However, while poor and underdeveloped Macedonia was permitted to secede peacefully, Croat and Bosnian independence led to a bitter war with the local Serb militias, which were reinforced by what remained of the Yugoslav army. The Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia did not want to become minorities in the new national states. One of the more successful multi-ethnic states in recent European history thus ended in ethnic carnage. Something like twelve thousand people, mostly civilians, were killed in the Croatian war, while the Bosnian wars cost at least one hundred thousand lives. The successor states that emerged, with the possible exception of Slovenia, are poorer and less independent than authoritarian Tito's Yugoslavia had been.
Individual citizens are also much poorer and less secure.
The middle class has been economically destroyed and replaced by a new gangster elite. And people of all classes are less secure because of the terrible crimes that have been committed in the names of their various ethnic communities. Even the economic sanctions helped, because they provided vast opportunities for smuggling, which became a patriotic act. The new politicians, generals, and volunteer militia heads have devastated the land, committing atrocities that spur huge population transfers. This new class born out of the intra-ethnic wars of Yugoslav succession thrives on ethnic confrontation and relentlessly fosters ethnic chauvinism, preventing any transition to stability and democracy.