ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Yugoslav wars

Okay kiddo, let's talk about something called the Yugoslav Wars. Do you remember learning about Yugoslavia in your geography class? It was a country in Europe that existed for a while, but then it broke apart into smaller countries. The Yugoslav Wars happened because people in different parts of Yugoslavia wanted to have their own countries and do things their own way.

In the early 1990s, some of the different groups started fighting with each other because they couldn't agree on how to run the country. The wars went on for a few years and lots of people died. It was really sad and scary.

One reason why it was so hard to stop the wars was because there were lots of different groups involved. Some people were fighting for their religion, some were fighting for their language, and some were fighting for their ethnicity. Plus, there were some places where different groups lived really close together, so it was hard to separate them into their own countries.

Eventually, some of the countries were able to separate and become independent, like Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. But other areas, like Kosovo, are still disputed and some countries don't recognize them as their own independent countries.

So, that's the Yugoslav Wars. It happened because different groups wanted different things and couldn't agree on how to work together. It was really sad and a lot of people died.