Bosnia

Bosnia

With the death of Josip Tito, Bosnia's long time authoritarian dictator, the combination of the emergence of nationalist politics and the militarization of Serbia and Croatia sparked the eruption of a three-sided civil war between the Bosnian-Serbs, Bosnian-Croats, and Bosnian-Muslims. Within this war, Bosnian Serbs attempted to ethnically cleanse strategic regions in Bosnia to accomplish their mission of creating a "Greater Serbia." The scale of atrocities committed against the Muslim populations in various areas of Bosnia by the Serbs was genocidal. Over 200,000 Muslims have been killed or starved and tortured to death in concentration camps between 1992 and 1995.

History/ Background: Due to the modern conflict, Bosnia has been transformed from a peaceful, pluralist society of multiple ethnicities with religious flexibility to a region torn apart by three, distinct ethnic groups: Bosnian-Serbs, Bosnian-Croats, and Bosnian-Muslims. Multiple colonizations and the authoritarian regime of Josip Tito served to aggravate ethnic tensions throughout the development of Bosnia. With the death of Tito and his iron rule over the Bosnian population, the system of checks and balances between the conflicting ethnic groups was dissolved, releasing the pressure cooker for the ethnic conflict. The election of 1990 further polarized the ethnic groups, as nationalist parties began to emerge as leading forces within domestic politics. This surge of nationalism met with the mobilizations of a “Greater Serbia” (led by Slobodan Milosevic) and a “Greater Croatia” in neighboring states and sparked the explosion of a three-sided civil war, especially as Bosnia declared its independence in 1992. Concerned about spillovers to European nations, the European Community held a number of conferences to try and resolve the Bosnian conflict by dividing up the country into different areas, each controlled by a different ethnic group. Unfortunately, these partition strategies only served to aggravate the ethnic groups further. As war broke out, Serb and Croat armies attempted to ethnically cleanse strategic regions of Bosnia to saturate their ethnicity in that area for the purposes of achieving their “Greater Serbia” and “Greater Croatia.” As Milosevic led his Serbian army to join the Bosnian-Serbs and cleanse the Muslim regions of the east that bordered Serbia and Bosnia, over 200,000 were killed by being targeted for their ethnicity.