Convoy Bosnia - A Summary of the Crisis in Bosnia

Courtesy of the AMERICAN COMMITTEE TO SAVE BOSNIA A Summary of the Crisis in Bosnia A WAR OF AGGRESSION Before its independence, Bosnia-Herzegovina was one of the constituent republics of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. At that time, roughly four million people lived in Bosnia, and three ethnic groups predominated: Slavic Muslims (forming 44% of the population), Serbs (31%), and Croats (17%). Bosnia became an independent country as Yugoslavia disintegrated. Yugoslavia was first founded after World War I, but disintegrated during World War II. After the war, Yugoslavia was refounded as a Communist state and held together largely by the strength of its dictator, Josip Broz Tito. When Tito died in 1980, a power vacuum opened in which separatist and centralist tensions quickly mounted throughout the 1980s. The 1990 elections in Bosnia resulted in a governing coalition of three ethnically-based parties generally corresponding to the three major ethnic groups. Muslims and Croats in the governing coalition favored independence for Bosnia-Herzegovina, while most Bosnian Serbs did not. In January 1992 nationalist Bosnian Serb leaders proclaimed a Serbian entity within Bosnia. In a referendum shortly thereafter, over 63 percent of Bosnians voting chose independence, meeting the criteria for recognition set forth by the U.S. and the EU several months earlier. Although the Bosnian Serb party boycotted the vote and "encouraged" the Bosnian Serb community to follow suit, many Serbs supported the government. The U.S., along with most of the international community, recognized the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina in April 1992. In the spring of 1992, after its offensive in Croatia had ground to a stalemate, Serbia launched a war of aggression against Bosnia. The nationalist Bosnian Serb political party, proxies of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, had removed its members from the government. In March Serbian paramilitary forces, reinforced by the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav National Army, began a campaign of terror in eastern Bosnia. By early May the Yugoslav Army announced that it would withdraw from Bosnia-Herzegovina. In reality, however, some 80,000 men (mostly Bosnian Serbs) simply changed uniforms and, with a powerful arsenal including tanks and aircraft left behind by the truncated Yugoslav Army, continued prosecuting the war and genocide. This reconfigured Bosnian Serb force under "General" Ratko Mladic, aided by paramilitary groups, began seizing territory in northern and eastern Bosnia, expelled much of the non-Serbian population, and engaged in "ethnic cleansing." This campaign included mass killings of civilians, concentration camps, systematic rape, and the forced displacement of millions, creating the largest flow of refugees in Europe since World War II. The Serbian forces continue to be supplied and supported by the Milosevic regime in Belgrade as part of its efforts to create a Greater Serbia. The Bosnian government has sought to include all ethnic groups. The current president of the Bosnian parliament is a Bosnian Serb, and at least one-fifth of the defenders of Sarajevo, Bosnia's capital, are Serbian. One of the Deputy Commanders of the Bosnian defense forces is a Bosnian Croat, another a Serb. Although the HVO, a formerly separatist force of nationalist Bosnian Croats, fought Bosnian government troops during 1993 and early 1994, a U.S.-brokered Federation agreement, which the nationalist Bosnian Serbs are invited to join but have refused, ended the conflict between the two and has greatly strengthened the forces opposing Serbian aggression. In contrast, the Serbian regime controlling over 70% of Bosnian territory has ruled that all children of inter-ethnic marriages are to be considered "illegitimate." Moreover, the process of "ethnic cleansing" continues throughout Serb-held regions. Throughout the aggression the United Nations, the European Union (formerly the European Community), and the United States have proven ineffectual in their efforts to broker peace. At the request of the Milosevic regime, in September 1991 the U.N. imposed an arms embargo on Yugoslavia in an attempt to contain the fighting. Since Bosnia's recognition as an independent country, enforcement of this embargo against the government of Bosnia is a violation of the inherent right of self-defense, a right acknowledged in Article 51 of the U.N. Charter itself. The General Assembly of the U.N. has twice voted overwhelmingly in favor of requesting the Security Council to lift the embargo, arguing that it prevents the Bosnians from defending themselves. The Security Council has ignored these votes. Instead of allowing the Bosnians to defend themselves, the international community has relied on negotiations. In August 1992 at the London Conference, the U.N. and the European Community demanded that Bosnia remain a single country and that it not be partitioned into three separate, ethnically "pure" states. This policy was incorporated into the Vance-Owen plan, which would have resulted in a single country with ten semi-autonomous, ethnically-based cantons. The Bosnian Serb "parliament" rejected this plan in May 1993. Later that year, the Owen-Stoltenberg plan was offered. It completely reversed the policy of the London Conference by calling for the partition of Bosnia largely along the lines of Serbian and Croatian military gains, creating separate, ethnically "pure" countries. The Bosnian government rejected the plan, declaring that it would leave them with an economically unviable and militarily indefensible state. In May 1994 the U.S. joined France, Britain, Germany, and Russia (collectively known as the "Contact Group") in endorsing a plan to leave fifty-one percent of Bosnia under control of the new Bosnian-Bosnian Croat Federation, while awarding forty-nine percent to Serbia. The Bosnian Serbs have rejected the Contact Group's "take-it-or-leave-it" plan repeatedly, but the U.S. and the Europeans continue to make this partition plan the focus of their diplomatic efforts. In an ostensible effort to force the Bosnian Serbs to accept the plan, Serbian President Milosevic claims to have imposed an embargo against his Bosnian Serb proxies. Numerous reports, including a statement from Secretary of Defense Perry, suggest that the blockade is largely a facade. The small number of border monitors (135) sent by the U.N. to evaluate the Serbian "blockade" is widely regarded as completely inadequate; U.S. and other military sources have assessed the total number of monitors required for an effective mission at 4-5,000. Nonetheless, based on a preliminary report by the border monitors, the U.N. Security Council (with U.S. support) eased U.N. sanctions against Serbia as a reward for its purported moves to isolate the Bosnian Serb extremists, and has refused to reinstate full sanctions despite clear evidence that the Serb invasion of Bosnia continues. It is now over three years since Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence, was recognized by the U.S. and EC member states, and became a full member of the United Nations. In that time more than 200,000 Bosnians have been killed. Tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslim women, many of them only girls, have been raped. More than two million Bosnians are refugees or are in internal exile. The State Department's 1992 annual report on human rights stated that Serbian forces in Bosnia were conducting a campaign of "cruelty, brutality, and killing" unmatched in Europe "since Nazi times," and as recently as March 1995, a CIA report was leaked to the press that attributed more than 90% of atrocities committed in Bosnia to Bosnian Serb forces. While the Contact Group continues to call for peace, Serbian forces continue their aggression and ethnic cleansing. [BACK to Briefings Page ]