Bosnian Civil War

Bosnian Civil War (1992–5) The longest and most violent European war in the second half of the twentieth century. It was caused by opposition of the orthodox Serbian minority in Bosnia-Hercegovina to the country's secession from Yugoslavia, as demanded by its Muslim majority. Supported by substantial military assistance from Serbia, the Bosnian Serbs scored successive wins over a Muslim army severely weakened by an international arms embargo. In the areas which came under its control, the Bosnian Serbs carried out a brutal programme of ‘ethnic cleansing’, whereby Muslims and Croats were expelled (and, in many cases, murdered) in order to create ethnically homogeneous areas under Serb control, and to present the Bosnian Muslims and the international community with a fait accompli. As brutality and inhumanity escalated, rape became commonplace, while prisoners of war and innocent civilians were kept in ill-disguised concentration camps. In this way, the Bosnian Serbs controlled around 70 per cent of the country's area by the beginning of 1995.

Several factors began to change in the Bosnian Muslims' favour. They were strengthened by an alliance with the Bosnian Croat minority, which led to the creation of the Muslim-Croat Federation on 31 May 1994. More importantly, despite continuous European mediation through the UN and the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force, it was only the intervention of the USA in August 1995 against continued Serb aggression which led to Serbian agreement to negotiations. This led to the 1995 Dayton Agreement, which re-established a united country which would pursue a common foreign and defence policy, but which had two largely autonomous halves, the Muslim-Croat Federation based in Sarajevo and the Serb part of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Out of an original population of around 4.4 million (1991), virtually the entire population was uprooted, as around three million people became internal refugees migrating from areas under hostile control, and 1.3 million fled to other European states. As ethnic tensions within Bosnia-Hercegovina continued, more than one million refugees had still not returned to their homes by 2002.