Violence in the 1990s

By cmallari

  • South African Apartheid

    The inefficacy of Reagan’s policy of constructive engagement, combined with political rebellion and violence that penetrated international media coverage, led to the passage of economic sanctions in Congress under the 1986 Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which was the most effective policy to help facilitate the end of South African apartheid.

  • Israeli / Palestinian conflict

    In 1986 President Reagan had ordered a bombing attack on
    Libya. Evidence had linked that country’s leader, Mu‘ammar Gadhafi (guh-DAHfee), to an attack at a West Berlin nightclub. The attack killed one U.S. soldier and injured many others. In the summer of 1993, Clinton ordered the bombing of the Iraqi intelligence service headquarters. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had uncovered an Iraqi plot to assassinate former president George Bush.

  • Libya and Gaddafi

    Terrorism also occurred in the air. In 1988 a bomb destroyed a Pan American
    airliner flying over Lockerbie, Scotland. All 259 aboard were killed, including many
    Americans. The bomb was traced to two Libyans, but Gadhafi refused to send them
    to the United States for trial. In 1998 bombs exploded at U.S. embassies in Kenya
    and Tanzania, killing more than 200 people.

  • Civil War in Africa

    Elsewhere in Africa, however, turmoil reigned, worsened by famine and poverty. Civil war raged in Liberia, Mali, Somalia, and Zambia. In December 1992 a UN force, including many Americans, launched Operation Restore Hope to provide relief to famine-stricken Somalia. Fighting among rival clans in that country had previously prevented relief workers from getting food and other supplies to starving Somalis.Despite the UN effort, Somalia’s suffering continued.

  • Armenia/Azerbaijan

    As tensions rose in Europe in the Black Sea, like Russia and Ukrain, Christians in Armenia and Muslims in Azerbaijan are in concflict fighting a war over religion and power

  • Bosnia and Herzegovina (Breakup of Yugoslavia)

    In Bosnia and Herzegovina, ethnic fighting among Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes left some 150,000 people dead or missing by the end of 1993. The United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) sent peacekeeping forces to the area. By 1995, however, as the Bosnian Serbs continued their aggression, President Clinton took a stronger stance. The United States and NATO cooperated in bombing Bosnian Serb positions. In November 1995 the United States settled a peace accord.

  • War in Kosovo

    The Serbian nation of
    Yugoslavia had begun to pressure the province of Kosovo. . Some Kosovars, or residents of Kosovo,
    began to demand independence. In response, Milosevic’s troops
    killed thousands of Kosovar Albanians and forced thousands
    more to leave their homes. Western nations initially paid little
    attention to the developing Kosovo crisis until Serbian military forces increased their attacks on the Kosovars in March 1999. NATO
    responded by launching air strikes on Serbia.