Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Nearly three millennia ago, the territory now considered Bosnia and Herzegovina formed part of Illyria, which became known as the Roman province of Illyricum in the 1st century BC. Following the collapse of the Roman Empire, first the Goths and then the Slavs conquered the territory. Various petty Slav princes ruled the area until the 12th century AD, when Hungary made the area one of its dominions. The Hungarians later made Bosnia a banat (province) under the control of a ban (viceroy). Ban Stephen Krotomanic extended Hungarian authority over the principality of Hum (also known as Zahumlje), later known as Herzegovina. Krotomanic's nephew and successor Stephen Tvrtko further extended the boundaries, and in 1376 proclaimed himself king of Serbia and Bosnia. The kingdom began to disintegrate after the death of Tvrtko. A rebellious Bosnian chieftain seized the Hum region early in the 15th century and established it as Herzegovina, which means "independent duchy." By 1463 the Ottoman Empire had conquered most of Bosnia, and Herzegovina fell to them in 1483. The two territories remained provinces of the Ottoman Empire for the next 400 years, although unsuccessful uprisings against the Turks occurred frequently during the 19th century.
The population of the area included Roman Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs, and Muslims (Slavs who had converted to Islam during Ottoman rule) by the late 19th century. Unrest among the various ethnic groups coupled with the increasing deterioration of the Ottoman Empire led to a general decline of the area. During the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary negotiated with other European rulers for administration rights over the area and, by 1908, had annexed the two provinces. Austro-Hungarian rule did little to quell the ethnic tensions in the region, and instead it became a center of nationalist agitation for political independence and cultural autonomy. Europe began to take sides in the disputes: Austria-Hungary and Germany opposed the growing Serbian nationalism, while Russia and Great Britain, in part, supported it.
In June 1914 the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo, an act that precipitated World War I. Gavrilo Princip, the assassin, was a Serb student from Bosnia. During the war, some Croats and Serbs fought together, hoping to create a kingdom that would unite all the South Slavic peoples. On December 1, 1918, following the overthrow of the monarchy of Austria-Hungary at the close of the war, Bosnia and Herzegovina merged and became part of the independent Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes under the Serbian monarchy of Aleksandar I from 1921 to 1934. When conflict between Croats and Serbs led to greater national tensions, Aleksandar tightened control over the country, and in 1929 he renamed the kingdom Yugoslavia (which means "Land of the South Slavs").
During World War II (1939-1945), Axis powers invaded and dismembered Yugoslavia. Germany and Italy supported the formation of a pro-Fascist puppet state encompassing much of Croatia and Bosnia, which was headed by native nationalists in Croatia. Yugoslavs fought against each other during the remainder of the war; in particular, the forces of Josip Broz Tito, a Croatian Communist, fought against the Croat Fascist puppet state and the Serb monarchists. At the end of the war, Tito reconciled all the various parts of Yugoslavia and created a Yugoslav federation with Bosnia and Herzegovina as one of the constituent republics, despite insistence by Serbs that the region should be made only a province like Vojvodina and Kosovo. During the 1960s Tito granted Muslims a distinct ethnic status, in an effort to put them on equal footing with Serbs and Croats. In the 1970s a collective presidency was instituted in the republic. Ethnic tensions worsened, however, following Tito's death in 1980.
In 1990 the Communist Party finally relinquished power in Yugoslavia. An assortment of political parties quickly formed throughout the country, each advocating a different cause. Most of these new parties represented distinct ethnic groups. During the three rounds of elections for members of Bosnia and Herzegovina's Assembly in November and December 1990, the Muslim Party of Democratic Action (PDA), which was involved in growing tensions with ethnic Serbs, won 86 seats. The Serbian Democratic Party (SDP) earned 72 seats, and the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CDU) won 44 seats that same year. These three parties together also took all nine seats of the collective presidency. Alija Izetbegoviç of the PDA became the president of the presidency in the new coalition government.
During 1991, ethnic tensions throughout Yugoslavia helped weaken the precarious Bosnian presidency. When both Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence from Yugoslavia in June 1991, many Serbs throughout the remaining republics began proclaiming their allegiance to Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, as in Croatia, they formed Serbian Autonomous Regions (SARs). Rejection of the SARs by the Bosnian government led to armed conflicts between Serbs and non-Serbs. These conflicts escalated after Macedonia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in November 1991. The Yugoslav People's Army demonstrated its opposition to the secession of the three republics and potential secession of Bosnia by attacking various targets including the city of Mostar in southwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina. The deteriorating national situation was reflected in the government of Bosnia. The SDP rejected proposals for declaring independence by the presidency of the republic and by the PDA. Negotiations among the various parties ended in a stalemate. The dissenting Serbs formed an Assembly of the Serbian People and in November 1991 held a referendum for Serbs on whether they should remain part of Yugoslavia. While nearly all participants in the referendum voted to remain with Yugoslavia, voters in a similar referendum in March 1992 open to all ethnic groups (but boycotted by most Serbs) voted to secede. That same month, Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence. In early April, the Serbs, backed by the Yugoslav People's Army, began battling Croats and Muslims for territory.
Despite international recognition of the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, first by the United States in April 1992 and then by the United Nations (UN) in May 1992, the conflict continued. By May 1992, when Serbia and Montenegro declared themselves the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), Serbs had gained control of nearly two-thirds of Bosnia and Herzegovina and laid siege to Sarajevo. Early mediation efforts by the European Community (EC, now the European Union) and the UN failed. On May 30, 1992, the UN imposed economic sanctions against the FRY, which had not received international recognition. In June it mounted a humanitarian operation in Bosnia. The war took a new turn in July when a group of Croats, under the leadership of Mate Boban, formed a breakaway Croatian state called the Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia, with its own administration and security system.
The Bosnian government asked the international community to recognize that the imposition of economic sanctions against the FRY was actually more detrimental to Bosnia, which was unable to receive supplies. It also protested the international arms embargo on the former Yugoslav republics, arguing that the lack of an arms supply hurt the Bosnian Muslims more than the well-armed Serbs; as a result, the United States unilaterally decided to stop enforcing the ban in late 1994. During the second half of 1992, the international community became aware of extensive violations of human rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in particular, the mass murder of Muslim villagers and the widespread rape of Muslim women by Serbian soldiers, in the name of so-called ethnic cleansing. International mediation, however, was able to accomplish very little.
In May 1993 a conflict erupted between Croats and Muslims in central Bosnia. The fighting was associated with brutal ethnic cleansing and resulted in thousands of casualties. In June the UN Security Council passed a resolution to create six "safe areas" primarily for Bosnian Muslims: Bihaç, Tuzla, Srebrenica, Zepa, Gora"de, and Sarajevo. The resolution called for the deployment of up to 25,000 additional UN soldiers and gave them the mandate to use force to defend those areas. While the safe areas provided a refuge for many driven from their homes, the international community recognized the general ineffectiveness of this resolution as some of the safe areas, including Sarajevo and Gora"de, came under attack by Serbian forces.
In March 1994 fighting between Bosnian Muslims and Croats ended when the two groups agreed to create a joint federation to battle the Serbs and to ally the new federation with Croatia. The federation was based on territory amounting to 58 percent of Bosnia and Herzegovina, contingent upon the recovery of territory from the Serbs (who still controlled about two-thirds of Bosnia and Herzegovina). The federation was based on eight cantons, four of which would be Muslim-dominated; two, controlled by Croats; and the remaining two, of mixed ethnicity. The new federation would coexist with the established government of the republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which remained under the guidance of President Izetbegoviç. However, in early 1995 only one of the eight cantons, that of Tuzla, had been created, and there were power disputes within the federation government. Izetbegoviç and the Muslims remained wary of the expansion-minded Croats, which made the federation unstable.
A cease-fire between Bosnian Serbs and the Muslim-Croat federation was declared from January to April of 1995, but sporadic fighting continued to break out, and attempts at renewing the agreement were not successful. Fighting in neighboring Croatia also resumed in early May, bringing fears of a renewed regionwide conflict. In late May, aircraft belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombed Serb-held positions in Bosnia. In retaliation, and to prevent further attacks, the Serbs took more than 300 troops of the UN peacekeeping forces hostage, heightening tensions in the region. The Serbs gradually released the hostages.
Events moved quickly during the summer of 1995. Serbian forces overran the so-called safe areas of Srebrenica and Zepa and allegedly massacred thousands of Muslim civilians. NATO forces mounted a major air-strike campaign against Serbian positions to prevent further attacks. In cooperation with Bosnian Croat units, Bosnian government forces overran large areas of western Bosnia, and the Serbs suffered their first major defeat of the war. The Bosnian government also eliminated a Muslim rebellion in western Bosnia led by Fikret Abdiç, who had been collaborating with Serbian forces. By late summer, the Muslim-Croat federation controlled more than 50 percent of the country's territory.
In August 1995 U.S. assistant secretary of state Richard Holbrooke began a major campaign to forge a peace settlement between the three parties. Following lengthy negotiations, Bosnian president Izetbegoviç, Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, and Serbian president Slobodan Miloševiç initialed a comprehensive agreement on November 21, 1995, at the U.S. Air Force base near Dayton, Ohio; the agreement was formally signed in Paris the following month. The Dayton accord was intended to guarantee a lasting peace in Bosnia and to reconstruct the country as a single state consisting of two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (also known as the Muslim-Croat federation), which would receive 51 percent of the territory, and the Serb Republic, which would receive 49 percent. The accord established Sarajevo as a unified city under the control of the central government. It also called for free elections to posts in both the central government and constituent entities, to be held in September 1996 under OSCE supervision.
To ensure the peace, a NATO implementation force (I-FOR) was placed in Bosnia in January 1996 on a one-year mandate. The force consisted of 60,000 troops from more than 20 nations, including approximately 20,000 U.S. soldiers and large numbers of French and British troops. The troops were stationed primarily along the demarcation line between the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic.
The three parties complied promptly with the main military provisions of the Dayton accord by withdrawing their weapons and troops from the zones of separation, releasing most of their prisoners of war, and disclosing the size of their armed forces to arms control negotiators from the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Meanwhile, the UN began taking steps to lift the economic and military embargoes that had been imposed on the republics of the former Yugoslavia in 1991. Other provisions of the agreement proved more difficult, however. Serbian and Croatian nationalists resisted the integration of ethnically divided communities in Sarajevo, Mostar, and elsewhere. They also delayed the return of refugees to their homes.
As a result of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, between 100,000 and 250,000 people were reported killed and about 200,000 were wounded. The overwhelming majority of casualties were Muslims. An estimated 2.3 million people were displaced by the fighting to areas within and outside the country.
In early 1996 the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), established in late 1993 in The Hague, Netherlands, to indict, try, and sentence suspects accused of crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia, stepped up its activities. More than 50 Bosnians, the majority of whom were Serbs, were indicted by the ICTY for massacring civilians during the war. Those indicted included Radovan Karad"iç, the president of the Serb Republic in Bosnia, and General Ratko Mladic, military commander of the Bosnian Serbs. The two leaders were excluded from the Dayton accord by Serbian president Miloševiç. However, both remained technically in power. In July 1996 the ICTY issued international arrest warrants for both Karad"iç and Mladic on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Later that month, U.S. officials finally secured Karad"iç's resignation. Mladic was dismissed from power in November by Biljana Plavšiç, who had replaced Karad"iç as president of the Serb Republic.
In keeping with the provisions of the Dayton accord, national elections were held in Bosnia and Herzegovina in September 1996, supervised by the OSCE. The ruling Muslim, Serb, and Croat nationalist parties scored major victories, each capturing about 80 percent of the vote of their ethnic constituencies. The Muslim Party of Democratic Action (PDA) won the largest number of seats overall in Bosnia's central legislature. Seats on the three-member collective presidency went to Bosnia's Muslim president Alija Izetbegoviç, Serb leader Momcilo Krajišnik, and Croat leader Krešimir Zubak. Izetbegoviç received the most votes and thus was to chair the presidency. The Serbian Democratic Party (SDP) won the majority of seats in the assembly of the Bosnian Serb Republic, and Biljana Plavšiç, a member of the SDP, won her race to continue as president of the Serb Republic. The PDA won the largest number of seats in the Muslim-Croat federation's House of Representatives, followed by the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CDU). The presidency of the Muslim-Croat federation is chosen by the federation's parliament and thus was not contested. The overwhelming victory of the country's ruling parties reflected the suppression of opposition parties in the weeks leading up to the elections. Many observers feared that the success of those nationalist parties would serve to ratify Bosnia's partition along ethnic lines.
In October Izetbegoviç and Serbian president Slobodan Miloševiç agreed to establish full diplomatic relations between Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition to opening embassies and exchanging ambassadors, the two leaders pledged to allow each other's citizens to travel freely across their borders, without the need for visas. Miloševiç proclaimed Serbia's respect for Bosnia's territorial integrity, and Izetbegoviç agreed to recognize the FRY as the successor to the former Yugoslavia.
In December NATO launched a new, 31,000-strong stabilization force (S-FOR) in Bosnia to replace the 60,000-member I-FOR, whose one-year mandate had expired that month. The mission of the S-FOR was to deter new hostilities and provide a secure environment for civilian peace efforts. The United States contributed 8500 troops to the new force, which was expected to remain in Bosnia until June 1998.
The ICTY continued its efforts to bring war criminals to trial throughout 1996 and early 1997 but received little assistance from the leaders of Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia. By March 1997 the tribunal had indicted 74 suspects, of which 3 were Muslims, 54 were Serbs, and 17 were Croats. In May the tribunal delivered a historic verdict when it convicted Dusan Tadic, a Bosnian Serb, of war crimes and crimes against humanity for participating in an ethnic cleansing campaign against Bosnian Muslims in 1992. The trial, the first of the ICTY, marked the first time an international court has tried and convicted someone for war crimes since the close of World War II.