolithic quarrying, with the quarries being used as sources for the huge, monolithic architectural elements. Their profiles were pecked into the rock, with the detached blocks then levered out of the rock bank. Several quarries where round workpieces had been produced were identified. Their status as quarries was confirmed by the find of a 3-by-3 metre piece at the southeastern slope of the plateau. Unequivocally Neolithic are three T-shaped pillars that had not yet been levered out of the bedrock. The largest of them lies on the northern plateau. It has a length of and its head has a width of . Its weight may be around 50 tons. The two other unfinished pillars lie on the southern Plateau.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Archaeologists disagree on how much labour was needed to construct the site. Schmidt maintained that "the work of quarrying, transporting, and erecting tons of heavy, monolithic, and almost universally well-prepared limestone pillars [...] was not within the capability of a few people". Using Thor Heyerdahl's experiments with the moai of Rapa Nui as a reference, he estimated that moving the pillars alone must have involved hundreds of people. According to these experiments, one "moai" of similar size to a T-shaped pillar from Göbekli Tepe would have taken 20 people a year to carve, and 50–75 people a week to transport 15 km. Schmidt's team has also cited a 1917 account of the construction of a megalith on the Indonesian island of Nias, which took 525 people three days. These estimates underpin their interpretation that the site was built by a large, non-resident workforce, coerced or enticed there by a small religious elite. However, others estimate that just 7–14 people could have moved the pillars using ropes and water or another lubricant, with techniques used to construct other monuments such as Stonehenge. Experiments at Göbekli Tepe itself have suggested that all the PPNB structures currently exposed could have been built by 12–24 people in less than four months, allowing for time spent quarrying stone and gathering, and preparing food. These labour estimates are thought to be within the capability of a single extended family or village community in the Neolithic. They also match the number of people that could have comfortably been inside one of the buildings at the same time.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: The stone pillars in the enclosures at Göbekli Tepe are T-shaped, similar to other PPN sites in the region. Unlike at these other sites, however, many of the pillars are carved – typically in low relief, though sometimes in high relief. Most carvings depict animals, mostly serpents, foxes, and boars, but also gazelle, mouflon (wild sheep), onager, ducks, and vultures. Insofar as they can be identified, the animals are male, and often depicted with an aggressive posture.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Abstract shapes are also depicted, mostly an upright or horizontal ‘H’-shaped symbol, but also crescents and disks. Depictions of humans are rare; pillar 43 in enclosure D includes a headless man with an erect phallus. However, the ‘T’-shape of the pillars themselves is anthropomorphic: the shaft is the body, and the top is the head. This is confirmed by the fact that some pillars include – in addition to animal reliefs – carvings of arms, hands, and loincloths.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: The two central pillars occupied a special place in the symbolic architecture of the enclosures. Those in Enclosure D represent humans, with arms, a belt, and a piece of cloth that hides the genitals. The sex of the individuals depicted cannot be clearly identified, though Schmidt suggested that they are two men because the belts they wear are a male attribute in the period. There is only one certain representation of a woman, depicted naked on a slab.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Schmidt and zooarchaeologist Joris Peters have argued that the variety of fauna depicted on the pillars means they likely do not express a single iconography. They suggest that, since many of the animals pictured are predators, the stones may have been intended to stave off evils through some form of magic representation, or served as totems.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: The structures at Göbekli Tepe have also yielded a number of smaller carved stones, which typically cannot be attributed to one period or another. The iconography of these objects is similar to that of the pillars, mostly depicting animals, but also humans, again primarily male.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: A broken "totem" was discovered in one of the structures in Layer II. Reassembled, it is 1.92 m high and 30 cm in diameter. It depicts three figures (from top to bottom): a predator (a bear or large felid) with a missing head, and the neck and arms of a human; another figure missing a head with human arms, likely male; and a third figure with a preserved head. Snakes are carved on either side.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Klaus Schmidt's view was that Göbekli Tepe was a stone-age mountain sanctuary. He suggested it was a central location for a cult of the dead and that the carved animals are there to protect the dead. Butchered bones found in large numbers from the local game such as deer, gazelle, pigs, and geese have been identified as refuse from food hunted and cooked or otherwise prepared for the congregants. Zooarchaeological analysis shows that gazelle were only seasonally present in the region, suggesting that events such as rituals and feasts were likely timed to occur during periods when game availability was at its peak. Schmidt was the construction of Göbekli Tepe as contributing to the later development of urban civilization.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Schmidt also speculated on the belief systems of the groups that created Göbekli Tepe, based on comparisons with other shrines and settlements. He presumed shamanic practices and suggested that the T-shaped pillars represent human forms, perhaps ancestors, whereas he saw a fully articulated belief in deities as not developing until later, in Mesopotamia, that was associated with extensive temples and palaces. This corresponds well with an ancient Sumerian belief that agriculture, animal husbandry, and weaving were brought to humans from the sacred mountain Ekur, which was inhabited by Annuna deities, very ancient deities without individual names. Schmidt identified this story as a primeval oriental myth that preserves a partial memory of the emerging Neolithic. It is apparent that the animal and other images give no indication of organized violence, i.e. there are no depictions of hunting raids or wounded animals, and the pillar carvings generally ignore game on which the society depended, such as deer, in favour of formidable creatures such as lions, snakes, spiders, and scorpions. Expanding on Schmidt's interpretation that round enclosures could represent sanctuaries, Gheorghiu's semiotic interpretation reads the Göbekli Tepe iconography as a cosmogonic map that would have related the local community to the surrounding landscape and the cosmos.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: The assumption that the site was strictly cultic in purpose and not inhabited has been challenged as well by the suggestion that the structures served as large communal houses, "similar in some ways to the large plank houses of the Northwest Coast of North America with their impressive house posts and totem poles." It is not known why every few decades the existing pillars were buried to be replaced by new stones as part of a smaller, concentric ring inside the older one. According to Rémi Hadad, in recent years "the interpretative enthusiasm that sought to see Göbekli Tepe as a regional ceremonial centre where nomadic populations would periodically converge is giving way to a vision that is more in line with what is known about other large Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites, where ritual and profane functions coexist." For example, the discovery of domestic buildings and rainwater harvesting systems has forced a revision of the 'temple' narrative.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Before being documented by archaeologists, the hill Göbekli Tepe stands on, known locally in Kurdish as Girê Mirazan or Xerabreşk, was considered a sacred place.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: The archaeological site was first noted in a survey conducted by Istanbul University and the University of Chicago in 1963. American archaeologist Peter Benedict identified the stone tools collected from the surface of site as characteristic of the Aceramic Neolithic, but apparently mistook the upper parts of the T-shaped pillars for grave markers. The hill had long been under agricultural cultivation, and generations of local inhabitants had frequently moved rocks and placed them in clearance piles, which may have disturbed the upper layers of the site. At some point, attempts had been made to break up some of the pillars, presumably by farmers who mistook them for ordinary large rocks.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: In October 1994, German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, who had previously been working at Nevalı Çori, was looking for evidence of similar sites in the area and decided to re-examine the location described by the Chicago researchers in 1963. Asking in nearby villages about hills with flint, he was guided to Göbekli Tepe by Mahmut and İbrahim Yıldız, the farmers who owned the land the site was situated on. Mahmut Yıldız and his father had previously discovered finds while ploughing there, which they reported to the local museum. Having found similar structures at Nevalı Çori, Schmidt recognized the possibility that the stone slabs were not grave markers as supposed by Benedict, but the tops of prehistoric megaliths. He began excavations the following year and soon unearthed the first of the huge T-shaped pillars. Ultimately he found only three tombs on the eastmost hill-group, which were a pilgrimage destination. Yıldız went on to work on the excavations and serve as the site's guard.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Schmidt continued to direct excavations at the site on behalf of the Şanlıurfa Museum and the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) until his death in 2014. Since then, the DAI's research at the site has been coordinated by Lee Clare. , work on the site is conducted jointly by Istanbul University, the Şanlıurfa Museum, and the DAI, under the overall direction of Necmi Karul. Recent excavations have been more limited than Schmidt's, focusing on detailed documentation and conservation of the areas already exposed.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Göbekli Tepe was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018, recognising its outstanding universal value as "one of the first manifestations of human-made monumental architecture". , less than 5% of the site had been excavated.


title: Göbekli Tepe

text: Conservation work at the site caused controversy in 2018, when Çiğdem Köksal Schmidt, an archaeologist, and widow of Klaus Schmidt, said that damage was caused by the use of concrete and "heavy equipment" during the construction of a new walkway. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism responded that no concrete was used and that no damage had occurred.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and insurgencies that took place in the SFR Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2001. The conflicts both led up to and resulted from the breakup of Yugoslavia, which began in mid-1991, into six independent countries matching the six entities known as republics which previously composed Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and North Macedonia (previously named "Macedonia"). Yugoslavia's constituent republics declared independence due to unresolved tensions between ethnic minorities in the new countries, which fuelled the wars. While most of the conflicts ended through peace accords that involved full international recognition of new states, they resulted in a massive number of deaths as well as severe economic damage to the region.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: During the initial stages of the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) sought to preserve the unity of the Yugoslav nation by crushing all secessionist governments. However, it increasingly came under the influence of Slobodan Milošević, whose government invoked Serbian nationalism as an ideological replacement for the weakening communist system. As a result, the JNA began to lose Slovenes, Croats, Kosovar Albanians, Bosniaks, and Macedonians, and effectively became a fighting force of only Serbs. According to a 1994 report by the United Nations (UN), the Serb side did not aim to restore Yugoslavia; instead, it aimed to create a "Greater Serbia" from parts of Croatia and Bosnia. Other irredentist movements have also been brought into connection with the Yugoslav Wars, such as "Greater Albania" (from Kosovo, abandoned following international diplomacy) and "Greater Croatia" (from parts of Herzegovina, abandoned in 1994 with the Washington Agreement).


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Often described as Europe's deadliest armed conflict since World War II, the Yugoslav Wars were marked by many war crimes, including genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and mass wartime rape. The Bosnian genocide was the first European wartime event to be formally classified as genocidal in character since the military campaigns of Nazi Germany, and many key ex-Yugoslav individuals who perpetrated it were subsequently charged with war crimes; the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established by the UN in The Hague, Netherlands, to prosecute all individuals who had committed war crimes during the conflicts. According to the International Center for Transitional Justice, the Yugoslav Wars resulted in the deaths of 140,000 people, while the Humanitarian Law Center estimates at least 130,000 casualties. Over their decade-long duration, the conflicts resulted in major refugee and humanitarian crises.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The nation of Yugoslavia was created in the aftermath of World War I, and its population was mostly composed of South Slavic Christians, though the nation also had a substantial Muslim minority. Clear ethnic conflict between the Yugoslav peoples only became prominent in the 20th century, beginning with tensions over the constitution of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes in the early 1920s and escalating into violence between Serbs and Croats in the late 1920s after the assassination of Croatian politician Stjepan Radić. This nation lasted from 1918 to 1941, when it was invaded by the Axis powers during World War II, which provided support to the Croatian fascist Ustaše (founded in 1929), whose regime carried out the genocide of Serbs, Jews and Roma by executing people in concentration camps and committing other systematic and mass crimes inside its territory.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The predominantly Serb Chetniks, a Yugoslav Royalist and Serbian nationalist movement and guerrilla force, committed mass crimes against Muslims and Croats which are considered a genocide by several authors, and they also supported the instatement of a Serbian monarchy and the establishment of a Yugoslav federation. The Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans were able to appeal to all groups, including Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks, and also engaged in mass killings. In 1945, the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia (FPRY) was established under Josip Broz Tito, who maintained a strongly authoritarian leadership that suppressed nationalism.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: After Tito's death in 1980, relations between the six republics of the federation deteriorated. Slovenia, Croatia and Kosovo desired greater autonomy within the Yugoslav confederation, while Serbia sought to strengthen federal authority. As it became clear that there was no solution which was agreeable to all parties, Slovenia and Croatia moved towards secession. Although tensions in Yugoslavia had been mounting since the early 1980s, events in 1990 proved to be decisive. In the midst of economic hardship, Yugoslavia was facing rising nationalism among its various ethnic groups. By the early 1990s, there was no effective authority at the federal level. The Federal Presidency consisted of the representatives of the six republics, two provinces and the Yugoslav People's Army, and the communist leadership was divided along national lines.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The representatives of Vojvodina, Kosovo and Montenegro were replaced with loyalists of the President of Serbia, Slobodan Milošević. Serbia secured four out of eight federal presidency votes and was able to heavily influence decision-making at the federal level, since all the other Yugoslav republics only had one vote. While Slovenia and Croatia wanted to allow a multi-party system, Serbia, led by Milošević, demanded an even more centralized federation and Serbia's dominant role in it.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: At the 14th Extraordinary Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in January 1990, the Serbian-dominated assembly agreed to abolish the single-party system. However, Slobodan Milošević, the head of the Serbian Party branch (League of Communists of Serbia) used his influence to block and vote-down all other proposals from the Croatian and Slovene party delegates. This prompted the Croatian and Slovene delegations to walk out and thus the break-up of the party, a symbolic event representing the end of "brotherhood and unity".


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The survey of Yugoslav citizens which was conducted in 1990 showed that ethnic animosity existed on a small scale. Compared to the results from 25 years before, there was significant increase of ethnic distance among Serbs and Montenegrins toward Croats and Slovenes and vice versa.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Upon Croatia and Slovenia's declarations of independence in 1991, the Yugoslav federal government attempted to forcibly halt the impending breakup of the country, with Yugoslav Prime Minister Ante Marković declaring that the secessions of Slovenia and Croatia were both illegal and contrary to the constitution of Yugoslavia, and he also expressed his support for the Yugoslav People's Army in order to secure the integral unity of Yugoslavia.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: According to Stephen A. Hart, author of "Partisans: War in the Balkans 1941–1945", the ethnically mixed region of Dalmatia held close and amicable relations between the Croats and Serbs who lived there in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many early proponents of a united Yugoslavia came from this region, such as Ante Trumbić, a Croat from Dalmatia. However, by the time of the outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars, any hospitable relations between Croats and Serbs in Dalmatia had broken down, with Dalmatian Serbs fighting on the side of the self-declared proto-state Republic of Serbian Krajina.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Even though the policies throughout the entire socialist period of Yugoslavia seemed to have been the same (namely that all Serbs should live in one state), Dejan Guzina argues that "different contexts in each of the subperiods of socialist Serbia and Yugoslavia yielded entirely different results (e.g., in favour of Yugoslavia, or in favour of a Greater Serbia)". He assumes that the Serbian policy changed from conservative–socialist at the beginning to xenophobic nationalist in the late 1980s and 1990s.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: In Serbia and Serb-dominated territories, violent confrontations occurred, particularly between nationalists and non-nationalists who criticized the Serbian government and the Serb political entities in Bosnia and Croatia. Serbs who publicly opposed the nationalist political climate during the Yugoslav wars were reportedly harassed, threatened, or killed. However, following Milošević's rise to power and the outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars, numerous anti-war movements developed in Serbia. Protests were held against the actions of the Yugoslav People's Army, while protesters demanded the referendum on a declaration of war and disruption of military conscription, resulting in numerous desertions and emigrations.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: heavily dominated by Serbs. According to former commander of the fifth army in Zagreb Martin Špegelj, 50% of the command positions were held by Croats, whilst a few years later at the beginning of the war all key positions were held by Serbs.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The first of the conflicts, known as the Ten-Day War, was initiated by the JNA (Yugoslav People's Army) on 26 June 1991 after the secession of Slovenia from the federation on 25 June 1991.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Initially, the federal government ordered the Yugoslav People's Army to secure border crossings in Slovenia. Slovenian police and Slovenian Territorial Defence blockaded barracks and roads, leading to stand-offs and limited skirmishes around the republic. After several dozen casualties, the limited conflict was stopped through negotiation at Brioni on 7 July 1991, when Slovenia and Croatia agreed to a three-month moratorium on secession. The Federal army completely withdrew from Slovenia by 26 October 1991.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Fighting in Croatia had begun weeks prior to the Ten-Day War in Slovenia. The Croatian War of Independence began when Serbs in Croatia, who were opposed to Croatian independence, announced their secession from Croatia.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: In the 1990 parliamentary elections in Croatia, Franjo Tuđman became the first President of Croatia. He promoted nationalist policies and had a primary goal of the establishment of an independent Croatia. The new government proposed constitutional changes, reinstated the traditional Croatian flag and coat of arms, and removed the term "Socialist" from the title of the republic. In an attempt to counter changes made to the constitution, local Serb politicians organized a referendum on "Serb sovereignty and autonomy" in August 1990. Their boycott escalated into an insurrection in areas populated by ethnic Serbs, mostly around Knin, known as the Log Revolution.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Local police in Knin sided with the growing Serbian insurgency, while many government employees, mostly police where commanding positions were mainly held by Serbs and Communists, lost their jobs. The new Croatian constitution was ratified in December 1990, and the Serb National Council formed SAO Krajina, a self-proclaimed Serbian autonomous region.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Ethnic tensions rose, fueled by propaganda in both Croatia and Serbia. On 2 May 1991, one of the first armed clashes between Serb paramilitaries and Croatian police occurred in the Battle of Borovo Selo. On 19 May an independence referendum was held, which was largely boycotted by Croatian Serbs, and the majority voted in favour of the independence of Croatia. Croatia declared independence and dissolved its association with Yugoslavia on 25 June 1991. Due to the Brioni Agreement, a three-month moratorium was placed on the implementation of the decision that ended on 8 October.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The armed incidents of early 1991 escalated into an all-out war during the summer, with fronts being formed around the areas of the breakaway SAO Krajina. The JNA had disarmed the Territorial Units of Slovenia and Croatia prior to the declaration of independence, at the behest of Serbian President Slobodan Milošević. This was greatly aggravated by an arms embargo, imposed by the UN on Yugoslavia. The JNA was ostensibly ideologically unitarian, but its officer corps was predominantly staffed by Serbs or Montenegrins (70 percent).


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: As a result, the JNA opposed Croatian independence and sided with the Croatian Serb rebels. The Croatian Serb rebels were unaffected by the embargo because they were supported and supplied by the JNA. By mid-July 1991, the JNA moved an estimated 70,000 troops to Croatia. The fighting rapidly escalated, eventually spanning hundreds of square kilometers from western Slavonia through Banija to Dalmatia.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Border regions faced direct attacks from forces within Serbia and Montenegro. In August 1991, the Battle of Vukovar began, where fierce fighting took place with around 1,800 Croat fighters blocking the JNA's advance into Slavonia. By the end of October, the town was almost completely devastated as a result of land shelling and air bombardment. The Siege of Dubrovnik started in October with the shelling of UNESCO World Heritage Site Dubrovnik, where the international press was criticised for focusing on the city's architectural heritage, instead of reporting the destruction of Vukovar in which many civilians were killed.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: On 18 November 1991, the battle of Vukovar ended after the city ran out of ammunition. The Ovčara massacre occurred shortly after Vukovar's capture by the JNA. Meanwhile, control over central Croatia was seized by Croatian Serb forces in conjunction with the JNA Corps from Bosnia and Herzegovina, under the leadership of Ratko Mladić.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: In January 1992, the Vance Plan established UN controlled (UNPA) zones for Serbs in the territory which was claimed by the Serbian rebels as the self-proclaimed proto-state Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) and brought an end to major military operations, but sporadic artillery attacks on Croatian cities and occasional intrusions into UNPA zones by Croatian forces continued until 1995. The fighting in Croatia ended in mid-1995, after Operation Flash and Operation Storm. At the end of these operations, Croatia had reclaimed all of its territory except the UNPA Sector East portion of Slavonia, bordering Serbia. Most of the Serb population in the reclaimed areas became refugees. The areas of "Sector East", unaffected by the Croatian military operations, came under UN administration (UNTAES), and were reintegrated to Croatia in 1998 under the terms of the Erdut Agreement.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: In early 1992, a conflict engulfed Bosnia and Herzegovina as it also declared independence from rump Yugoslavia. The war was predominantly a territorial conflict between the Bosniaks, who wanted to preserve the territorial integrity of the newly independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb proto-state Republika Srpska and the self-proclaimed Croat Herzeg-Bosnia, which were led and supplied by Serbia and Croatia respectively, reportedly with a goal of the partition of Bosnia, which would leave only a small part of land for the Bosniaks. On 18 December 1992, the United Nations General Assembly issued resolution 47/121 in which it condemned Serbian and Montenegrin forces for trying to acquire more territories by force.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The Yugoslav armed forces had disintegrated into a largely Serb-dominated military force. The JNA opposed the Bosnian-majority led government's agenda for independence, and along with other armed nationalist Serb militant forces attempted to prevent Bosnian citizens from voting in the 1992 referendum on independence. They failed to persuade people not to vote, and instead the intimidating atmosphere combined with a Serb boycott of the vote resulted in a resounding 99% vote in support for independence.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: On 19 June 1992, the war in Bosnia broke out, though the Siege of Sarajevo had already begun in April after Bosnia and Herzegovina had declared independence. The conflict, typified by the years-long Sarajevo siege and the Srebrenica massacre, was by far the bloodiest and most widely covered of the Yugoslav wars. The Bosnian Serb faction led by ultra-nationalist Radovan Karadžić promised independence for all Serb areas of Bosnia from the majority-Bosniak government of Bosnia. To link the disjointed parts of territories populated by Serbs and areas claimed by Serbs, Karadžić pursued an agenda of systematic ethnic cleansing primarily against Bosnians through massacre and forced removal of Bosniak populations. Prijedor ethnic cleansing, Višegrad massacres, Foča ethnic cleansing, Doboj massacre, Zvornik massacre, siege of Goražde and others were reported.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: At the end of 1992, tensions between Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks rose and their collaboration fell apart. In January 1993, the two former allies engaged in open conflict, resulting in the Croat–Bosniak War. In 1994 the US brokered peace between Croatian forces and the Bosnian Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the Washington Agreement. After the successful Flash and Storm operations, the Croatian Army and the combined Bosnian and Croat forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, conducted an operation codenamed Operation Mistral in September 1995 to push back Bosnian Serb military gains.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The advances on the ground along with NATO air strikes put pressure on the Bosnian Serbs to come to the negotiating table. Pressure was put on all sides to stick to the cease-fire and negotiate an end to the war in Bosnia. The war ended with the signing of the Dayton Agreement on 14 December 1995, with the formation of Republika Srpska as an entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the United States reported in April 1995 that 90 percent of all the atrocities in the Yugoslav wars up to that point had been committed by Serb militants. Most of these atrocities occurred in Bosnia.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: In the 1990's, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was formed. They started carrying out attacks on Serb civilians. By the early 1990s, there were attacks on Serbian police forces, and secret-service officials in retaliation for the abuse and murder of Albanian civilians. A Serbian policeman was killed in 1995, allegedly by the KLA. The KLA sought to destabilize the region, hoping the United States and NATO would intervene. Serbian patrols were ambushed and policemen were killed. It was only in the next year that the organization of KLA took responsibility for attacks.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The KLA, originally composed of a few hundred Albanians, attacked several police stations and wounded many police officers in 1996–1997. In February 1996 the KLA undertook a series of attacks against police stations and Yugoslav government employees, saying that the Yugoslav authorities had killed Albanian civilians as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign. On 22 April 1996, four attacks on Serbian security personnel were carried out almost simultaneously in several parts of Kosovo.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: In January 1997, Serbian security forces assassinated KLA commander Zahir Pajaziti and two other leaders in a highway attack between Pristina and Mitrovica, and arrested more than 100 Albanian militants.Jashari, as one of the originators and leaders of the KLA, was convicted of terrorism "in absentia" by a Yugoslav court on 11 July 1997. Human Rights Watch subsequently described the trial, in which fourteen other Kosovo Albanians were also convicted, as "[failing] to conform to international standards."


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The NATO North Atlantic Council said that KLA was "the main initiator of the violence" and that it had "launched what appears to be a deliberate campaign of provocation". Pursuing Adem Jashari for the murder of a Serb policeman, the Serbian forces again attempted to assault the Jashari compound in Prekaz on the 22nd of January, 1998. Between 1991 and 1997, mostly in 1996–97, 39 persons were killed by the KLA. Attacks between 1996 and February of 1998 led to the deaths of 10 policemen and 24 civilians.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: After September 1990 when the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution had been unilaterally repealed by the Socialist Republic of Serbia, Kosovo's autonomy suffered and so the region was faced with state organized oppression: from the early 1990s, Albanian language radio and television were restricted and newspapers shut down. Kosovar Albanians were fired in large numbers from public enterprises and institutions, including banks, hospitals, the post office and schools. In June 1991, the University of Priština assembly and several faculty councils were dissolved and replaced by Serbs. Kosovar Albanian teachers were prevented from entering school premises for the new school year beginning in September 1991, forcing students to study at home.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: A NATO-facilitated ceasefire was signed on 15 October, but both sides broke it two months later and fighting resumed. When the killing of 45 Kosovar Albanians in the Račak massacre was reported in January 1999, NATO decided that the conflict could only be settled by introducing a military peacekeeping force to forcibly restrain the two sides. Yugoslavia refused to sign the Rambouillet Accords, which among other things called for 30,000 NATO peacekeeping troops in Kosovo; an unhindered right of passage for NATO troops on Yugoslav territory; and immunity for NATO and its agents to Yugoslav law; the right to use local roads, ports, railways, and airports without payment and requisition public facilities for its use free of cost.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: NATO then prepared to install the peacekeepers by force, using this refusal to justify the bombings.<section end=KosovoWar />


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia followed, an intervention against Serbian forces with a mainly bombing campaign, under the command of General Wesley Clark. Hostilities ended 2½ months later with the Kumanovo Agreement. Kosovo was placed under the governmental control of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo and the military protection of Kosovo Force (KFOR). The 15-month war had left thousands of civilians killed on both sides and over a million displaced.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The Insurgency in the Preševo Valley was an armed conflict between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and ethnic-Albanian insurgents of the Liberation Army of Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac (UÇPMB), beginning in June 1999. There were instances during the conflict in which the Yugoslav government requested KFOR support in suppressing UÇPMB attacks, since the government could only use lightly armed military forces as part of the Kumanovo Treaty, which created a buffer zone so the bulk of the Yugoslav armed forces could not enter. Yugoslav president Vojislav Koštunica warned that fresh fighting would erupt if KFOR units did not act to prevent the attacks that were coming from the UÇPMB.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The insurgency in the Republic of Macedonia was an armed conflict in Tetovo which began when the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) militant group began attacking the security forces of the Republic of Macedonia at the beginning of February 2001, and ended with the Ohrid Agreement. The goal of the NLA was to give greater rights and autonomy to the country's Albanian minority, who made up 25.2% of the population of the Republic of Macedonia (54.7% in Tetovo). There were also claims that the group ultimately wished to see Albanian-majority areas secede from the country, although high-ranking NLA members have denied this.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The United Nations Security Council had imposed an arms embargo in September 1991. Nevertheless, various states had been engaged in, or facilitated, arms sales to the warring factions. In 2012, Chile convicted nine people, including two retired generals, for their part in arms sales.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: It is widely believed that mass murders against Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina escalated into genocide. On 18 December 1992, the United Nations General Assembly issued resolution 47/121 condemning "aggressive acts by the Serbian and Montenegrin forces to acquire more territories by force" and called such ethnic cleansing "a form of genocide". In its report published on 1 January 1993, Helsinki Watch was one of the first civil rights organisations that warned that "the extent of the violence and its selective nature along ethnic and religious lines suggest crimes of genocidal character against Muslim and, to a lesser extent, Croatian populations in Bosnia-Hercegovina".


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: A telegram sent to the White House on 8 February 1994 by U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, Peter W. Galbraith, stated that genocide was occurring. The telegram cited "constant and indiscriminate shelling and gunfire" of Sarajevo by Karadzic's Yugoslav People Army; the harassment of minority groups in Northern Bosnia "in an attempt to force them to leave"; and the use of detainees "to do dangerous work on the front lines" as evidence that genocide was being committed. In 2005, the United States Congress passed a resolution declaring that "the Serbian policies of aggression and ethnic cleansing meet the terms defining genocide".


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: A trial took place before the International Court of Justice, following a 1993 suit by Bosnia and Herzegovina against Serbia and Montenegro alleging genocide. The ICJ ruling of 26 February 2007 indirectly determined the war's nature to be international, though clearing Serbia of direct responsibility for the genocide committed by the forces of Republika Srpska in Srebrenica. The ICJ concluded, however, that Serbia failed to prevent genocide committed by Serb forces in Srebrenica and failed to punish those responsible, and bring them to justice.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: War crimes were conducted simultaneously by different Serb forces in different parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially in Bijeljina, Sarajevo, Prijedor, Zvornik, Višegrad and Foča. The judges however ruled that the criteria for genocide with the specific intent ("dolus specialis") to destroy Bosnian Muslims were met only in Srebrenica in 1995. The court concluded that other crimes, outside Srebrenica, committed during the 1992–1995 war, may amount to crimes against humanity according to the international law, but that these acts did not, in themselves, constitute genocide per se.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The crime of genocide in the Srebrenica enclave was confirmed in several guilty verdicts handed down by the ICTY, most notably in the conviction of the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Ethnic cleansing was a common phenomenon in the wars in Croatia, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. This entailed intimidation, forced expulsion, or killing of the unwanted ethnic group as well as the destruction of the places of worship, cemeteries and cultural and historical buildings of that ethnic group in order to alter the population composition of an area in the favour of another ethnic group which would become the majority. These examples of territorial nationalism and territorial aspirations are part of the goal of an ethno-state. Detention camps such as Omarska and Trnopolje were also designated as an integral part of the overall ethnic cleansing strategy of the authorities.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: According to numerous ICTY verdicts and indictments, Serb and Croat forces performed ethnic cleansing of their territories planned by their political leadership to create ethnically pure states (Republika Srpska and Republic of Serbian Krajina by the Serbs; and Herzeg-Bosnia by the Croats).


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: and other non-Serb civilians in 1991–92 and at least 700,000 Albanians in Kosovo in 1999. Further hundreds of thousands of Muslims were forced out of their homes by the Serb forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina. By one estimate, the Serb forces drove at least 700,000 Bosnian Muslims from the area of Bosnia under their control.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: War rape occurred as a matter of official orders as part of ethnic cleansing, to displace the targeted ethnic group. According to the Trešnjevka Women's Group, more than 35,000 women and children were held in such Serb-run "rape camps". Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovač, and Zoran Vuković were convicted of crimes against humanity for rape, torture, and enslavement committed during the Foča massacres.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The evidence of the magnitude of rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina prompted the ICTY to openly deal with these abuses. Reports of sexual violence during the Bosnian War (1992–1995) and Kosovo War (1998–1999) perpetrated by the Serbian regular and irregular forces have been described as "especially alarming". The NATO-led Kosovo Force documented rapes of Albanian, Roma and Serbian women by both Serbs and members of the Kosovo Liberation Army.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Others have estimated that during the Bosnian War, between 20,000 and 50,000 women, mostly Bosniak, were raped. There are few reports of rape and sexual assault between members of the same ethnic group.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: War rape in the Yugoslav Wars has often been characterized as a crime against humanity. Rapes which were perpetrated by Serb forces served to destroy the cultural and social ties which existed between the victims and their communities. Serbian policies allegedly urged soldiers to rape Bosniak women until they became pregnant as an attempt towards ethnic cleansing. Serbian soldiers hoped to force Bosniak women to carry Serbian children through repeated rape. Often Bosniak women were held in captivity for an extended period of time and only released slightly before the birth of a child conceived of rape. The systematic rape of Bosniak women may have carried further-reaching repercussions than the initial displacement of rape victims. Stress, caused by the trauma of rape, coupled with the lack of access to reproductive health care often experienced by displaced peoples, led to serious health risks for victimized women.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: During the Kosovo War, thousands of Kosovo Albanian women and girls became victims of sexual violence. War rape was used as a weapon of war and it was also used as an instrument of systematic ethnic cleansing; rape was used to terrorize the civilian population, extort money from families, and force people to flee their homes. According to a report by the Human Rights Watch group in 2000, rape in the Kosovo War can generally be subdivided into three categories: rapes in women's homes, rapes during flight, and rapes in detention. The majority of the perpetrators were Serbian paramilitaries, but also included Serbian special police or Yugoslav army soldiers. Virtually all of the sexual assaults Human Rights Watch documented were gang rapes involving at least two perpetrators. Since the end of the war, rapes of Serbian, Albanian, and Roma women by ethnic Albanians — sometimes by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) – have been documented, but they have not occurred on a similar scale. Rapes frequently occurred in the presence, and with the acquiescence, of military officers. Soldiers, police, and paramilitaries often raped their victims in the full view of numerous witnesses.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: A 2013 report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Croatia entitled 'Assessment of the Number of Sexual Violence Victims during the Homeland War on the Territory of the Republic of Croatia and Optimal Forms of Compensation and Support of Victims', determined the estimated victims (male and female) of rape and other forms of sexual assault on both sides to number between approximately 1,470 and 2,205 or 1,501 and 2,437 victims. Most victims were non-Serbs assaulted by Serbs. By region, the largest number of rapes and acts of sexual violence occurred in Eastern Slavonia, with an estimated 380-570 victims. According to the UNDP report, between 300 and 600 men (4.4%-6.6% of those imprisoned) and between 279 and 466 women (or 30%-50% of those imprisoned) suffered from various forms of sexual abuse while being held in Serbian detention camps and prisons (including those in Serbia proper). Between 412 and 611 Croat women were raped in the Serb-occupied territories, outside of detention camps, from 1991 to 1995. Croat forces were also known to have committed rapes and acts of sexual violence against Serb women during Operations Flash and Storm, with an estimated 94-140 victims. Sexual abuse of Serb prisoners also occurred in the Croat-run Lora and Kerestinec camps.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Some estimates put the number of killed in the Yugoslav Wars at 140,000. The Humanitarian Law Center estimates that in the conflicts in former Yugoslav republics at least 130,000 people lost their lives. Slovenia's involvement in the conflicts was brief, thus avoiding higher casualties, and around 70 people were killed in its ten-day conflict. The War in Croatia left an estimated 22,000 people dead, of which 15,000 were Croats and 7,000 Serbs.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Bosnia and Herzegovina suffered the heaviest burden of the fighting: between 97,207 and 102,622 people were killed in the war, including 64,036 Bosniaks, 24,905 Serbs, and 7,788 Croats. By share, 65% of the killed were Bosniaks, 25% Serbs, and 8% Croats. In the Kosovo conflict, 13,535 people were killed, including 10,812 Albanians (80%) and 2,197 Serbs (16%). The highest death toll was in Sarajevo: with around 14,000 killed during the siege, the city lost almost as many people as the entire war in Kosovo.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: In relative and absolute numbers, Bosniaks suffered the heaviest losses: 64,036 of their people were killed in Bosnia, which represents a death toll of over 3% of their entire ethnic group. They experienced the worst plight in the Srebrenica massacre, where the mortality rate of the Bosniak men (irrespective of their age or civilian status) reached 33% in July 1995.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The share of Bosniaks among all the civilian fatalities during the Bosnian War was around 83%, rising to almost 95% in Eastern Bosnia.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The Yugoslav Wars caused one of the largest refugee crises in European history. It is estimated that the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo produced about 2.4 million refugees and an additional 2 million internally displaced persons.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina caused 2.2 million refugees or displaced, of which over half were Bosniaks. Up until 2001, there were still 650,000 displaced Bosniaks, while 200,000 left the country permanently.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The Kosovo War caused 862,979 Albanian refugees who were either expelled from the Serb forces or fled from the battle front. In addition, 500,000 to 600,000 were internally displaced, which means that, according to the OSCE, almost 90% of all Albanians were displaced from their homes in Kosovo by June 1999. After the end of the war, Albanians returned, but over 200,000 Serbs, Romani and other non-Albanians fled Kosovo. By the end of 2000, Serbia thus became the host of 700,000 Serb refugees or internally displaced from Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: From the perspective of asylum for internally displaced or refugees, Croatia took the brunt of the crisis. According to some sources, in 1992 Croatia was the host to almost 750,000 refugees or internally displaced, which represents a quota of almost 16% of its population of 4.7 million inhabitants: these figures included 420 to 450,000 Bosnian refugees, 35,000 refugees from Serbia (mostly from Vojvodina and Kosovo) while a further 265,000 persons from other parts of Croatia itself were internally displaced. This would be equivalent of Germany being a host to 10 million displaced people or France to 8 million people.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Official UNHCR data indicate that Croatia was the host to 287,000 refugees and 344,000 internally displaced in 1993. This is a ratio of 64.7 refugees per 1000 inhabitants. In its 1992 report, UNHCR placed Croatia #7 on its list of 50 most refugee burdened countries: it registered 316 thousand refugees, which is a ratio of 15:1 relative to its total population. Together with those internally displaced, Croatia was the host to at least 648,000 people in need of an accommodation in 1992. In comparison, Macedonia had 10.5 refugees per 1000 inhabitants in 1999.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Slovenia was the host to 45,000 refugees in 1993, which is 22.7 refugees per 1000 inhabitants. Serbia and Montenegro were the host to 479,111 refugees in 1993, which is a ratio of 45.5 refugees per 1000 inhabitants. By 1998 this grew to 502,037 refugees (or 47.7 refugees per 1000 inhabitants). By 2000 the number of refugees fell to 484,391 persons, but the number of internally displaced grew to 267,500, or a combined total of 751,891 persons who were displaced and in need of an accommodation.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Material and economic damages brought by the conflicts were catastrophic. Bosnia and Herzegovina had a GDP of between $8–9 billion before the war. The government estimated the overall war damages at $50–$70 billion. It also registered a GDP decline of 75% after the war. Some 60% of the housing in the country has been either damaged or destroyed, which proved a problem when trying to bring all the refugees back home. Bosnia also became the most landmine contaminated country of Europe: 1820 km of its territory were contaminated with these explosives, which represent 3.6% of its land surface. Between 3 and 6 million landmines were scattered throughout Bosnia. Five thousand people died from them, of which 1,520 were killed after the war.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: In 1999, the Croatian Parliament passed a bill estimating war damages of the country at $37 billion. The government alleges that between 1991 and April 1993 an estimated total of 210,000 buildings in Croatia (including schools, hospitals and refugee camps) were either damaged or destroyed from shelling by the Republic of Serbian Krajina and the JNA forces. Cities affected by the shelling were Karlovac, Gospić, Ogulin, Zadar, Biograd and others. The Croatian government also acknowledged that 7,489 buildings belonging to Croatian Serbs were damaged or destroyed by explosives, arson or other deliberate means by the end of 1992. From January to March 1993 another 220 buildings were also damaged or destroyed. Criminal charges were brought against 126 Croats for such acts.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Sanctions against FR Yugoslavia created a hyperinflation of 300 million percent of the Yugoslav dinar. By 1995, almost 1 million workers lost their jobs while the gross domestic product had fallen 55 percent since 1989. The 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia resulted in additional damages. One of the most severe was the bombing of the Pančevo petrochemical factory, which caused the release of 80,000 tonnes of burning fuel into the environment. Approximately 31,000 rounds of depleted Uranium ammunition were used during this bombing.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was a body of the United Nations established to prosecute serious crimes committed during the Yugoslav Wars, and to try their perpetrators. The tribunal was an ad hoc court located in The Hague, Netherlands. One of the most prominent trials involved ex-Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, who was in 2002 indicted on 66 counts of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide allegedly committed in wars in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia. His trial remained incomplete since he died in 2006, before a verdict was reached. Nonetheless, ICTY's trial "helped to delegitimize Milosevic's leadership", as one scholar put it.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Several convictions were handed over by the ICTY and its successor, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT). The first notable verdict confirming genocide in Srebrenica was the case against Serb General Radislav Krstić: he was sentenced in 2001, while the Appeals Chamber confirmed the verdict in 2004. Another verdict was against ex-Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadžić, who was also convicted for genocide. On 22 November 2017, general Ratko Mladić was sentenced to a life in prison.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Other important convictions included those of ultranationalist Vojislav Šešelj, paramilitary leader Milan Lukić, Bosnian Serb politician Momčilo Krajišnik, Bosnian Serb general Stanislav Galić, who was convicted for the siege of Sarajevo, the former Assistant Minister of the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs and Chief of its Public Security Department, Vlastimir Đorđević, who was convicted for crimes in Kosovo, ex-JNA commander Mile Mrkšić as well as both of Republic of Serbian Krajina ex-Presidents Milan Martić and Milan Babić.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Several Croats, Bosniaks and Albanians were convicted for crimes, as well, including ex-Herzegovina Croat leader Jadranko Prlić and commander Slobodan Praljak, Bosnian Croat military commander Mladen Naletilić, ex-Bosnian Army commander Enver Hadžihasanović and ex-Kosovo commander Haradin Bala.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: In the Trial of Gotovina et al, Croatian Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač were ultimately acquitted on appeal in 2012.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: By 2019, based on its statute, the ICTY found that the Serb officials were found guilty of persecutions, deportation and/or forcible transfer (crimes against humanity, Article 5) in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Vojvodina. They were also found guilty of murder (crimes against humanity, Article 5) in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo; as well as terror (violations of the laws or customs of war, Article 3) and genocide (Article 4) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Croat forces were not found guilty of anything in Croatia, but were found guilty of deportation, other inhumane acts (forcible transfer), murder and persecutions (crimes against humanity, Article 5) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bosniak forces were found guilty of inhuman treatment (grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, Article 2), murder; cruel treatment (violations of the laws or customs of war, Article 3) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. One Albanian official was found guilty of torture, cruel treatment, murder (violations of the laws or customs of war, Article 3) in Kosovo.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: After the fighting ended, millions of weapons were left with civilians who held on to them in case violence should resurface. These weapons later turned up on the arms black market of Europe.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: In 2018 there were no exact official figures on how many firearms are missing; in Serbia authorities have given estimates ranging from 250,000 to 900,000 of different kinds are in circulation. In Bosnia, public reports state a figure of 750,000. At the end of 2017, a man entered a bus in Banja Luka carrying two bags with 36 hand grenades, three assault rifles, seven handguns, a mine and hundreds of cartridges with Gothenburg as the destination. He was stopped in the neighbouring country of Slovenia. A 26-year-old woman was stopped at the border to Croatia with three antitank weapons and a hand grenade. Police found four machine guns, three battle rifles, three assault rifles and a large quantity of explosives at the home of a 79-year-old man. According to a UNDP official, getting civilians to give up their arms to state authorities is complicated as people are then forced to trust that authorities will protect them. Instead, criminals collect the weapons. Some of the missing weapons were used in the November 2015 Paris attacks during which 130 people were killed by jihadists. Other arms were assault rifles used in the 2015 Gothenburg pub shooting.


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Successor-state government efforts to reduce the prevalence of illegally held arms are co-ordinated through a Regional Approach to Stockpile Reduction (RASR) focused on reducing stockpiles, arms diversion and unexplained explosions in South-east Europe. Partners include the European Union, the US Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and NATO's Support and Procurement Agency. Funded by the US Government, activities include annual workshops attended by US government officials from the Departments of State and Defense and defense ministry representatives from the Yugoslav successor states .


title: Yugoslav Wars

text: Since the beginning of hostilities between warring factions in the former Yugoslavia, the Kosovo Liberation Army as well as the Serbian mafia have been involved in the illegal drug trade, particularly with West Asian heroin entering Central and Western Europe. In the early 1990's, 2,000 Albanians from Kosovo were held in Swiss jails on charges of arms and drug smuggling. Over the course of the war, a total of several tons of heroin were confiscated by Interpol and local law enforcement. Illegal drug smuggling operations also led to additional crimes all across Western Europe, which included bank robberies and extortion committed by criminal gangs operating out of Eastern Europe. The intensification of heroin consumption in Western Europe led to the expansion of open air drug markets, particularly in Switzerland. Bosnian criminal gangs continue to have a significant impact on global drug trafficking, through entering the lucrative cocaine trade.


title: Swami Vivekananda

text: Swami Vivekananda (; ; 12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902), born Narendranath Datta (), was an Indian Hindu monk, philosopher, author, religious teacher, and the chief disciple of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. He was a key figure in the introduction of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world; and is credited with raising interfaith awareness, and bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion. Vivekananda became a popular figure after the 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago, where he began his famous speech with the words, "Sisters and brothers of America...," before introducing Hinduism to Americans.


title: Swami Vivekananda

text: He was so impactful at the Parliament that an American newspaper described him as, “an orator by divine right and undoubtedly the greatest figure at the Parliament”.


title: Swami Vivekananda

text: After great success at the Parliament, in the subsequent years, Vivekananda delivered hundreds of lectures across the United States, England and Europe, disseminating the core tenets of Hindu philosophy, and founded the Vedanta Society of New York and the Vedanta Society of San Francisco (now Vedanta Society of Northern California), both of which became the foundations for Vedanta Societies in the Western world.


title: Swami Vivekananda

text: Born into an aristocratic Bengali Kayastha family in Calcutta, Vivekananda was inclined from a young age towards religion and spirituality. He later found his guru, Ramakrishna, and became a monk. After the death of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda extensively toured the Indian subcontinent, acquiring first-hand knowledge of the living conditions of Indian people in then British India. Moved by their plight, he resolved to help his country men, and found a way to travel to the United States, where he was highly successful. In India, Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Math, which provides spiritual training for monastics and householder devotees, and the Ramakrishna Mission, to provide charity, social work and education. Vivekananda was also a major force in contemporary Hindu reform movements, and contributed to the concept of nationalism in colonial India. He is regarded as a patriotic saint, and his birthday in India is celebrated as National Youth Day.


title: Swami Vivekananda

text: Vivekananda was born Narendranath Datta (shortened to Narendra or Naren) in a Bengali family at his ancestral home at 3 Gourmohan Mukherjee Street in Calcutta, the capital of British India, on 12 January 1863 during the Makar Sankranti festival. He belonged to a traditional family and was one of nine siblings. His father, Vishwanath Datta, was an attorney at the Calcutta High Court. Durgacharan Datta, Narendra's grandfather was a Sanskrit and Persian scholar who left his family and became a monk at age twenty-five. His mother, Bhubaneswari Devi, was a devout housewife. The progressive, rational attitude of Narendra's father and the religious temperament of his mother helped shape his thinking and personality. Narendranath was interested in spirituality from a young age and used to meditate before the images of deities such as Shiva, Rama, Sita, and Mahavir Hanuman. He was fascinated by wandering ascetics and monks. Narendra was naughty and restless as a child, and his parents often had difficulty controlling him. His mother said, "I prayed to Shiva for a son and he has sent me one of his demons".


title: Swami Vivekananda

text: In 1871, at the age of eight, Narendranath enrolled at Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar's Metropolitan Institution, where he went to school until his family moved to Raipur in 1877. In 1879, after his family's return to Calcutta, he was the only student to receive first-division marks in the Presidency College entrance examination. He was an avid reader in a wide range of subjects, including philosophy, religion, history, social science, art and literature. He was also interested in Hindu scriptures, including the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the "Ramayana", the "Mahabharata" and the Puranas. Narendra was trained in Indian classical music, and regularly participated in physical exercise, sports and organised activities. Narendra studied Western logic, Western philosophy and European history at the General Assembly's Institution (now known as the Scottish Church College). In 1881, he passed the Fine Arts examination, and completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1884. Narendra studied the works of David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Baruch Spinoza, Georg W. F. Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill and Charles Darwin. He became fascinated with the evolutionism of Herbert Spencer and corresponded with him, translating Herbert Spencer's book "Education" (1861) into Bengali. While studying Western philosophers, he also learned Sanskrit scriptures and Bengali literature.


title: Swami Vivekananda

text: William Hastie (principal of Christian College, Calcutta, from where Narendra graduated) wrote, "Narendra is really a genius. I have travelled far and wide but I have never come across a lad of his talents and possibilities, even in German universities, among philosophical students. He is bound to make his mark in life".


title: Swami Vivekananda

text: Narendra was known for his prodigious memory and the ability at speed reading. Several incidents have been given as examples. In a talk, he once quoted verbatim, two or three pages from Pickwick Papers. Another incident that is given is his argument with a Swedish national where he gave reference to some details on Swedish history that the Swede originally disagreed with but later conceded. In another incident with Dr. Paul Deussen's at Kiel in Germany, Vivekananda was going over some poetical work and did not reply when the professor spoke to him. Later, he apologised to Dr. Deussen explaining that he was too absorbed in reading and hence did not hear him. The professor was not satisfied with this explanation, but Vivekananda quoted and interpreted verses from the text, leaving the professor dumbfounded about his feat of memory. Once, he requested some books written by Sir John Lubbock from a library and returned them the very next day, claiming that he had read them. The librarian refused to believe him until cross-examination about the contents convinced him that Vivekananda was being truthful.


title: Swami Vivekananda

text: In 1880 Narendra joined Keshab Chandra Sen's "Nava Vidhan", which was established by Sen after meeting Ramakrishna and reconverting from Christianity to Hinduism. Narendra became a member of a Freemasonry lodge "at some point before 1884" and of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj in his twenties, a breakaway faction of the Brahmo Samaj led by Keshab Chandra Sen and Debendranath Tagore. From 1881 to 1884, he was also active in Sen's Band of Hope, which tried to discourage youths from smoking and drinking.