A Brief History of the Bosnian War and Genocide

For almost five decades following the end of the Second World War, Europe saw a period of great tension during the Cold War, but avoided any large armed conflicts. Then communism fell and in mid 1991 the Republic of Yugoslavia began to fall apart. First Croatia, then Slovenia declared independence from the federation of six republics which had been held together only by the aggressive suppression of its constituent ethnicities. Bosnia was not far behind and in early 1992 a referendum declared it independent too. The people of Bosnia are collectively known as Bosniaks, but the country is made up of ethnic Croats, Serbs, and Muslims.

Within two months of the referendum, open war had broken out in Bosnia. The Bosnian Serbs set up a shadow republic within the country called the Republika Srpska and with the cooperation of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) based in Serbia, began to wage a brutal, vicious war against the Bosnia government and people. Sarajevo, the capital and host of the 1984 Olympic Games, was subjected to a nearly four-year siege - the longest in the history of modern warfare. Its defenders came from all of Bosnia’s three peoples and were targeted by Serb forces for their loyalty to the multi-ethnic government.

Until the end of the war in 1995, all sides (Croatia later invaded as well) in the conflict committed atrocities, but over ninety percent have been attributed to Serb forces who attempted to drive all others out of the land and establish “Greater Serbia.” Massacres and unprecedented cruelty became the norm, culminating in the Srebrenica massacre of July 11, 1995 - the largest in Europe since the end of the war - which saw 8 000 Muslim men and boys slaughtered (srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com). An estimated 250 000 people were killed in the war, and various high-level figures have been indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Many have been convicted, some are still at large.