The
Bosnian War, also known as the War in
Bosnia and Herzegovina
, was an international armed conflict that
took place between March 1992 and November 1995. The war
involved several sides.
According to numerous International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
judgments
the conflict involved Bosnia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
(later Serbia and
Montenegro) as well as Croatia
.
According
to an International Court of Justice
judgment,
Serbia
gave
military and financial support to Serb forces
which consisted of the Yugoslav
People's Army, the Army of
Republika Srpska, the Serbian Ministry of the
Interior, the Ministry of the Interior of Republika Srpska and Serb Territorial
Defense Forces. Croatia gave military support to
Croat forces of the self-proclaimed
Croatian Community of
Herzeg-Bosnia. Bosnian government forces were led by the
Army of
the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. These factions changed
objectives and allegiances several times at various stages of the
war.
Following
the Srebrenica and Markale massacres, NATO
intervened
during the 1995 Operation
Deliberate Force against the positions of the Army of Republika Srpska which
internationalized the conflict, but only in its final
stages. The war was brought to an end after the signing of
the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina
in Paris on 14 December 1995.
Peace negotiations were held in Dayton, Ohio
, and were
finalized on 21 December 1995. The accords are known as the
Dayton Agreement.
The most recent research places the number of killed people at
around 100,000–110,000 and 1.8 million displaced (see
Casualties). The research from June 2007 has
shown that most of the 97,207 documented casualties (civilians and
soldiers) during Bosnian War were Bosniaks (66%), with Serbs in
second (25%) and Croats (8%) in third place. However, 83 percent of
civilian victims were Bosniaks, 10 percent were Serbs and more than
5 percent were Croats, followed by a small number of others such as
Albanians or
Romani people. At least 30 percent of the
Bosniak civilian victims were women and children. The percentage of
Bosniak civilian victims would be higher had survivors of
Srebrenica not reported 1,800 of their loved-ones as
soldiers to access social services and other government
benefits. The total figure of dead could rise by a maximum of
another 10,000 for the entire country due to ongoing
research.
According to a detailed 1995 report about the war made by the
Central Intelligence
Agency, 90% of the war crimes of the Bosnian War were committed
by Serbs. In 2005, the
United
States Congress passed a resolution declaring that "the Serbian
policies of aggression and ethnic cleansing meet the terms defining
genocide". According to legal experts, as of early 2008, 45 Serbs,
12 Croats and 4 Bosniaks were convicted of war crimes by the ICTY
in connection with the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Both Serbs and
Croats were indicted and convicted of systematic war crimes
(
joint criminal
enterprise), while Bosniaks just of individual ones. Some high
ranking political leaders of Serbs (
Momčilo Krajišnik and
Biljana Plavšić) as well as Croats
(
Dario Kordić) were convicted of
war crimes, while some others are presently on trials at the ICTY
(
Radovan Karadžić and
Jadranko Prlić).
Genocide is the most serious war crime
the Serbs were convicted of, crimes against humanity, a charge
second in gravity only to genocide (i.e.
ethnic cleansing) for the
Croats, and breaches of the
Geneva
Conventions for the Bosniaks.
Breakup of Yugoslavia
The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina came about as a result of the
breakup of
Yugoslavia.
In 1989 Slobodan Milošević became
President of Serbia (later indicted by the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
of the war crimes including genocide in Bosnia,
Croatia and Kosovo). Crisis emerged in Yugoslavia with the
weakening of the Communist system at the end of the
Cold War. In Yugoslavia, the national Communist
party, officially called Alliance or
League of Communists of
Yugoslavia, was losing its ideological potency, while the
nationalist and
separatist ideologies were on the rise in the
late 1980s.
This was particularly noticeable in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to a lesser extent in Slovenia
and Republic of Macedonia
.
In March
1989, the crisis in Yugoslavia deepened after adoption of
amendments to the Serbian constitution which allowed the Serbian
republic's government to impose effective power over the autonomous
provinces of Kosovo
and Vojvodina
.
Until that point, their decision-making had been independent. Each
also had a vote on the Yugoslav federal level.
Serbia, under
president Slobodan
Milošević, thus gained control over three out of eight votes in
the Yugoslav
presidency. With additional votes from Montenegro
, Serbia was
thus able to heavily influence decisions of the federal
government. This situation led to objections in other
republics and calls for reform of the Yugoslav Federation.
At the 14th Extraordinary Congress of the League of Communists of
Yugoslavia, on 20 January 1990, the delegations of the republics
could not agree on the main issues in the Yugoslav federation.
As a
result, the Slovenian and Croatian
delegates left the Congress. The Slovenian delegation,
headed by
Milan Kučan demanded
democratic changes and a looser federation, while the Serbian
delegation, headed by Milošević, opposed this. This is considered
the beginning of the end of
Yugoslavia.
Moreover, nationalist parties attained power in other republics.
Among them, the Croatian
Franjo
Tuđman's
Croatian
Democratic Union was the most prominent.
On December 22, 1990,
the Parliament of Croatia
adopted the new Constitution, taking away some of
the rights from the Serbs granted by the previous Socialist constitution. This created ground
for nationalist action among the indigenous Serbs of Croatia.
Furthermore, Slovenia and Croatia shortly after began the process
towards independence, which led to a
short
armed conflict in Slovenia, and
all-out war in Croatia, in the
areas that had a substantial Serb population.
The pre-war situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina
[[Image:Eth relations 1991 bih.gif|thumb|right|200px|The
distribution of the three main ethnic groups in Bosnia and
Herzegovina in 1991 by municipalities.
]]
Bosnia and Herzegovina has historically been a multi-ethnic state.
In 1990, its population included approximately 43% of Bosniaks, 31%
of Serbs, and 17% of Croats.
In the first multi-party election that took place in November 1990
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the three largest nationalist parties in
the country won, the
Party of
Democratic Action, the
Serbian Democratic Party and the
Croatian Democratic
Union.
Parties divided the power along the ethnic lines so that the
President of the Presidency of the
Socialist Republic
of Bosnia and Herzegovina was a Bosniak, president of the
Parliament was a
Serb and the prime minister a
Croat.
Karađorđevo agreement
Discussions between
Franjo Tuđman
and
Slobodan Milošević
which included "
...the partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina
between Serbia and Croatia." were held as early as March 1991
known as
Karađorđevo
agreement. Following the declaration of
independence of Republic of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, the Serbs attacked different parts of the country. The
state administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina effectively ceased
to function having lost control over the entire territory. The
Serbs wanted all lands where Serbs had a majority, eastern and
western Bosnia. The Croats and their leader
Franjo Tuđman also aimed at securing
parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina as Croatian. The policies of the
Republic of Croatia and its leader Franjo Tuđman towards Bosnia and
Herzegovina were never totally transparent and always included
Franjo Tuđman's ultimate aim of expanding Croatia's borders.
Bosniaks were an easy target, because the Bosnian government forces
were poorly equipped and unprepared for the war.
Establishment of the "Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia"
The objectives of
nationalists from
Croatia were shared by Croat nationalists in Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
The ruling party in the Republic of Croatia
, the Croatian
Democratic Union (HDZ), organized and controlled the branch of
the party in Bosnia and Herzegovina. By the latter part of
1991, the more extreme elements of the party, under the leadership
of
Mate Boban,
Dario Kordić,
Jadranko Prlić, Ignac Koštroman and
local leaders such as Anto Valenta, and with the support of
Franjo Tuđman and
Gojko Šušak, had taken effective
control of the party. On November 18, 1991, the party branch in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, proclaimed the existence of the
Croatian Republic of
Herzeg-Bosnia, as a separate "political, cultural, economic and
territorial whole", on the territory of Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
Establishment of the "Serb Republic of Bosnia and
Herzegovina"
The
Serb members of parliament, consisting
mainly of the
Serb Democratic
Party members, but also including some other party
representatives (which would form the "
Independent Members of
Parliament Caucus"), abandoned the central parliament in
Sarajevo, and formed the
Assembly of the Serb
People of Bosnia and Herzegovina on October 24, 1991, which
marked the end of the tri-ethnic coalition that governed after the
elections in 1990. This assembly established the
Serbian Republic of
Bosnia and Herzegovina on January 9, 1992, which became
Republika Srpska in August 1992.
Independence referendum in Bosnia and Herzegovina
After
Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia in 1991,
Bosnia and Herzegovina organized a referendum on independence as
well. The decision of the Parliament of Socialist Republic
of Bosnia and Herzegovina on holding the referendum was taken after
the majority of
Serb members had left the
assembly in protest.
These Bosnian Serb assembly members invited the
Serb population to boycott the referendums held on
February 29 and March 1, 1992. The turnout to the referendums was
67% and the vote was 99.43% in favor of independence. Independence
was declared on March 5, 1992 by the parliament. The referendums
were utilized by the Serb political leadership as a reason to start
roadblocks in protest.
Cutileiro-Carrington Plan
The
Lisbon Agreement, also known as
the Carrington-Cutileiro plan, named for its creators Lord
Peter Carrington and Portuguese Ambassador
José Cutileiro, resulted from
the
EEC-hosted conference held in September 1991
in an attempt to prevent Bosnia and Herzegovina sliding into war.
It proposed ethnic power-sharing on all administrative levels and
the devolution of central government to local ethnic communities.
However, all Bosnia and Herzegovina's districts would be classified
as Bosniak, Serb or Croat under the plan, even where ethnic
majority was not evident.
On March 18, 1992, all three sides signed the agreement;
Alija Izetbegović for the Bosniaks,
Radovan Karadžić for the
Serbs and
Mate Boban for the
Croats.
However, on March 28, 1992, Izetbegović, after meeting with then US
ambassador to Yugoslavia
Warren
Zimmermann in Sarajevo, withdrew his signature and declared his
opposition to any type of ethnic division of Bosnia.
- What was said and by whom remains unclear.
Zimmerman denies that he told Izetbegovic that if he withdrew
his signature, the United States would grant recognition to Bosnia
as an independent state. What is indisputable is that
Izetbegovic, that same day, withdrew his signature and renounced
the agreement.
Arms embargo
On September 25, 1991 the
United Nations Security
Council passed UNSC Resolution 713 imposing an arms embargo on
all of former Yugoslavia.
The embargo hurt the Army of Republic of
Bosnia and Herzegovina the most because Serbia inherited
the lion's share of the former JNA arsenal and the Croatian army
could smuggle weapons through its coast. Over 55% of the
armories and barracks of the former Yugoslavia were located in
Bosnia owing to its mountainous terrain, in anticipation of a
guerrilla war, but many of those factories were under Serbian
control (such as the UNIS PRETIS factory in Vogošća
), and others were inoperable due to a lack of
electricity and raw materials. The Bosnian government
lobbied to have the embargo lifted but that was opposed by the
United Kingdom, France and Russia. US proposals to pursue this
policy were known as
lift and
strike. The US congress passed two resolutions calling for the
embargo to be lifted but both were vetoed by President
Bill Clinton for fear of creating a rift
between the US and the aforementioned countries. Nonetheless, the
United States used both "
black"
C-130 transports and
back channels
including
Islamist groups to smuggle
weapons to the Bosnian government forces via Croatia.
Course of the war
The
Yugoslav People's Army
(JNA) officially left Bosnia and Herzegovina on May 12, 1992
shortly after independence was declared in April 1992. However,
most of the command chain, weaponry, and higher ranked military
personnel, including general
Ratko
Mladić, remained in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the
Army of Republika Srpska. The
Croats organized a defensive military formation of their own called
the
Croatian Defense
Council (
Hrvatsko Vijeće Obrane, HVO) as the armed
forces of the self-proclaimed
Herzeg-Bosnia. The Bosniaks mostly organized
into the
Army
of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (
Armija Republike
Bosne i Hercegovine, Armija RBiH). This army had a number of
non-Bosniaks (around 25%), especially in the 1st Corps in Sarajevo.
The deputy commander of the Bosnian Army's Headquarters, was
general
Jovan Divjak, the highest
ranking ethnic Serb in the Bosnian Army. General
Stjepan Šiber, an ethnic Croat was the
second deputy commander.
President Izetbegović also appointed
colonel Blaž Kraljević, commander of the
Croatian Defence Forces in
Herzegovina, to be a member of Bosnian
Army's Headquarters, seven days before Kraljević's assassination,
in order to assemble multi-ethnic pro-Bosnian defense front.
Various paramilitary units were operating in the Bosnian war: the
Serb "
White Eagles"
(
Beli Orlovi),
Arkan's "Tigers", "
Serbian Volunteer Guard" (
Srpska
Dobrovoljačka Garda), Bosnians "
Patriotic League" (
Patriotska
Liga) and "
Green Berets"
(
Zelene Beretke), and Croatian "Croatian Defense Forces"
(
Hrvatske Obrambene Snage), etc. The Serb and Croat
paramilitaries involved volunteers from Serbia and Croatia, and
were supported by nationalist political parties in those countries.
Allegations exist about the involvement of the Serbian and Croatian
secret police in the conflict. Forces of the Republic of Bosnia and
Herzegovina were divided in 5 corps'.
1st Corps operated at
the region of Sarajevo and Gorazde while a stronger 5th Corps was
positioned in the western Bosanska
Krajina pocket which cooperated with the HVO units in and
around the city of Bihać
.
The Serbs received support from Christian
Slavic fighters from countries including Russia.
Greek
volunteers
of the Greek Volunteer Guard
are also reported to have taken part in the Srebrenica Massacre, with the Greek flag being hoisted in Srebrenica when the
town fell to the Serbs.
Some radical Western fighters as well as numerous individuals from
the cultural area of Western Christianity fought as volunteers for
the Croats including
Neo-Nazi volunteers
from Germany and Austria.
Swedish Neo-Nazi
Jackie Arklöv was charged with
war crimes upon his return to Sweden
.
Later he confessed he committed
war
crimes on Bosnian Muslim civilians in Croatian camps
Heliodrom and
Dretelj as a member of Croatian forces.
The Bosnians received support from Muslim groups. According to some
US NGO reports, there were also several hundred
Iranian
Revolutionary Guards assisting the Bosnian government during
the war.
At the outset of the Bosnian war,
Serb forces
attacked the Bosnian Muslim civilian population in eastern Bosnia.
Once towns and villages were securely in their hands, the Serb
forces - military, police, the paramilitaries and, sometimes, even
Serb villagers – applied the same pattern: houses and apartments
were systematically ransacked or burnt down, civilians were rounded
up or captured, and sometimes beaten or killed in the process. Men
and women were separated, with many of the men detained in the
camps. The women were kept in various detention centers where they
had to live in intolerably unhygienic conditions, where they were
mistreated in many ways including being raped repeatedly. Serb
soldiers or policemen would come to these detention centres, select
one or more women, take them out and rape them.
The Serbs had the
upper hand due to heavier weaponry (despite less manpower) that was
given to them by the Yugoslav People's Army and established control
over most areas where Serbs had relative majority but also in areas
where they were a significant minority in both rural and urban
regions excluding the larger towns of Sarajevo and Mostar
. The
Serb military and political leaders, from ICTY
received the most accusations of
war
crimes many of which have been confirmed after the war in ICTY
trials.
Most of
the capital Sarajevo
was
predominantly held by the Bosniaks, although the official Republic
of Bosnia and Herzegovina government continued to function in its
relative multiethnic capacity. In the 44 months of the
siege, the terror against Sarajevo and its residents varied in its
intensity, but the purpose remained the same: to inflict the
greatest possible suffering on the civilians in order to force the
Bosnian authorities to accept the Serb demands. The
Army of Republika Srpska surrounded
it (alternatively, the Serb forces situated themselves in the areas
surrounding Sarajevo the so-called Ring around Sarajevo), deploying
troops and artillery in the surrounding hills in what would become
the longest siege in the history of modern warfare lasting nearly 4
years.
See Siege of
Sarajevo
.
Numerous cease-fire agreements were signed, and breached again when
one of the sides felt it was to their advantage. The
United Nations repeatedly, but unsuccessfully
attempted to stop the war and the much-touted
Vance-Owen Peace Plan made little impact.
1992
[[Image:Bosnian war.gif|thumb|250px|Fronts of Bosnian war:
]]
The first casualty in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a point of
contention between Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs. Bosniaks and Croats
consider the first casualties of the war after the independence
declaration to be
Suada
Dilberović and
Olga Sučić,
who were shot during a peace march by unidentified Serb gunmen on
April 5 in a Holiday Inn hotel under the control of the
Serbian Democratic Party. Serbs
consider Nikola Gardović, a groom's father who was killed at a Serb
wedding procession on the second day of the referendum, on March 1,
1992 in Sarajevo's old town
Baščaršija, to be the first victim
of the war.
On
September 19, the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) moved extra troops
to the area around the city of Mostar, which was
publicly protested by the local government. On October 13,
1991 future president of Republika Srpska,
Radovan Karadžić expressed his
view about future of Bosnia and Bosnian Muslims:
"In just a
couple of days, Sarajevo will be gone and there will be five
hundred thousand dead, in one month Muslims will be annihilated in
Bosnia and Herzegovina".[[Image:posavina.gif|thumb|200px|Fall of
Posavina
:
]]
On January 7, 1992, the Serb members of the Prijedor Municipal
Assembly and the presidents of the local Municipal Boards of the
SDS proclaimed the Assembly
of the Serbian People of the Municipality of Prijedor and
implemented secret instructions that were issued earlier on
December 19, 1991. The "
Organisation and Activity of Organs of
the Serbian People in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Extraordinary
Circumstances" provided a plan for the SDS take-over of
municipalities in BiH, it also included plans for the creation of
Crisis Staffs.
Milomir
Stakić, later convicted by ICTY of mass
crimes against humanity
against Bosniak and Croat civilians, was
elected President of this Assembly. Ten days later, on
January 17, 1992, the Assembly endorsed joining the Serbian
territories of the Municipality of Prijedor to the Autonomous
Region of Bosnian Krajina in order to implement creation of a
separate Serbian state on ethnic Serbian territories.
On 9 January 1992, the Bosnian Serb Assembly adopted a declaration
proclaiming the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina ("SR
BiH"). On 28 February 1992, the Constitution of the SR BiH declared
that the territory of that Republic included "the territories of
the Serbian Autonomous Regions and Districts and of other Serbian
ethnic entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, including the regions in
which the Serbian people remained in the minority due to the
genocide conducted against it in
World War
Two," and it was declared to be a part of Yugoslavia. On 12
August 1992, the name of the SR BiH was changed to Republika Srpska
("RS").
During the months of March-April-May 1992 fierce attacks raged in
eastern Bosnia as well as the northwestern part of the country. In
March attacks by the SDS leaders, together with field officers of
the Second Military Command of former JNA, were conducted in
eastern part of the country with the objective to take
strategically relevant positions and carry out a communication and
information blockade. Attacks carried out resulted in a large
number of dead and wounded civilians.
1992 ethnic cleansing campaign in Eastern Bosnia
Initially, the Serb forces attacked the non-Serb civilian
population in Eastern Bosnia. Once towns and villages were securely
in their hands, the Serb forces - military, police, the
paramilitaries and, sometimes, even Serb villagers – applied the
same pattern: Bosniak houses and apartments were systematically
ransacked or burnt down, Bosniak civilians were rounded up or
captured, and sometimes beaten or killed in the process. Men and
women were separated, with many of the men detained in the
camps.
Bosniak women were specifically targeted as the rapes against the
Bosniak women were one of the many ways in which the Serbs could
assert their superiority and victory over the Bosniaks. Women were
kept in various detention centres known as
rape camps
where they had to live in intolerably unhygienic conditions and
were mistreated in many ways including being repeatedly raped. Serb
soldiers or
policemen would come to these detention centres,
select one or more women, take them out and rape them. All this was
done in full view, in complete knowledge and sometimes with the
direct involvement of the
Serb local authorities, particularly the police
forces. The head of Foča police forces, Dragan Gagović, was
personally identified as one of the men who came to these detention
centres to take women out and rape them. There were numerous rape
camps in Foča.
Karaman's house was one of the most notable
rape camps. While kept in this house, the girls were constantly
raped. Among the women held in "Karaman's house" there were minors
as young as 15 years of age. So far, there are no exact figures on
how many women and children were systematically raped by the Serb
forces in various camps, but estimates range from 20,000 to
50,000.
Prijedor region
On April 23, 1992, the
SDS decided
inter alia that all Serb units immediately
start working on the takeover of the Prijedor municipality in
co-ordination with JNA. By the end of April 1992, a number of
clandestine Serb police stations were created in the municipality
and more than 1,500 armed Serbs were ready to take part in the
takeover.
A
declaration on the
takeover prepared by the Serb politicians from
SDS was read out on Radio Prijedor the day after
the takeover and was repeated throughout the day. In the night of
the April 29/30, 1992, the takeover of power took place. Employees
of the public security station and reserve police gathered in
Cirkin Polje, part of the town of Prijedor. Only Serbs were present
and some of them were wearing military uniforms. The people there
were given the task of taking over power in the municipality and
were broadly divided into five groups. Each group of about twenty
had a leader and each was ordered to gain control of certain
buildings. One group was responsible for the Assembly building, one
for the main police building, one for the courts, one for the bank
and the last for the post-office.
Serb authorities set up
concentration camps and determined who
should be responsible for the running of those camps.
Keraterm factory was set up as a camp on or
around May 23/24, 1992. The
Omarska
mine complex was located about 20 km
from the town of Prijedor. The first detainees were taken to the
camp sometime in late May 1992 (between 26 and 30 May). According
to the Serb authorities documents from Prijedor, there were a total
of 3,334 persons held in the camp from May 27 to August 16, 1992.
3,197 of them were Bosniaks (i.e. Bosnian Muslims), 125 were
Croats. The Trnoplje camp was set up in the village of Trnoplje on
May 24, 1992. The camp was guarded on all sides by the Serb army.
There were
machine-gun nests and
well-armed posts pointing their
guns towards the
camp. There were several thousand people detained in the camp, the
vast majority of whom were Bosnian Muslim and some of them were
Croats.
ICTY concluded
that the takeover by the Serb politicians was as an illegal
coup d'état, which was planned and
coordinated a long time in advance with the ultimate aim of
creating a pure Serbian municipality. These plans were never
hidden and they were implemented in a coordinated action by the
Serb
police,
army and
politicians. One of the leading figures
was
Milomir Stakić, who came to
play the dominant role in the political life of the
Municipality.
JNA under control of Serbia was able to take
over at least 60% of the country during before 19 May official
withdrawn all officers and troops which are not from Bosnia . Much
of this is due to the fact that they were much better armed and
organized than the Bosniak and Bosnian Croat forces. Attacks also
included areas of mixed ethnic composition.
Doboj
, Foča
,
Rogatica
, Vlasenica
, Bratunac
, Zvornik
, Prijedor
, Sanski Most
, Kljuc
, Brčko, Derventa
, Modrica
, Bosanska Krupa
, Bosanski Brod
, Bosanski Novi
, Glamoc
, Bosanski Petrovac
, Cajnice
, Bijeljina
, Višegrad
, and parts
of Sarajevo are all
areas where Serbs established control and expelled Bosniaks and
Croats. Also areas in which were more ethnically
homogeneous and were spared from major fighting such as Banja Luka
, Bosanska Dubica
, Bosanska Gradiska
, Bileca
, Gacko
, Han Pijesak
, Kalinovik
, Nevesinje
, Trebinje
, Rudo
saw their
non-Serb populations expelled. Similarly, the
regions of central Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sarajevo, Zenica
, Maglaj
, Zavidovici
, Bugojno
, Mostar, Konjic
, etc.) saw
the flight of its Serb population, migrating to the Serb-held areas
of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In June
1992, the United Nations Protection Force
which had originally been deployed in Croatia had its mandate
extended into Bosnia and Herzegovina, initially to protect the
Sarajevo International
Airport
. In September, the role of the UNPROFOR
was expanded in order to protect humanitarian aid and assist in the
delivery of the relief in the whole Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well
as aid in the protection of civilian refugees when required by the
Red Cross.
The Croat Defence Council take-overs in Central Bosnia
Pressured and contained by heavily armed Serb forces in
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, Croat forces - HVO (Croatian
Defence Council) shifted their focus from defending their parts of
Bosnia from Serbs to trying to capture remaining territory held by
Bosnian Army. It is widely believed that this was due to the
Karađorđevo
agreement (March 1991) reached between presidents
Slobodan Milošević and
Franjo Tuđman to split Bosnia between
Croatia and Serbia. In order to accomplish this Croatian forces
would have to defeat the Bosnian Army, since the territory that
they wanted was under Bosnian government control. HVO with great
engagement from the Military of Republic of Croatia and material
support from Serbs, attacked Bosniak civilian population in
Herzegovina and in central Bosnia starting an ethnic cleansing of
Bosniak populated territories.
In June
1992 the focus switched to Novi
Travnik
and
Gornji Vakuf
where the
Croat Defence Council (HVO) efforts to gain control were
resisted.
On June
18, 1992 the Bosnian Territorial Defence in Novi
Travnik received
an ultimatum from the HVO which included
demands to abolish existing Bosnia and Herzegovina institutions,
establish the authority of the Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia
and pledge allegiance to it, subordinate the Territorial Defense to
the HVO and expel Muslim refugees, all within 24 hours. The
attack was launched on June 19. The elementary school and the Post
Office were attacked and damaged. Gornji Vakuf was initially
attacked by Croats on June 20, 1992, but the attack failed. (See:
Lašva Valley ethnic
cleansing)Vastly underequipped Bosnian forces, fighting on two
fronts, were able to repel Croats and gain territory against them
on every front. At this time, due to its geographic position,
Bosnia was surrounded by Croat and Serb forces from all sides.
There was no way to import weapons or food. What saved Bosnia at
this time was its vast Industrial complex (Steel and Heavy
Industries) that was able to switch to military hardware
production.The
Graz agreement caused
deep division inside the Croat community and strengthened the
separation group, which led to the conflict with Bosniaks. One of
the primary pro-union Croat leaders,
Blaž Kraljević (leader of the
HOS armed group) was killed
by HVO soldiers in August 1992, which severely weakened the
moderate group who hoped to keep the alliance between Bosniaks and
Croats alive. The situation became more serious in October 1992
when Croat forces attacked Bosniak civilian population in
Prozor burning their homes and killing civilians.
According to
Jadranko Prlić
indictment, HVO forces cleansed most of the Muslims from the
town of Prozor and several surrounding villages.
In October 1992 the Serbs captured the town of
Jajce and expelled the Croat and Bosniak population.
The fall of the town was largely due to a lack of Bosniak-Croat
cooperation and rising tensions, especially over the previous four
months.
1993
[[Image:Map of Vance-Owen peace
plan.png|thumb|right|
Vance-Owen
Peace Plan
]]
On January 8, 1993 the Serbs killed the deputy
prime minister of Bosnia
Hakija Turajlić after stopping the UN
convoy which was taking him from the airport. On May 15-16 96% of
Serbs voted to reject the Vance-Owen plan. After the failure of the
Vance-Owen peace plan, which practically intended to divide the
country into three ethnic parts, an armed conflict sprung between
Bosniaks and Croats over the 30 percent of Bosnia they held. The
peace plan was one of the factors leading to the
escalation of the conflict, as
Lord Owen avoided moderate Croat authorities
(pro-unified Bosnia) and negotiated directly with more extreme
elements (which were for separation).[[Image:Bosniak croat
war.gif|thumb|180px|Map of the Bosniak-Croat conflict:
]]
Much of 1993 was dominated by the
Croat-Bosniak war. On January 1993 Croat
forces attacked Gornji Vakuf again in order to connect Herzegovina
with Central Bosnia.
In April 1993, the United Nations Security Council issued
Resolution 816, calling on member states to enforce a no-fly zone
over Bosnia-Herzegovina. On April 12, 1993, NATO commenced
Operation Deny Flight to enforce this
no-fly zone.
Gornji Vakuf shelling
Gornji Vakuf is a town
to the south of the Lašva Valley and of strategic importance at a
crossroad en
route to Central Bosnia. It is 48 kilometres from Novi Travnik and about
one hour's drive from Vitez
in an
armoured vehicle. For Croats it was a very important
connection between the Lašva Valley and
Herzegovina, two territories included in the
self-proclaimed
Croatian Community of
Herzeg-Bosnia. The Croat forces shelling reduced much of the
historical oriental center of the town of Gornji Vakuf to
rubble.
On
January 10, 1993, just before the outbreak of hostilities in Gornji
Vakuf, the Croat Defence Council (HVO) commander Luka Šekerija,
sent a "Military – Top Secret" request to Colonel Tihomir Blaškić and Dario Kordić, (later convicted by ICTY of war crimes and crimes against humanity i.e.
ethnic cleansing) for rounds of
mortar shell available at the ammunition factory in
Vitez.
Fighting then broke out in Gornji Vakuf on January 11, 1993,
sparked by a bomb which had been placed by Croats in a
Bosniak-owned hotel that had been used as a military
headquarters. A general outbreak of fighting
followed and there was heavy shelling of the town that night by
Croat
artillery.
During
cease-fire negotiations at the Britbat HQ in Gornji Vakuf,
colonel Andrić, representing the HVO,
demanded that the Bosnian forces lay down their arms and accept HVO
control of the town, threatening that if they did not agree he
would flatten Gornji Vakuf to the ground. The HVO demands were not
accepted by the
Bosnian Army and the
attack continued, followed by massacres on Bosnian Muslim civilians
in the neighbouring villages of Bistrica, Uzričje, Duša, Ždrimci
and Hrasnica. During the
Lašva Valley ethnic
cleansing it was surrounded by
Croatian Army and
Croatian Defence Council for seven
months and attacked with
heavy
artillery and other weapons (tanks and snipers). Although
Croats often cited it as a major reason for the attack on Gornji
Vakuf, the commander of the British Britbat company claimed that
there were no Muslim
holy warriors in Gornji Vakuf
(commonly known as Mujahideen) and that his soldiers did not see
any. The shelling campaign and the attackes during the war resulted
in hundreds of injured and killed, mostly Bosnian Muslim
civilians.
Lašva Valley ethnic cleansing
The
Lašva Valley
ethnic cleansing campaign against Bosniak civilians planned by
the
Croatian
Community of Herzeg-Bosnia's
political
and
military leadership from May 1992 to March 1993 and
erupting the following April, was meant to implement objectives set
forth by Croat
nationalists in November
1991. The Lašva Valley's Bosniaks were subjected to persecution on
political,
racial and
religious grounds, deliberately discriminated
against in the context of a widespread attack on the region's
civilian population and suffered
mass
murder,
rape,
imprisonment in
camps, as
well as the destruction of cultural sites and private property.
This was
often followed by anti-Bosniak propaganda, particularly in the municipalities of
Vitez, Busovača
, Novi Travnik and
Kiseljak
.
Ahmići massacre
in April 1993, was the culmination of the Lašva Valley ethnic
cleansing, resulting in mass killing of Bosnian Muslim civilians
just in a few hours. An estimate puts the death toll at 120.
The youngest was a three-month-old baby, who was shot to death in
his crib, and the oldest was a 96-year-old woman. It is the biggest
massacre committed during the
conflict between Croats and the Bosnian government (dominated by
Bosniaks).
The
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has ruled
that these crimes amounted to crimes against humanity in numerous
verdicts against Croat political and military leaders and soldiers,
most notably Dario Kordić.
Based on the evidence of numerous HVO attacks at that time, the
ICTY Trial Chamber concluded in the
Kordić and Čerkez case
that by April 1993 Croat leadership had a common design or plan
conceived and executed to ethnically cleanse Bosniaks from the
Lašva Valley. Dario Kordić, as the local political leader, was
found to be the planner and
instigator of this plan. According to the
Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Center (IDC), around
2,000 Bosniaks from the Lašva Valley are missing or were killed
during this period.
War in Herzegovina
The
Croatian
Community of Herzeg-Bosnia took control of many municipal
governments and services in
Herzegovina
as well, removing or marginalising local Bosniak leaders.
Herzeg-Bosnia took control of the media and imposed Croatian
ideas and
propaganda.
Croatian
symbols and
currency were introduced, and Croatian curricula
and the Croatian language were introduced in schools. Many Bosniaks
and Serbs were removed from positions in government and private
business; humanitarian aid was managed and distributed to the
Bosniaks' and Serbs' disadvantage; and Bosniaks in general were
increasingly harassed. Many of them were deported into
concentration camps:
Heliodrom, Dretelj, Gabela, Vojno and
Šunje.
Up till 1993 the
Croatian
Defence Council (HVO) and
Army of Republic of
Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) had been fighting side by side
against the superior forces of the
Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) in
some areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Even though armed
confrontation and events like the
Totic
kidnappings strained the relationship between the HVO and ARBiH
the Croat-Bosniak alliance held in Bihać pocket (northwest Bosnia)
and the Bosanska Posavina (north), where both were heavily
outmatched by Serb forces.
According to ICTY judgment in
Naletilić-Martinović case
Croat forces attacked the villages of Sovici and Doljani, about 50
kilometers north of Mostar in the morning on April 17, 1993. The
attack was part of a larger HVO offensive aimed at taking
Jablanica, the main Bosnian Muslim dominated town
in the area. The HVO commanders had calculated that they needed two
days to take Jablanica. The location of Sovici was of strategic
significance for the HVO as it was on the way to Jablanica. For the
Bosnian Army it was a gateway to the plateau of Risovac, which
could create conditions for further progression towards the
Adriatic coast. The larger HVO offensive on Jablanica had already
started on April 15, 1993. The artillery destroyed the upper part
of Sovici. The Bosnian Army was fighting back, but at about five
p.m. the Bosnian Army commander in Sovici, surrendered.
Approximately 70 to 75 soldiers surrendered. In total, at least 400
Bosnian Muslim civilians were detained. The HVO advance towards
Jablanica was halted after a cease-fire agreement had been
negotiated.
Siege of Mostar
Mostar was
surrounded by the Croat forces for nine months, and much of its
historic city was severely damaged in shelling including the famous Stari
Most
bridge.
Mostar was divided into a Western part, which was dominated by the
Croat forces and an Eastern part where the
Army of Republic of
Bosnia and Herzegovina was largely concentrated. However, the
Bosnian Army had its headquarters in West Mostar in the basement of
a building complex referred to as Vranica. In the early hours of
May 9, 1993, the Croatian Defence Council attacked Mostar using
artillery, mortars, heavy weapons and small arms. The HVO
controlled all roads leading into Mostar and international
organisations were denied access. Radio Mostar announced that all
Bosniaks should hang out a white flag from their windows. The HVO
attack had been well prepared and planned.
The Croats took over the west side of the city and expelled
thousands Bosniaks from the west side into the east side of the
city. The HVO shelling reduced much of the east side of Mostar to
rubble.
The JNA (Yugoslav Army) demolished Carinski
Bridge, Titov Bridge and Lucki Bridge over the river excluding the
Stari Most.
HVO forces (and its smaller divisions) engaged in a mass execution,
ethnic cleansing and rape on the Bosniak people of the West Mostar
and its surrounds and a fierce siege and shelling campaign on the
Bosnian Government run East Mostar. HVO campaign resulted in
thousands of injured and killed.
Bosnian Army launched an operation known as
Neretva 93 against the Croatian Defence Council and
Croatian Army in September 1993 in
order to end the siege of Mostar and to
recapture areas of Herzegovina, which were included in
self-proclaimed Croatian Republic of
Herzeg-Bosnia. The operation was stopped by Bosnian
authorities after it received the information about the
massacre against Croat civilians and
POWs in the villages of Grabovica and Uzdol.
The Croat
leadership (Jadranko Prlić,
Bruno Stojić, Slobodan Praljak, Milivoj Petković, Valentin Ćorić and Berislav Pušić) is presently on
trial at the ICTY on charges
including crimes against
humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva conventions and
violations of the laws or customs of war. Dario Kordić, political leader of Croats
in Central Bosnia was convicted of the
crimes against humanity in Central
Bosnia i.e.
ethnic cleansing and
sentenced to 25 years in prison. Bosnian commander
Sefer Halilović was charged with one
count of violation of the laws and customs of war on the basis of
superior criminal responsibility of the incidents during
Neretva 93 and found not
guilty.
In an
attempt to protect the civilians, UNPROFOR's role was further
extended in 1993 to protect the "safe havens" that it had declared
around Sarajevo, Goražde
, Srebrenica
, Tuzla
, Žepa
and
Bihać.
1994
In 1994,
NATO became
actively involved, when its jets shot down
four Serb aircraft over central Bosnia on
February 28, 1994 violating the UN no-fly zone.
The
Croat-Bosniak war officially ended on February 23, 1994 when the
Commander of HVO, general Ante Roso and commander of Bosnian Army,
general Rasim Delić, signed a ceasefire agreement in Zagreb
. In
March 1994 a peace agreement mediated by the USA between the
warring Croats (represented by the Republic of Croatia) and the
Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was signed in Washington and
Vienna which is known as the
Washington Agreement. Under the
agreement, the combined territory held by the Croat and Bosnian
government forces was divided into ten autonomous cantons,
establishing the
Federation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina. This effectively ended the war between Croats and
Bosniaks, and narrowed the warring parties down to two.
1995
[[Image:Wb.gif|thumb|left| Military actions in western Bosnia which
caused end of Bosnian war:
]]
The war continued through most of 1995.
In July 1995.
Serb troops under general Ratko Mladić,
occupied the UN "safe area" of Srebrenica in
eastern Bosnia where around 8,000
men were killed (most women were expelled to Bosniak-held
territory and some of them were raped and killed).
The
ICTY ruled this event as genocide in the case
Prosecutor vs. Krstić.
In line with the Croat-Bosniak agreement, Croatian forces operated
in western Bosnia (
Operation
Summer '95) and in early August launched
Operation Storm, taking over the
Serb Krajina in Croatia.
With this, the Bosniak-Croat alliance gained the initiative in the
war, taking much of western Bosnia from the Serbs in several
operations, including:
Mistral and
Sana.
These forces now came to threaten the
Bosnian Serb capital Banja Luka with direct
ground attack.
Serb forces committed several major massacres during 1995 : the
first
Markale massacre,
Tuzla massacre (on May 25), the second
Markale massacre and the
Srebrenica massacre.
After the
second Markale massacre, NATO responded by
opening wide air strikes
against Bosnian Serb infrastructure and units in
September.
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 of the
peace agreement was signed December 14, 1995 in Paris.
Impact of the war
Casualties
There are large discrepancies in many of the estimates of
casualties during the war. These are generally due to the
inconsistent definitions of who can be considered victims of the
war. Some research calculated only direct casualties of the
military activity while other also calculated indirect casualties,
such as those who died from harsh living conditions, hunger, cold,
illnesses or other accidents indirectly caused by the war
conditions. Original higher numbers were also used as many victims
were listed twice or three times both in civilian and military
columns as little or no communication and systematic coordination
of these lists could take place in wartime conditions; one valid
form of historical revision involves identifying where a given
victim is separately identified in multiple primary lists, and
correcting the resulting overcount; in particular, the RDC and
ICTY's demographic unit performed such forensic revision.
The death
toll after the war was originally estimated at around 200,000 by
the Bosnian government and NATO. They
also recorded around 1,326,000
refugees and
exiles.
According to Prof. Steven L. Burg and Prof. Paul S. Shoup
(1999),
On June 21, 2007, the
Research and
Documentation Center in Sarajevo published
the most
extensive research on Bosnia-Herzegovina's war casualties
titled: The Bosnian Book of the Dead - a database that reveals
97,207 names of Bosnia and Herzegovina's citizens killed and
missing during the 1992-1995 war. An international team of experts
evaluated the findings before they were released. More than 240,000
pieces of data have been collected, processed, checked, compared
and evaluated by international team of experts in order to get the
final number of more than 97,000 of names of victims, belonging to
all nationalities. Recent research have shown that most of the
97,207 documented casualties (soldiers and civilians) during
Bosnian War were Bosniaks (65%), with Serbs in second (25%) and
Croats (8%) in third place. However, 83 percent of civilian victims
were Bosniaks, 10 percent were Serbs and more than 5 percent were
Croats, followed by a small number of others such as Albanians or
Romani people. The total figure of dead could rise by a maximum of
another 10,000 for the entire country due to ongoing
research.
In a statement on 23 September 2008 to the United Nations Dr
Haris Silajdžić, as head
of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Delegation to the United Nations,
63rd Session of the General Assembly, said that "According to the
ICRC data, 200,000 people were killed, 12,000
of them children, up to 50,000 women were raped, and 2.2 million
were forced to flee their homes. This was a veritable
genocide and sociocide".
There are no precise statistics dealing with the casualties of the
Croat-Bosniak conflict along
ethnic lines. The RDC's data on human losses in the regions caught
in the Croat-Bosniak conflict as part of the wider Bosnian War,
however, can serve as a rough
approximation. According to this data, in
Central Bosnia most of the 10,448 documented casualties (soldiers
and civilians) were Bosniaks (62%), with Croats in second (24%) and
Serbs (13%) in third place.
It should be noted that the municipalities
of Gornji Vakuf and
Bugojno also
geographically located in Central Bosnia (known as Gornje Povrbasje
region), with the 1,337 documented casualties are not included in
Central Bosnia statistics, but in Vrbas
region. Approximately 70-80% of the casualties from Gornje
Povrbasje were Bosniaks.
In the region of Neretva
river of
6,717 casualties, 54% were Bosniaks, 24% Serbs and 21%
Croats. The casualties in those regions were mostly but not
exclusively the consequence of Croat-Bosniak conflict. To a lesser
extent the conflict with the Serbs also resulted in a number of
casualties included in the statistics. For instance, a number of
Serbs were massacred by Croat forces in June 1992 in the village of
Čipuljić located in Bugojno municipality.
There were also significant casualties on the part of International
Troops in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Some 320 soldiers of
UNPROFOR were killed during this conflict in
Bosnia.
Casualty figures according to RDC
(For the Bosnian War)
(as reported in June 2009)
Total
97,214 |
Bosniaks |
64,341 |
66.2% |
| Serbs |
24,726 |
25.4% |
| Croats |
7,602 |
7.8% |
| other |
547 |
0.5% |
Total civilians
39,685 |
Bosniaks |
33,071 |
83.3% |
| Serbs |
4,075 |
10.2% |
| Croats |
2,163 |
5.4% |
| others |
376 |
0.9% |
Total soldiers
57,529 |
Bosniaks |
31,270 |
54.4% |
| Serbs |
20,649 |
35.9% |
| Croats |
5,439 |
9.5% |
| others |
171 |
0.3% |
| unconfirmed |
4,000 |
|
|
Casualty figures according to the
Demographic Unit at the ICTY
(For the Bosnian War)
Total
102,622 |
Bosniaks & Croats |
c. 72,000 |
| Serbs |
c. 30,700 |
Total civilians
55,261 |
Bosniaks & Croats |
c. 38,000 |
| Serbs |
c. 16,700 |
Total soldiers
47,360 |
Bosniaks |
c. 28,000 |
| Serbs |
c. 14,000 |
| Croats |
c. 6,000 |
|
War crimes
Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing was a common
phenomenon in the war. This typically entailed intimidation, forced
expulsion and/or killing of the undesired ethnic group as well as
the destruction or removal of the physical vestiges of the ethnic
group, such as places of worship, cemeteries and cultural and
historical buildings. As well as the frequent use of torture, rape
and ritualistic killing, most commonly throat slitting by the
Serbs:
The murderer binds the victim's hands behind his or her
back and forces the victim to kneel on the ground. The
murderer then jabs his knee into the center of the victim's back,
grabs the top of the victim's head by the hair, pulls the victims
head back, and slits the victims throat with his
knife.According to numerous ICTY verdicts and indictments,
Serb and Croat forces performed
ethnic
cleansing of their territories planned by their political
leadership in order to create ethnically pure states (
Republika Srpska and
Herzeg-Bosnia). Furthermore, Serb forces
committed
genocide in Srebrenica
at the end of the war.
Based on the evidence of numerous HVO attacks, the ICTY Trial
Chamber concluded in the
Kordić and Čerkez case that by
April 1993 Croat leadership had a common design or plan conceived
and executed to
ethnically cleanse Bosniaks
from the Lašva Valley in Central Bosnia.
Dario Kordić, as the local political
leader, was found to be the planner and
instigator of this plan.
Genocide
A trial
took place before the International
Court of Justice
, following a 1993 suit by Bosnia and
Herzegovina against Serbia and Montenegro alleging genocide (see Bosnian genocide
case at the International Court of Justice).
The
International Court of
Justice (ICJ) ruling of 26 February 2007 indirectly
determined the war's nature to be international, though clearing
Serbia of direct responsibility for the genocide committed by the
forces of Republika Srpska.
The ICJ concluded, however, that Serbia failed to prevent genocide
committed by Serb forces and failed to punish those who carried out
the genocide, especially General
Ratko
Mladić, and bring them to justice.
A cable sent to the White House on 8 February 1994 and penned by US
Ambassador to Croatia John Galbraith described stated that genocide
was occurring. The cable cited "constant and indiscriminate
shelling and gunfire" of Sarajevo by Karadzic’s Yugoslav People
Army; the harassment of minority groups in Northern Bosnia "in an
attempt to force them to leave"; and the use of detainees "to do
dangerous work on the front lines" as evidence that genocide was
being committed.
Despite
the evidence of many kinds of war crimes conducted simultaneously
by different Serb forces including JNA (VJ) in
different parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially in Bijeljina, Sarajevo, Prijedor,
Zvornik, Banja Luka, Višegrad and
Foča, the judges ruled that the
criteria for genocide with the specific intent (dolus specialis) to destroy Bosnian
Muslims were met only in
Srebrenica or Eastern Bosnia in 1995.The court concluded
that the crimes committed during the 1992-1995 war, may amount to
crimes against humanity
according to the international law, but that these acts did not, in
themselves, constitute genocide per se. The Court further decided
that, following Montenegro's declaration of independence in May
2006, Serbia was the only respondent party in the case, but that
"any responsibility for
past events involved at the
relevant time the composite State of Serbia and Montenegro".
Mass rape and psychological oppression
During the Bosnian War many women were raped on all sides.
Estimates of the numbers raped range from 20,000 to 50,000
Common profound complications among surviving women and girls
include gynaecological, physical and psychological (post traumatic)
disorders, as well as unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted
diseases. The survivors often feel
uncomfortable/frustrated/sickened with men, sex and relationships;
ultimately affecting the growth/development of a population and/or
society as such (thus constituting a slow genocide according to
some). In accordance with the Muslim society, most of the girls not
married were virgins at the time of rape; further traumatizing the
situation.
Mass rapes were mostly done in Eastern
Bosnia (during Foča massacres),
and in Grbavica during the Siege of
Sarajevo. Women and girls were kept in various
detention centres where they had to live in intolerably unhygienic
conditions and were mistreated in many ways including being
repeatedly raped. Serb soldiers or policemen would come to these
detention centres, select one or more women, take them out and rape
them. All this was done in full view, in complete knowledge and
sometimes with the direct involvement of the
Serb local
authorities, particularly the police forces. The head of Foča
police forces, Dragan Gagović, was personally identified as one of
the men who came to these detention centres to take women out and
rape them. There were numerous rape camps in Foča. "Karaman's
house" was one of the most notable rape camps. While kept in this
house, the girls were constantly raped. Among the women held in
"Karaman's house" there were minors as young as 12 and 14 years of
age.
Muslim women were specifically targeted as the rapes against them
were one of the many ways in which the Serbs could assert their
superiority and victory over the Bosniaks. For instance, the girls
and women, who were selected by convicted
war criminal Dragoljub Kunarac or by his men, were
systematically taken to the soldiers’ base, a house located in
Osmana Đikić street no 16. There, the girls and women, who Kunarac
knew were civilians, were raped by his men or by the convicted
himself. Some of the girls were just 14. Serb soldiers demonstrated
a total disregard for Bosniak in general, and Bosniak women in
particular. Serb soldiers removed many Muslim girls from various
detention centres and kept some of them for various periods of time
for him or his soldiers to rape.
The other
example includes Radomir
Kovač,convicted also by ICTY.
While four girls were kept in his apartment, the convicted Radomir
Kovač abused them and raped three of them many times, thereby
perpetuating the attack upon the Bosnian Muslim civilian
population. Kovač would also invite his friends to his apartment,
and he sometimes allowed them to rape one of the girls. Kovač also
sold three of the girls. Prior to their being sold, Kovač had given
two of these girls, to other Serb soldiers who abused them for more
than three weeks before taking them back to Kovač, who proceeded to
sell one and give the other away to acquaintances of his.
In popular culture
Film
The
Bosnian War has been depicted in a number of films including
Hollywood movies such as The Hunting Party, about
an attempt at catching the accused war criminal Radovan Karadžić, The Peacemaker, Behind Enemy Lines, and a
number of British movies such as Welcome to Sarajevo, which is about
the life of Sarajevo citizens during the siege, Beautiful
People directed by the Bosnian director Jasmin Dizdar, and an award-winning British
television
drama, Warriors, aired
on BBC One in 1999 about the Lašva Valley ethnic
cleansing. Bosnian director
Danis Tanović's
No Man's Land won the Best
Foreign Language Film awards at the 2001
Academy Awards and the
2002 Golden Globes.
Serbian-American film
Savior,
directed by Predrag Antonijevic, tells the story of an American
mercenary in Bosnia. The Polish film "Demony wojny" ("Demons of
War", 1998), set during the Bosnian conflict, portrays a Polish
group of
IFOR soldiers who accidentally come to
help a pair of journalist tracked by a local warlord whose crimes
they had taped.
Grbavica, about the life of a single
mother in contemporary Sarajevo in the
aftermath of systematic rape of
Bosniak women by Serbian troops during the war, won the Golden
Bear at the Berlin
International Film Festival. Short films such as
In the Name of the
Son, about a father who murders his son during the Bosnian
War, and
10 Minutes, which
contrasts 10 minutes of life of a Japanese tourist in Rome with a
Bosnian family during the war, received acclaim for their depiction
of the war.
Documentaries include Bernard-Henri Lévy's Bosna!
about Bosnian resistance against well equipped Serbian troops at
the beginning of the war, Slovenian documentary
Tunel upanja (A Tunnel of Hope) about the Sarajevo Tunnel constructed by the besieged
citizens of Sarajevo in order to link the city of Sarajevo, which
was entirely cut-off by Serbian forces, with the Bosnian government
territory and British documentary A Cry from the Grave
about the Srebrenica massacre,
as well as BBC's lengthy series "The Death of Yugoslavia",
documenting the outbreak of the war from the earliest roots of the
conflict, in the 1980s. A number of Western films made the
Bosnian conflict the background of their stories - some of those
include "Avenger", based on Frederick Forsyth's novel in which a
mercenary tracks down a Serbian warlord responsible for war crimes,
and "The Peacemaker", in which a Serbian activist emotionally
devastated by the losses of war plots to take revenge on the United
Nations by exploding a nuclear bomb in New York. Part 6 of the
BBC Masterpiece
Theatre mini-series
Prime Suspect
follows British DCI Jane Tennison (played by
Helen Mirren) as she travels to the region to
investigate the conflict. The 2006
Annie
Leibovitz collection,
A Photographer's Life includes
photographs of Sarajevo during this period.
Books
Semezdin Mehmedinović's
Sarajevo Blues and
Miljenko Jergović's Sarajevo Marlboro
are among the best known and critically praised books written
during the war in Bosnia.
Plays about the war include
Necessary Targets, written by
Eve Ensler.
A book on the Bosnian War called
"My WarGone by,I Miss it
so" by
Anthony Loyd depicts the
view of a
freelance war
photographer.
"Pretty Birds," by Scott Simon, depicts a teenage girl in Sarajevo,
once a basketball player on her high school team, becomes a
sniper.
"The Cellist of Sarajevo," by Steven Galloway, is a novel following
the stories of four people living in Sarajevo during the war.
″Life’s Too Short to Forgive,″ written in 2005 by Len Biser,
follows the efforts of three people — a courageous Bosnian woman
soldier, a former UNPROFOR Lieutenant and a private citizen — who
unite to assassinate Karadzic in order to stop the Serb
atrocities.
"Fools Rush In," written by Bill Carter, tells a story of a man who
helped bring U2 to a landmark Sarajevo concert.
"Evil Doesn't Live Here," by Daoud Sarhandi and Alina Boboc,
presents a large number of posters portraying the war, from all
sides in the conflict and many regions throughout
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"The Avenger" by Frederick Forsyth
Music
U2's
Miss Sarajevo is among the best
known pieces of music about the war in Bosnia. The song features
Bono and
Luciano
Pavarotti, and is a song that Bono cites as his favourite.
Other songs include "Bosnia" by
The
Cranberries.
Savatage recorded a concept album entitled
Dead Winter Dead, which was set in
the Balkan War. One of the songs from this album, "Christmas Eve in
Sarajevo", also appears on the first album by the
Trans Siberian Orchestra.
Other Media
Dampyr is an Italian
comic book,
created by Mauro Boselli and Maurizio Colombo and published in
Italy by
Sergio Bonelli
Editore about Harlan Draka, half human, half vampire, who wages
war on the multifaceted forces of Evil. The first two episodes are
located in Bosnia and Herzegovina (#1 Il figlio del Diavolo) i.e.
Sarajevo (#2 La stirpe della note) during the Bosnian war. The war
in Eastern Bosnia is a subject of
Joe
Sacco's comic book
Safe
Area Goražde.
Niko Bellic, the protagonist of Grand Theft Auto IV, fought in the
Bosnian war before his immigration to the United
States
.
Galleries
Image:Former_Yugoslavia_wartime_1.PNG|Former
Yugoslavia during war, fronts of 1993Image:1991 BiH
towns.svg|Ethnic Composition of towns/regional centers in
1991
Image:Ethnic Composition of BiH in 1991.gif|Ethnic
composition in 1991 by municipalitiesImage:Ethnic
Composition of BiH in 2005.GIF|Estimated ethnic composition
in 2005Image:Bosniak_Croat_territories1993.GIF|The
front lines in 1993, while HVO (blue) was still allied with the
Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims)
(green)Image:Bih94.JPG|The front lines in 1994, at
the end of the Bosniak-Croat war and after the signing of the
Washington
AgreementImage:BiH95.JPG|The front lines in
1995, before Operation
StormImage:BiH_territory_posession_just_before_Dayton.png|The
front lines in 1995, before the Dayton
AgreementImage:Abih_controlled.png|Territories
controlled by ABiH during the
warImage:Hvo_controlled.png|Territories controlled
by HVO/Croatian Army during the
warImage:Bsa_controlled.png|Territories controlled
by BSA during the warImage:Former Yugoslavia wartime
animation 92-95.gif|Animation of the various republics
control
Notes
Bibliography
- Howard, Les "Winter Warriors - Across Bosnia with the PBI",
ISBN 978-1846240775 Critical account of a Peacekeeper's
contribution to the end of the war
- Gutman, Roy, A Witness to Genocide: The 1993 Pulitzer
Prize-Winning Dispatches on the "Ethnic Cleansing" of Bosnia,
ISBN 978-0020329954
- Macqueen, Angus; Mitchell, Paul, The Death of
Yugoslavia, [62445]
- Hoare, Marko Attila, How Bosnia Armed Saqi Books,
2004, ISBN 978-0863563676
- Cigar, Norman, Genocide in Bosnia: The Politics of Ethnic
Cleansing, Texas A&M University Press, 1995, ISBN
978-1585440047
- Shrader, Charles R. The Muslim-Croat Civil War in Central
Bosnia Texas A&M University Press, 2003 ISBN
1-58544-261-5
- Simms, Brendan. Unfinest
Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia. Penguin, 2003.
ISBN 0-14-028983-6
- Raguz, Vitomir Miles. Who Saved Bosnia Naklada Stih,
2005 ISBN 953-6959-28-3
- Beloff, Nora. Yugoslavia: An Avoidable War. New
European Publications, 1997. ISBN 1-872410-08-1
- Loyd, Anthony. "My War Gone By, I Miss It So." Penguin, 1999.
ISBN 0-14-029854-1
- Maas, Peter. Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War.
Vintage Books, 1996. ISBN 0-679-76389-9
- Dr. R. Craig Nation. "War in the Balkans 1991-2002." Strategic
Studies Institute, 2002, ISBN 1-58487-134-2 [62446]
- Srebrenica, Potocari, [62447]
See also
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