nce residents fleeing the conflict; 2,500
Guinea-Bissau residents have fled into Senegal in 2006 to escape
armed confrontations along the border

Refugees and internally displaced persons:
refugees (country of origin): 19,712 (Mauritania)
IDPs: 22,400 (approximately 65 percent of the IDP population
returned in 2005 but new displacement is occurring due to clashes
between government troops and separatists in Casamance region) (2006)

Illicit drugs:
transshipment point for Southwest and Southeast Asian heroin and
South American cocaine moving to Europe and North America; illicit
cultivator of cannabis

This page was last updated on 8 February, 2007

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@Serbia

Introduction Serbia

Background:
The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was formed in 1918; its
name was changed to Yugoslavia in 1929. Various paramilitary bands
resisted Nazi Germany's occupation and division of Yugoslavia from
1941 to 1945, but fought each other and ethnic opponents as much as
the invaders. The military and political movement headed by Josip
TITO (Partisans) took full control of Yugoslavia when German and
Croatian separatist forces were defeated in 1945. Although
Communist, Tito's new government and his successors (he died in
1980) managed to steer their own path between the Warsaw Pact
nations and the West for the next four and a half decades. In 1989,
Slobodan MILOSEVIC became president of the Serbian Republic and his
ultranationalist calls for Serbian domination led to the violent
breakup of Yugoslavia along ethnic lines. In 1991, Croatia,
Slovenia, and Macedonia declared independence, followed by Bosnia in
1992. The remaining republics of Serbia and Montenegro declared a
new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in April 1992 and under
MILOSEVIC's leadership, Serbia led various military campaigns to
unite ethnic Serbs in neighboring republics into a "Greater Serbia."
These actions led to Yugoslavia being ousted from the UN in 1992,
but Serbia continued its - ultimately unsuccesful - campaign until
signing the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995. MILOSEVIC kept tight
control over Serbia and eventually became president of the FRY in
1997. In 1998, a small-scale ethnic Albanian insurgency in the
formerly autonomous Serbian province of Kosovo provoked a Serbian
counterinsurgency campaig