History of Slovenia: Three months after the end of the Ten-Day War, the last soldier of the Yugoslav People's Army leaves the territory of the Republic of Slovenia.
The Ten-Day War (Slovene: desetdnevna vojna), or the Slovenian War of Independence (slovenska osamosvojitvena vojna), was a brief armed conflict that followed Slovenia's declaration of independence from Yugoslavia on 25 June 1991. It was fought between the separatists of the Slovenian Territorial Defence and the Yugoslav People's Army (or JNA). It lasted from 27 June 1991 until 7 July 1991, when the Brioni Accords were signed.
It was the second of the Yugoslav wars to start in 1991, following the Croatian War of Independence, and by far the shortest of the conflicts with fewest overall casualties. The war was brief because the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA, dominated by Serbo-Montenegrins, although still made up of all the nationalities of Yugoslavia) did not want to waste resources on this campaign, as it was preparing for the Croatian War of Independence, where the Serbo-Montenegrin majority in Yugoslavia did have territorial uses, unlike Slovenia, which was considered "ethnically homogeneous" and therefore of no interest to the Yugoslavs. In the BBC documentary The Death of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Miloevi said: "I was against using the Yugoslav Army in Slovenia." Borisav Jovi said: "With Slovenia out of the way, we could dictate the terms to the Croats."
The history of Slovenia chronicles the period of the Slovenian territory from the 5th century BC to the present. In the Early Bronze Age, Proto-Illyrian tribes settled an area stretching from present-day Albania to the city of Trieste. The Slovenian territory was part of the Roman Empire, and it was devastated by the Migration Period's incursions during late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. The main route from the Pannonian plain to Italy ran through present-day Slovenia. Alpine Slavs, ancestors of modern-day Slovenians, settled the area in the late 6th Century AD. The Holy Roman Empire controlled the land for nearly 1,000 years, and between the mid-14th century and 1918 most of Slovenia was under Habsburg rule. In 1918, Slovenes formed Yugoslavia along with Serbs and Croats, while a minority came under Italy. The state of Slovenia was created in 1945 as part of federal Yugoslavia. Slovenia gained its independence from Yugoslavia in June 1991, and is today a member of the European Union and NATO.