The Former Yugoslavia: A Recent History of Conflict and Resolution

Ethnic and Religious Communities

Bosnia and Herzegovina (often simply called Bosnia) was an intricate patchwork of ethnic and religious communities and had a history of periodic intercommunal violence. Many observers had long regarded it as the Yugoslav republic where civil war was most likely and believed that conflict there would be especially bloody if Yugoslavia disintegrated. None of Bosnia’s three official nations—Muslim Slavs, Croats, and Serbs—constituted a majority of the population. In the 1991 census Muslim Slavs (or Bosniaks) made up 44 percent of the population of 4.4 million, Serbs made up 31 percent, and Croats made up 17 percent, while 5.5 percent declared themselves “Yugoslavs.” The remaining 2.5 percent comprised various small minority groups, such as Roma and Jews. Both Serbia and Croatia had historic claims to all or parts of Bosnia.

The Elections to 1990

Bosnia held its first multiparty elections in the fall of 1990. Three nationalist parties, one for each of the major ethnic groups, garnered 76 percent of the popular vote and 202 of the legislature’s 240 seats. The Muslim Slavs’ Party of Democratic Action (SDA in its Serbo-Croatian abbreviation), led by Alija Izetbegović, won 87 seats, or 34 percent of the legislature. The Serb Democratic Party (SDP), led by Radovan Karadžić and linked to Milošević’s ruling party in Serbia, took 71 seats, or 30 percent. The Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia-Herzegovina (HDZBH in its Serbo-Croatian abbreviation), the Bosnian branch of Tudjman’s ruling HDZ in Croatia, won 44 seats, or 18 percent. Izetbegović became president of Bosnia’s seven-member state presidency. The three nationalist parties formed a fragile coalition government, but it fell apart as Yugoslavia disintegrated in 1991.

Fragmentation

The secession of Croatia and Slovenia in June 1991, the war in Croatia that began in July 1991, and reports that Milošević and Tudjman had already secretly discussed partitioning Bosnia between Serbia and Croatia further soured relations between the three main ethnic groups. In October 1991 the Serb deputies walked out of a session of the legislature before the Muslim and Croat majority adopted measures that provided a basis for eventual secession from Yugoslavia. When the EC members decided to proceed with recognition of Slovenia and Croatia in December, the Bosnian government, again ignoring Serb protests, asked the EC members to recognize Bosnia as an independent state.

By the end of 1991 Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats had already formed “statelets” of their own within Bosnia. In the fall of 1991 the SDP established a separate Bosnian Serb legislature and a network of Serb Autonomous Regions (SARs) in northwestern, eastern, and southern districts that were inhabited primarily by Serbs. Each SAR organized its own armed defenders. In November the SDP organized a referendum in which Bosnian Serbs voted almost unanimously to “remain in a common Yugoslav state” with the rest of “the Serb nation.” Croat nationalists in the southern region of Herzegovina and in western Bosnia proclaimed the Croat Community of Herzeg-Bosnia (Herceg-Bosna) that same month. It was run as a virtually separate state by the Croat Defense Council (Hrvatsko Vijece Odbrane, or HVO), which had the backing of the Croatian government and army. On February 29 and March 1, 1992, the Bosnian government held a referendum on independence that was demanded by the EC as a condition for recognition. Most Serbs boycotted the referendum, but 97 percent of the Muslims and Croats who participated voted to secede. Bosnia proclaimed its independence—and the SDP formally proclaimed its separate Serb Republic (Republika srpska) with Karadžić as president. The United States and the EC members recognized Bosnia’s independence on April 6, 1992.

Conflict Errupts

A vicious three-sided armed conflict, with the Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat sides enjoying major external support—from Serbia and Croatia, respectively—erupted the same week. The Bosnian Croats, aided by the Croatian government and army, initially fought alongside poorly armed and unprepared Bosnian government forces, mostly Muslim, against Serb forces. The Yugoslav army transferred most of its troops and weapons in Bosnia to the Bosnian Serb army before formally pulling out, under international pressure, when Serbia and Montenegro declared themselves the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) later in April. Irregular armed bands from Serbia and Croatia terrorized civilian populations of other nationalities and burned their villages. Some of these bands were mobilized by ultranationalist parties and individuals in Serbia and Croatia; others came simply to plunder and kill. Volunteers from Islamic countries later fought alongside the Bosnian government forces. Many of them were former guerrillas who had fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s following the 1979 invasion and occupation of that country by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

The Serbian forces had two objectives: to expand and link up the territories they controlled and to eliminate the non-Serb population in these areas. By the summer of 1992 the Serbs controlled about 70 percent of Bosnia. They laid siege to Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital, with artillery and snipers and carried out ethnic cleansing, through massacres and expulsions of non-Serbs in territories they controlled. Reports of mass murder, organized mass rape, and torture became widespread. Tens of thousands of people, mostly Muslim males, were herded into concentration camps, where many died or were executed. These atrocities produced worldwide condemnation, but there was no international intervention except for the delivery of humanitarian aid under the protection of otherwise ineffective UNPROFOR troops. The UN Security Council authorized the deployment of 7,000 UNPROFOR troops in Bosnia in 1992. By 1994 they numbered 24,000.

Attempts to End the Conflict

International efforts to bring about a ceasefire and resolution of the conflict in Bosnia were numerous but unsuccessful until late 1995. These efforts included a series of international conferences and peace plans sponsored separately or jointly by the UN and the European Union (EU; formerly the European Community, or EC). The principal conferences were in Lisbon, Portugal, in February 1992; London, England, in August 1992; and Geneva, Switzerland, in the summer of 1993. The London meeting, which aimed at a wider regional settlement, created a standing International Conference on Former Yugoslavia (ICFY) under Cyrus Vance for the UN and British diplomat Lord David Owen for the EU. The international conferences produced a series of peace plans that one or more of the Bosnian factions always finally rejected. What came to be known as the Vance-Owen plan was put forth in 1992 and 1993 and was widely considered the most promising proposal. It was at one point accepted by all parties except the Bosnian Serbs. Their refusal led Milošević, who feared that international pressure might grow into foreign military intervention, to cool his relations with Karadžić and reduce Serbia’s support of the Bosnian Serb army.

The UN began imposing sanctions on the FRY in May 1992, in an attempt to halt Serbian support of Bosnian Serb offensives and atrocities. In May 1993 the UN Security Council established an International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, The Netherlands, to indict and try persons suspected of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide committed in Yugoslavia. In the spring of 1993 the UN also established six “safe areas” for Muslims, towns where UNPROFOR troops would protect them from attack. These areas were Sarajevo and the Muslim towns of Bihać, Tuzla, Goražde, Srebrenica, and Zepa.

Brief local or general ceasefires were sometimes arranged by local commanders and units or outside mediators. The longest and most effective was a four-month general ceasefire negotiated by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter in January 1995. In March 1994 U.S. pressure put an end to the Muslim-Croat war in central Bosnia and persuaded the Bosnian Croats and Croatian president Tudjman to agree, on paper, to a Muslim-Croat federation. However, Herzeg-Bosnia continued to function and to maintain its own government and army, both still closely linked to Croatia.

NATO Involvement

In May 1995 renewed Serb bombardment of Sarajevo was answered by NATO air strikes on Serb forces. The Serbs responded by holding more than 350 UNPROFOR soldiers hostage, and they were released only after protracted negotiations. In July, Serb forces overran Srebrenica and Zepa. In Srebrenica they massacred thousands of Muslim men and boys, captured in the presence of a small Dutch UNPROFOR contingent that had requested NATO air support but never received it. The United States and NATO reacted to these events with more forceful efforts to end the conflict.

The End of the War

The war in Bosnia finally ended in late 1995 as a result of a series of partly coordinated developments. In August NATO aircraft launched their first serious attacks on Serb positions in response to a murderous mortar attack on a crowded market in Sarajevo. Also in August a lightning Croatian army offensive met little Serb resistance in overrunning Krajina, an area of Croatia on Bosnia’s western border that had been controlled by Croatian Serbs since 1991. The Krajina Serb army and most Krajina Serbs fled to Bosnia or across Bosnia to Serbia, creating a major refugee problem for both countries. Richard Holbrooke, a U.S. assistant secretary of state, began a nonstop diplomatic campaign to forge a peace settlement. In September a joint Bosnian Croat and Muslim offensive overran large areas of Karadžić’s Serb Republic in western Bosnia. The Serbs suffered their first major defeat of the Bosnian war. In early October U.S. president Bill Clinton announced that the warring parties had agreed to a ceasefire. He also announced that leaders of all parties in the conflict would attend a peace conference in the United States.

The Dayton Peace Accord

In November 1995 Tudjman, Izetbegović, and Milošević—who represented the Bosnian Serbs, with their reluctant agreement—initialed a peace accord at a U.S. Air Force base near Dayton, Ohio, after three weeks of intensive negotiations and pressure from the United States. The Dayton Peace Accord was formally signed in Paris in December.

The Dayton Peace Accord dictated a constitution that established a formally united Bosnia made up of two “entities”: the Muslim-Croat federation, which continued to exist almost only on paper, with 51 percent of Bosnia’s territory, and the Serb Republic, with 49 percent. The central government had almost no powers. The accord included provisions for internationally organized elections and the unhindered return of refugees—estimated at 2.3 million people out of the prewar population of 4.4 million—to their places of origin. Real authority was vested in the international community’s High Representative, selected by the EU, and an official appointed by the UN. UNPROFOR was replaced by a multinational, but primarily NATO, Implementation Force (IFOR) of 60,000 troops. IFOR was initially authorized for one year, but soon its existence was extended indefinitely. Its mission was to keep the peace and oversee the agreement’s military and security provisions. In 1997 IFOR became SFOR, for Stabilization Force, which was gradually reduced from an initial 31,000 troops to 24,000, of which 15 percent were Americans. Bosnia became, in effect, a protectorate of NATO, the EU, and the UN. It has remained so up until today.

"Yugoslav Succession, Wars of," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2004 http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.