The motivation for the war in Bosnia was found in Nineteenth century nationalism and memories of the intense fighting of the Second World War. Tito’s multiethnic, communistPartisans were successful over the Croatian Ustashe and the Serbian royalists known as the Chetnicks.

The driving force in the war that erupted in Bosnia was the desire on the part of the Croats and Serbians to eliminate the multiethnic nature of the republic and split the territory between them. Many Bosnians wanted to retain the traditional multiethnic nature they had always known when it also declared its independence on 3 March 1992.

In April 1992 Serbia and Montenegro joined together under the leadership of Slobodan Milosevic to declare their independence as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and was made a member of the United Nations. On 22 May 1992 the new independent republics of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina became members of the United Nations (UN).

Politically Bosnia and Herzegovina’s population became fractured along ethnic lines with the rise of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) led by Redovan Karadizic who was a pan Serbian nationalist. Supporting the SDS was the Bosnian Serb armed militia (BSA) that supported Bosnian Serb desires. The Bosnian Croat Defence Council (HVO) acted as a militia to support and protect Bosnian Croats.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina the Muslim and Croat population agreed to vote in favour of independence. This coalition out numbered the Serb population. In response the Bosnian Serbs boycotted the vote as they wanted to be a part of a larger Serbia. They also argued that the constitution stated that decisions like independence had to be made with a consensus. The Serbs inability to influence the referendum on the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina provided the justification for war against the other ethnic groups.

Ethnic Cleansing”

The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina began in the spring of 1992 and witnessed the death of over 200,000 and the injury of over 200,000 citizens, which included 50,000 children. These numbers of dead and injured were the result of concentration camps, and the massacres of civilians. The attacks brought about the exodus of 2.5 million civilians from Bosnia and Herzegovina regardless of their ethnic background.

The declaration of independence in Bosnia and Herzegovina brought war and the rapid occupation of over half the territory by the Serbs. “Ethnic cleansing” followed in all the territories claimed by each ethnic group. In the years after the war in 1995 leaders and military leaders of several ethnic groups were indicted by the Hague war crimes tribunal.

The Croats and the Serbs went beyond a war that would lead to the occupation and control of Bosnia and Herzegovina to a horrific process called “ethnic cleansing” where the participants set out to remove other ethnic groups in the areas the occupied.

The UN moved quickly with 1,000 peacekeepers arriving at the airport in Sarajevo to supply humanitarian aid. In July the Croats declared one fifth of Bosnia and Herzegovina the independent state of “Herceg-Besna.” The Serbs and Croats continued to fight over the last third of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992.

As it became clear that there were massive human rights violations in Bosnia and Herzegovina early in 1993 the Council of Europe passed resolutions that defined what was happening and demanding that it end. The United Nations investigated crimes against humanity and prepared to prosecute those involved.

In April and May 1993 the United Nations declared that Sarajevo, Tuzla, Bihać, Srebrenica, Zepa, and Gorazde as safe areas to protect the Muslim population

Bosnia and Herzegovina had a majority of Muslims as did the army it set up. Hostilities between the ethnic groups intensified in September 1993, when the Bosnian army killed dozens of Croat civilians at Uzdol. This action brought accusations by the HVO that the Bosnian army had carried out many more atrocities than what had been reported and moved armed troops into the Uzdol area to protect the Croats there. The fighting caused thousands of Croats to leave their homes and flee to Croatia or parts of Bosnia protected by the HVO. In Fonjnica the Bosnian army killed two Franciscan friars. The army also was seen openly looting Croat shops in Vares.

As the war continued to degenerate into local conflicts there were many complexities that included an alliance between the Muslims and the Serbs to fight against the Croats in Herzegovina. In north western Bosnia, rival Muslim groups fought each other. In another case in central Bosnia the Croats and Serbs united to fight the Muslims.

Surveys after the war showed that 60 percent of the houses that once stood in Bosnia and Herzegovina were destroyed with half the schools and about a third of the hospitals being burned to the ground. A waste land of destroyed roads, power plants, water systems, crops, vineyards, and industrial plants was all that was left. Toxic pollutants were dumped in rivers, and the fields had been seeded with land mines.

The events of 1995 in Bosnia and Herzegovina demonstrated that United Nations peacekeeping required more than UN troops having a presence in troubled regions.

The United Nations declared that Sarajevo, Tuzla, Bihać, Srebrenica, Zepa, and Gorazde were safe areas to protect the Muslim population in the spring of 1993. By 1995 the Serbs were no longer respecting the UN forces as they continued their efforts to remove all other ethnic groups. In response to the continued aggression of the Serbs, NATO forces carried out some air strikes against them. The response from the Serb forces came in May 1995 when they took 350 UN peacekeepers hostage and threatened to kill them if there were any further air strikes.

On 22 May 1995 the commander of UN peacekeepers in Srebrenica asked to have a substantial increase in the number of his forces or to remove the peacekeepers to allow for NATO air strikes. His requests were denied. The Serbs increased their action against Srebrenica by stopping international convoys of supplies and increased their artillery strikes on the area.

Attacks increased on Srebrenica and the UN commander asked for air support from 6 to 9 of July. This request was rejected as were the requests from Muslim defenders to have their surrendered arms back. Bosnian Serbs increased their attacks, including taking a Dutch peacekeeping post and taking over two dozen troops hostage. At the same time Muslims began to flee from the area.

On July 10 there were a number of limited air strikes against the Serbs, but this ended as soon as the Bosnian Serbs stopped attacking. The Muslim population moved in close to the UN positions for safety as the Serbs refuse to retreat.

On July 11, the Dutch dropped bombs on the Serb forces, which brought a threat that another attack would result in the killing of Dutch peacekeepers that they were holding as hostages and the shelling of the refugees. Unable to act, Ratko Mladic, the commander of the Bosnian Serbs entered Srebrenica and demanded that all weapons be handed over.

During the night thousands of Muslim fights attempted to escape, but were shelled by the Bosnian Serbs. The next day, the Serbs began bussing tens of thousands of Muslims out of Srebrenica, separating the men and boys from the rest. By July 13, there were reports that mass killings of Muslim males by the Serbians. To release captured Dutch peacekeepers from the Serbs, thousands of Muslims that had entered the UN encampment were handed over to the Bosnian Serbs. Reports of the mass killings of these Muslims reach the UN forces in the days that followed. The final number of massacred at Srebrenica was over 7,500 people.

By July 16 the Dutch were able to negotiate with the Bosnian Serbs to leave the area. The Dutch were to leave without their weapons or supplies.

On November 16 indictments were brought against the Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic and the leader Radovan Karadzic by the International War Crimes Tribunal. These charges included genocide, crimes against humanity and violations against the laws and customs of war at Srebrenica.

Radovan Karadzic, the former senior commander of the Bosnian Serbs was found guilty of genocide in absentia by the International War Crimes Tribunal and received a sentence of forty-six years in prison.

On 19 April 2002 the Dutch government resigned after a report stated that it was in part responsible for the events at Srebrenica because the Dutch troops were too lightly armed to carry out the task they had been given.

This stage of the hostilities ended on 21 November 1995 when the warring groups initialled a peace treaty at Dayton, Ohio, which was finalized in Paris on 14 December 1995. This agreement brought about a definition of the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina with a national multiethnic government. There were two equal sized republics, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Serb based Republika Srpska.

To maintain the peace and to allow the building of the new Bosnia and Herzegovina the NATO led the international peacekeeping force called IFOR, which was made up of 60,000 troops. A smaller group also led by NATO called the Stabilization Force or SROR replaced IFOR. This force was replaced by the European Union peacekeeping force called EUFOR in December 2004.

The military forces and paramilitary groups of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia moved in 1998-99 to expel the Albanians in Kosovo by force, which provoked an extraordinary response from the international community. NATO began bombing targets in Serbia and stationed a force named KFOR in Kosovo to protect the local population.

The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia election in the fall of 2000 saw the defeat of President Slobodan Milosevic and the election of Vojislav Kostunica. By 2001, Milosevic was arrested and transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague where he was tried for crimes against humanity.

With the new leadership, the country was allowed back into the UN as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. With this membership in the UN the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) continued. After talks that lasted from 2002 until February 2003, Serbia and Montenegro agreed to be a loose federation of republics that in the future could become independent after a referendum. And later on Montenegro became independent country on 21 May 2006.

Previous