Tensions between the three constitutional peoples remain high in Bosnia and often provoke political disagreements. Each of the three peoples are influential to roughly the same degree in Bosnia with Bosniaks being the most numerous, Serbs having their own entity and Croats, although politically marginalized, are economically the strongest.

Along with Slovenia, Croatia declared her independence from Yugoslavia on June 25, 1991, which triggered the Croatian War of Independence. The Serb population living in border areas of Croatia revolted, supported by the Yugoslav army, and the ensuing months saw combat between various Croatian and Serbian armed forces. During this stage of the war, the independence of Croatia was recognized by the international community, while the Serbs proclaimed their own state, the Republic of Serbian Krajina, and by the early 1992 the troops were entrenched. This stage of the war left hundreds of thousands as refugees on the Croatian side.

After the Dayton Agreement in 1995, Albanians organized into the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), employing guerilla-style tactics against Serbian police forces. Yugoslav forces allegedly committed war crimes in Kosovo, although the Serbian government claims that the army was only going after suspected Albanian “terrorists”. Violence escalated in a series of KLA attacks and Yugoslav reprisals into the year 1999, with increasing numbers of civilian victims on both sides

Northern Ireland was for many years the site of a bitter ethnic/religious campaign of violence between a minority of Nationalists (who wanted it to be reunified with the Republic of Ireland) and a majority of Unionists (who wanted it to remain part of the United Kingdom). The campaign was known popularly as The Troubles. The majority of both sides of the community had no association with the violent campaigns waged. Since the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998, the major paramilitary campaigns have either been on ceasefire or have declared their “war” to be over.

All of these areas (click on maps for more info) have seen significant ethnic and religious violence in the previous decades. Some, like Northern Ireland, have worked towards a cessation of violence and are moving towards reconciliation and redemption. Others, like the Southeastern European countries listed, are still dealing with racial and religious hatred and are only experiencing peace through outside peacekeeping groups.

I was offered the Brueggeman Fellowship at Xavier and will be traveling next summer to these areas to finish off a year’s worth of research on Religious Conflict. The hope is to gain a better understanding of why violence arose in these instances, but more importantly to understand why religious violence occurs and how to best redeem the people involved. I’m incredibly excited about it and am very thankful for the opportunity to further involve myself in the field.