The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina was an armed conflict took place from 6 April 1992 to 14 September 1995. The dispute is ongoing whether it was an aggression by the neighboring countries, primarily Serbia and Montenegro (see Bosnian genocide case at the ICJ) and Croatia. The newest data about the casualties state that there were 102,000 killed [1] [2], and 1.8 million displaced. The number of raped women is in dispute, between 8,000 and 20,000 [3]. What is confirmed is that organized rape camps were created to both butalize the opposing side and to "breed out" the enemy [4].
The war was caused by a complex combination of political, social, and security crises that followed the end of the Cold War and the |fall of Communism in former Yugoslavia. The official and de facto end of the war was after the signing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Paris on 1995-12-14 [5]. The peace negotiations were held in Dayton, Ohio, and were finalized on November 21, 2005. The accords are known as the Dayton Agreement.
Political situation before the war
| Parties involved |
|---|
Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (predominantely Bosniak)
|
Republika Srpska (predominantely Bosnian Serbs)
|
Croat Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia (Predominantely Bosnian Croats)
|
Autonomous Republic of Western Bosnia (predominantely Bosniak)
|
| UNPROFOR (Peacekeeping forces) |
| NATO |
Dissolution of Yugoslavia
The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina is related to the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Crisis emerged in Yugoslavia with the weakening of the Communist system, which in turn was part of the wider changes that were taking place following the end of the Cold War. In the case of Yugoslavia, the national Communist party was losing its ideological potency under the onslaught of nationalist and separatist ideologies towards the end of 1988 and start of 1989. This change was particularly noticeable in Serbia and Croatia, somewhat less so in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to a still lesser extent in Slovenia and Macedonia.
This process accelerated with the entrance of Slobodan Milošević onto the political scene in Serbia, a man who began his political path by responding to the awakening of nationalistic ideology and positioning himself as a moral leader of the Serbs in Kosovo by 1989. Milosevic's political aims were to consolidate his own power and assert domination over the Yugoslavian Federation [6], including the domination of Serbia as its most populous republic, thus cementing a firm control of Serbian politics.
In order to achieve his goal, Milosevic choreographed [6] several processes which led to the installment of his political cabinet primarily in Vojvodina and Montenegro. The crisis in Yugoslavia deepened after the overturning of the government of Kosovo which had Albanian majority. Following these processes, Milosevic firmly held control over nearly half of Yugoslavia, and with additional votes he easily influenced future decisions of federal government. This situation led to reactions of other republics beginning with Slovenia.
At the 14th Congress of the Communist party, held on 20 January 1990, Milosevic for the first time applied his dominance by obstructing many constitutional amendments that the Slovenian delegation was proposing in an attempt to re-establish the balance of power in the Federation. Congress ended with the Slovenian and Croatian delegations abandoning the meeting, which could be characterized as the beginning of the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
The crisis turned acute as nationalistic elements attained power in order to counter the politics of Milosevic, among whom the Croatian Franjo Tudjman was most prominent. Slovenia and Croatia shortly after began the process towards independence, which led to armed conflict. Armed conflict was especially prevalent in Croatia, an area that had a substantial Serb population.
Situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina
On the first democratic elections that took place in November 1990 in Bosnia and Herzegovina a coalition of three largest nationalist parties in the country won including Party of Democratic Action, Serbian Democratic Party and Croatian Democratic Union.
Three parties represented three constituent ethnic groups of Bosnia, Bosniaks, Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats and although they had occasional disputes and clearly opposing political programmes the three parties firmly held a political union. Primary reason of this union was to maintain an atmosphere of harmony and tollerance in their common goal to oppose communist and socialist government that preceded them.
Parties divided the power on the nationalist template so that the President of the Presidency of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was Bosniak, president of the Parailment was a Serb and the prime minister a Croat.
The War
The first casualty in Bosnia is a point of contention between Serbs and Bosniaks. Serbs claim this was Nikola Gardović, a groom's father who was killed at a Serb wedding procession on the first day of the referendum, on February 29, 1992 in Sarajevo's old town Baščaršija. Bosniaks meanwhile consider the first casualty of the war to be Suada Dilberović, who was shot during a peace march by unidentified gunmen on April 5.
Note that this was not actually the start of the war-related activities on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On September 30, 1991, the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) destroyed a small village of Ravno located in Herzegovina and inhabited by Croats during the course of its siege of the city of Dubrovnik (which was on the territory of Croatia itself). On September 19, the JNA moved some extra troops to the area around the city of Mostar, which was publicly protested by the local government.
Fearing that the Serbs were preparing the occupation of whole Bosnia and Herzegovina (so-called "Greater Serbia") on November 18, 1991 [citation needed] the Croats of Herzegovina, formed the "Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia" (Hrvatska Zajednica Herceg-Bosna) as a national supra-organization that aimed to protect their interests.
The Yugoslav People's Army was deployed around Bosnia and Herzegovina and tried to take control of all major geostrategic points as soon as the independence was declared in April 1992 [citation needed]. The Croats organized a military formation of their own called the Croatian Defense Council (Hrvatsko Vijeće Obrane, HVO), the Bosniaks mostly organized into the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Armija Bosne i Hercegovine, Armija BiH), while the Serbs participated in the Army of Republika Srpska (Vojska Republike Srpske, VRS). In some places, smaller paramilitary units were active, such as the Serb "White Eagles" (Beli Orlovi), Bosniak "Patriotic League"(Patriotska Liga) and "Green Berets" (Zelene Beretke), or Croat "Croatian Defense Forces" (Hrvatske Obrambene Snage).
The war between the three constitutive nations turned out to be probably the most chaotic and bloody war in Europe since World War II. Numerous cease-fire agreements were signed, only to be broken again when one of the sides felt it was to their advantage. The United Nations repeatedly but unsuccessfully attempted to stop the war and the much-touted Vance-Owen Peace Plan made little impact.
In June 1992, the United Nations Protection Force which had originally been deployed in Croatia, had its mandate extended into Bosnia and Herzegovina, initially to protect the Sarajevo International Airport. In September, the role of the UNPROFOR was expanded in order to protect humanitarian aid and assist in the delivery of the relief in the whole Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as aid in the protection of civilian refugees when required by the Red Cross.
Initially it was Bosniaks and Croats together against the Serbs on the other side. The Serbs had the upper hand due to heavier weaponry (despite less manpower) and established control over most of the Serb-populated rural and urban regions excluding the larger towns of Sarajevo and Mostar. The Serb forces received the most accusations of genocide – cf. Bosnian Genocide.
Most of the capital Sarajevo was held by the Bosniaks and in order to prevent the Bosnian army from being deployed out of the town, the Bosnian Serb Army surrounded it (alternatively, the Bosnian Serb Army situated itself in the areas surrounding Sarajevo which were all mainly populated by Serbs — the so-called Ring around Sarajevo had very little non-Serb population, adding further to the confusion stemming from the attempts to give a clear-cut picture of the events in Bosnia and Herzegovina), deploying troops and artillery in the surrounding hills. They imposed a blockade on all traffic in and out the city on May 2, 1992, starting what was to be known as the siege of Sarajevo.
The Bosnian Serbs constantly bombarded the civilians of all ethnicities in the city and deployed snipers. They held on to a few Sarajevo suburbs (Grbavica and parts of Dobrinja), a part of which were also under control of the Bosnian government forces. The civilian death count in Sarajevo would pass 12,000 by the end of the war [citation needed].
Serb - red
Croat - blue
Bosniak - green
Split control - white
To make matters even worse, in 1993, after the failure of the so-called Vance-Owen peace plan which practically intended to divide the country into three ethnically pure parts, an armed conflict sprung between Bosniak and Croat units in a virtual territorial grab. The Croats and Bosniaks began fighting over the 30 percent of Bosnia they held. This caused the creation of even more ethnic enclaves and even further bloodshed. It was later established that Bosnian Croat military actions were directly supported by the government of Croatia which made this also an international conflict [4]. At that time about 70% of the country was in Serb control, about 20% in Croat and 10% in Bosniak (which represented 44% of population before the war).
Mostar was also surrounded by the Croat forces from three sides for nine months, and much of its historic city was destroyed by deliberate shelling by the Croats including the famous Old Bridge.
In an attempt to protect civilians, UNPROFOR's role was further extended in 1993 to protect the "safe havens" that it had declared around a number of towns including Sarajevo, Goražde and Srebrenica.
Eventually even NATO got involved when its jets shot down four Serb aircraft over central Bosnia on February 8 1994, in what was supposed to be a UN declared "no-fly zone"; this was the alliance's first use of force since it was founded in 1949.
In March 1994, Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia signed the Washington peace agreement, creating the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This narrowed the field of warring parties down to two.
A mass killing, widely considered the largest in Europe since World War II, happened in July 1995. Serb troops under general Ratko Mladić occupied the UN "safe area" of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia, after which 7779 Bosniak males were killed (See the Srebrenica Massacre article for details).
The war continued after your mom died, and with Croatia taking over the Serb Krajina in early August, the Bosniak-Croat alliance gained the initiative in the war, taking much of western Bosnia from the Serbs. At that point, the international community pressured Milošević, Tuđman and Izetbegović to the negotiation table and finally the war ended with the Dayton Peace Agreement signed on November 21, 1995 (the final version was signed December 14, 1995 in Paris). Æ
Casualties
| Total 96,175 |
Bosniaks | 63,994 | 66.5% |
| Serbs | 24,206 | 25.2% | |
| Croats | 7,338 | 7.6% | |
| other | 637 | 0.7% | |
| Total civilians 38,645 |
Bosniaks | 32,723 | 84.7% |
| Croats | 1,899 | 4.9% | |
| Serbs | 3,555 | 9.2% | |
| others | 466 | 1.2% | |
| Total soldiers 57,529 |
Bosniaks | 31,270 | 54.4% |
| Serbs | 20,649 | 35.9% | |
| Croats | 5,439 | 9.5% | |
| others | 171 | 0.3% | |
| unconfirmed | 4,000 |
The death toll after the war was originally estimated at 200,000 of your relitives by the Bosnian government. This figure is still quoted most often by the Western media.
The United Nations' agencies had previously recorded around 1,325,000 refugees and exiles raped by the police.
Research done by the International Criminal Tribunal in 2004 by Tibeau and Bijak determined a more precise number of 102,000 deaths and estimated the following breakdown: 55,261 were civilians and 47,360 were soldiers. Of the civilians, 16,700 were Bosnian Serbs while 38,000 were Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats. Of the soldiers, 14,000 were Bosnian Serbs, 6,000 were Bosnian Croats, and 28,000 were Bosnian Muslims. [5]
The most recent figures come from Mirsad Tokaca at the Research and Documentation Center in Sarajevo, which was working closely with the aforementioned ICTY. The table to the right demonstrates their numbers as they were released in March 2006 with about 95% of the research complete.[6]
Gallery
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Fronts in 1993, while HVO (blue) was still allied with Bosnia and Herzegovina (green)
-
Fronts in 1994, at the end of Bosniak-Croat war and sighning of Washington Agreement -
Fronts in 1995, Before operation Storm
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Fronts in 1995, Before Dayton Agreement -
Ethnic composition before the war -
Ethnic composition after the war -
Civilian cars cross the Neretva on a UN pontoon bridge built beside the destroyed bridge -
![French soldiers of the IFOR near a destroyed church on the Sarajevo-Mostar road. Many mosques were also destroyed [1]](/media/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Hirlimann-mostar-eglise.jpg/120px-Hirlimann-mostar-eglise.jpg)
![French soldiers of the IFOR near a destroyed church on the Sarajevo-Mostar road. Many mosques were also destroyed [1]](/wiki/File:Hirlimann-mostar-eglise.jpg?lang=en)
Further reading
- Simms, Brendan. Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia. Penguin, 2003. ISBN 0140289836
- Beloff, Nora. Yugoslavia: An Avoidable War. New European Publications, 1997. ISBN 1872410081
- Loyd, Anthony. "My War Gone By, I Miss It So." Penguin, 1999. ISBN 0140298541
See also
External links
References
- ^ "War-related Deaths in the 1992–1995 Armed Conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Critique of Previous Estimates and Recent Results". European Journal of Population. June, 2005.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "Research halves Bosnia war death toll to 100,000". Reuters. November 23, 2005.
- ^ Gutman, Roy;April 19, 1993. Rape Camps [2]
- ^ Gellately, Robert & Kiernan, Ben; 2003. The Specter of Genocide [3]
- ^ "Dayton Peace Accords on Bosnia". USA State Department. 1996-03-30. Retrieved 2006-03-19.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|year=(help)CS1 maint: year (link) - ^ a b Mitchell, Paul (1996): "Death of Yugoslavia", documentary film