19th and 20th century
Nationalistic movements in this region started in the 19th century. The Orthodox Serbs were the most nationally organized. The Catholics sided mostly with the Croats from neighbouring Austro-Hungarian province of Croatia-Slavonia. The Bosnian Muslims were ethnically claimed by both Croats and Serbs and although some did opt for Serbdom (Osman Đikić, Šukrija Kurtović) or Croatdom, most were undecided and still clung to the memory of the Ottoman golden age, preferring the designation of Turks.
World War I began after the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The Serb nationalist organization Mlada Bosna organized the attack, and of all the conspirators, Gavrilo Princip had the most success.
Following the Great War, Bosnia became part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
It was given to Nazi-puppet Croatia in World War II. Bosnia and Herzegovina became a republic of Yugoslavia in 1945, when the country was re-organized as a communist federal state under Josip Broz Tito.
Yugoslavia's unraveling was hastened by the rise of nationalism: Bosniaks led by Alija Izetbegović, Serbs led by Slobodan Milošević and Croats led by Franjo Tuđman. Bosnia and Herzegovina was the only Yugoslav Republic where there was no majority of a single ethnicity, and its capital Sarajevo was the prime example of inter-ethnic mixing and tolerance. But in the 1990s fate had twisted and Bosnia became a particularly problematic area.
In 1990, Slovenia declared independence which caused a short conflict with the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) which tried to prevent secession. Later that year, Croatia did the same and JNA responded the same way, but with the Serb majority in Krajina separating from Croatia. Bosnia was ethnically heterogenous and there could not be a remotely clear delimitation between the areas that wanted to secede and those that did not. The Constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina provided for three constitutional nations: the Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, so no major constitutional changes were to be granted short of a unanimous agreement from all three sides. This was pretty much a guarantee that the warfare would be very bloody.
On February 29th and March 1st 1992, the Bosnian government held a referendum on independence. The Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks mostly voted on the referendum while the Bosnian Serbs mostly boycotted it, because of its unconstitutionality as the Serb delegates in parliament did not approve it.
Being in the middle of a wider conflict, the situation in Bosnia quickly escalated. The first casualty in Bosnia 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. A Serb Orthodox priest was also wounded in the attack.
With 99% voting for the independence out of 66% of the eligible voters, the Bosniak and Croat representatives in Bosnia's parliament declared the republic's independence on April 5, 1992. The Serb delegates, having previously left over the violation of the Constitution, declared their own state Republika Srpska on midnight between April 6th and April 7th.
Most European countries and the U.S. recognized the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina by April 7th, and the country was admitted to the United Nations on May 22nd.
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. 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. Most of the capital Sarajevo was held by the Bosniaks and in order to prevent the Bosniak army from being deployed out of the town, the Bosnian Serb Army surrounded it, deploying troops and artillery in the surrounding hills, and often bombarded the Bosniak army in the city. The Serbs held on to a few Sarajevo suburbs (Grbavica and parts of Dobrinja) who were also shelled by the Bosniak forces as well. The civilian death count in Sarajevo would pass 11,000 by the end of the war.
To make matters even worse, in 1993 the Bosnian 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.
The third incarnation of the war in the former Yugoslavia prompted the United Nations to establish the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague on May 25, 1993. The warring parties committed war crimes, committed ethnic cleansing, formed internment camps often compared to concentration camps etc, so the UN repeatedly attempted to stop the war, but wasn't particularly successful.
Eventually even NATO got involved when its jets shot down four Serb aircraft over central Bosnia on February 8th 1994; this was the alliance's first use of force since it was founded in 1949. The so-called Vance-Owen peace plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina was announced on Febrary 9, 1994 and in March 1994, Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia signed the peace agreement, creating the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This narrowed the field of warring parties down to two.
A particularly disturbing and problematic incident happened in July 1995, when, reportedly in retaliation to previous incursions by Naser Orić's troops, Serb troops under general Ratko Mladić occupied the UN "safe area" of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia, after which around 7,000 Bosniak males went missing.
The war continued through most of 1995, 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).
In the end, the war caused an estimated 278,000 dead and missing persons and another 1,325,000 refugees and exiles from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
after Dayton Agreement
The Dayton Agreement divides Bosnia and Herzegovina roughly equally between the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Bosnian Serb Republika Srpska, based mostly on their wartime borders.
In 1995-1996, a NATO-led international peacekeeping force (IFOR) of 60,000 troops served in Bosnia to implement and monitor the military aspects of the agreement. IFOR was succeeded by a smaller, NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) whose mission was to deter renewed hostilities.
The United Nations' International Police Task Force in Bosnia was replaced at the end of 2002 by the European Union Police Mission, the first such police training and monitoring taskforce from the European Union.
Throughout this conflict the international community, especially the United Nations, have made fatal errors in evaluating the whole situation.
This is a point of contention -- opinions range from those that say they should have intervened earlier and stopped the bloodshed, to whether they should have intervened at all.
External links
General history:
War and post-war history:
