A Brief (and Unexhaustive) History of the Bosnian War

February 2021

This is a companion piece to my multi-part series on Sarajevo. Here, I hope to set the historical stage and provide relevant context for my other pieces

Given its bloody, convoluted, history—and the festering open wounds still present across the region—I'm not sure that it’s my place as an outsider to write this piece. I didn’t want to, but I realize that in order to appreciate the rest of my writing about Sarajevo, it’s necessary to have at least some background on Yugoslavia and the Bosnian War.

As such, please find here the highest-level of histories, compiled from my best understanding of a range of sources. Any mistakes or oversights are unintentional, and I apologize for them. This is meant as a primer, by no means an in-depth tale—please seek the legion of better sources for further knowledge.

I. A Brief History of Yugoslavia

Image from Doc-Research

Yugoslavia refers to one of several historical states in the South Balkans, commonly understood to encompass present-day Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and North Macedonia. The word Yugoslavia is a Serbo-Croatian word meaning “land of the South Slavs” (yugo = “South”).

As implied by this name, the majority of peoples living in this mountainous part of Europe are Slavs, descendants of historical migration from various parts of Eastern Europe, who speak a mutually-intelligible variant of Serbo-Croatian-Slovene. Of these peoples, the most pertinent to our story are the Serbs, Croats, and the Bosniaks.

Each of these peoples has a long and proud history and national identity; enmeshed within these identities are strong ties to the group's religious traditions. The Serbs are Eastern Orthodox, the Croats Catholic, and the Bosniaks Muslim. At risk of being too reductionist, I would say that this religious divide has been an integral element driving the enduring ethnic conflict this region has seen over the past thousand years.

And there has been significant conflict. Since the Slavs first arrived to this region around 1000 AD, one or the other of these ethnic groups has established hegemony over the others living in its territory, before eventually being defeated and supplanted by another. This history of violence, inflamed by religious division, has seeded a baseline environment of rancor between these major ethnic groups. This distrust, coupled with the desire for ethnic self-determination, are at the core of the conflict that engulfed Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Note: In Yugoslavia, the members of these ethnic groups commonly lived (and still live) outside of their home republics. It thus is common to specify the nationality and ethnic group (e.g., "Bosnian Serb" referring to a citizen of Bosnia who is ethnically Serb)

II. WWII in Yugoslavia

The first Yugoslav state was established in 1918 as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. After centuries of living under foreign rule, this was the first major opportunity for South Slavic self-determination. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia ruled in some form for roughly 20 years, until its 1941 invasion and occupation by Nazi Germany.

Under Nazi rule, the various ethnic groups’ leaders attempted to use the war’s turmoil to advance their respective aims (*). Some fought the Nazis, others sided with them, still others used the chaos as an opportunity to wage ethnic warfare. The most notable of these groups were:

The Ustaše ruled as a Nazi puppet state, using Catholic facsism to establish a brutally repressive regime in Croatia. It had the outspoken goal of creating an ethnically “pure” Croatia by killing, expelling, and forcibly converting the state’s Serbian population. This government ran the Jasenovac concentration camp complex, where between 300 and 390K Serbs were murdered during the war

The aforementioned Yugoslav Partisans, composed of old Communist parties and boasting members of each nationality, led the perhaps most effective resistance campaign in Nazi-occupied Europe. Led by one Josip Broz Tito (born to a Croat father and a Slovene mother), the Partisans had the goal of establishing a multi-ethnic communist state in Yugoslavia. They waged a guerilla campaign that later developed into conventional warfare after they received Allied support in 1944. The Partisans operated without remorse for civilian casualties, and indeed massacred their fair share of opponents—especially in retaliatory anti-facsist purges in 1945 and onwards. Estimates range from 80-100K victims of Partisan atrocities.

A resistance group composed of Serbian royalists loyal to the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia, who had the goal of creating a Greater Serbia. Initially anti-Nazi, their internal war with the communist Partisans eventually led them to collaborate with the Italians, Germans, and Ustaše. They waged a campaign of terror against Partisans and non-Serbs alike, killing ~50-70K people over the course of the war

The Croatian Ustaše (pronounced oo-sta-sha)

The Chetniks

The Yugoslav Partisans

The Second World War in Yugoslavia was an exceedingly complex and volatile state of affairs, but eventually the Partisans emerged victorious. Under Tito's leadership, they crushed the Chetniks and pushed the Nazi-Ustaše forces out of Yugoslavia without any Allied ground assistance.

III. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Having consolidated power and liberated Yugoslavia, Tito and the Communist Party established the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia in 1945. The country was made up of six constituent republics (Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Croatia, and Slovenia), which each had constitutionally-mandated equal rights and responsibilities. For the next 35 years, Tito would rule with an iron fist, aptly navigating internal strife and ethnic division to knit this region together into a stable, relatively prosperous country.

From 1950-1970, the country experienced significant economic growth. Staying true to his policy of “Brotherhood and Unity” between the various ethnic groups, Tito aptly quashed any notion of ethnonationalism using a clever mix of concessions and hard power. If you wronged him, Tito would come down on you brutally—there were nontrivial levels of repression and persecution of political opponents throughout the nation’s history. But to most historians, Tito was a relatively benevolent dictator, who generally ruled with Yugoslavia’s best interests in mind. Today, many former Yugoslavs look back fondly on his rule, the term Yugo-nostalgia used to describe the modern-day longing for the “glory days” of peaceful & stable Socialist Yugoslavia.

All this changed in the 1970s. The central government's power declined significantly after 1974 constitutional reforms gave increasing power to the republics. The late-'70s OPEC oil crisis would cause a slowdown in economic growth, and the weak central government mismanaged Yugoslavia's command economy, leading to a near-catastrophic recession by 1980. To cap it all off, Tito died in May 1980, creating a power vacuum that ethnic leaders quickly scrambled to fill. The period of hope and national belief was slowly coming to an end, generating popular uncertainty that lent credence to divisive nationalist rhetoric.

IV. The Breakup of Yugoslavia

Michel Eular | Associated Press

By the late 1980s, Yugoslav politics were disproportionately dominated by its Serb plurality. Serbia was the largest and most powerful republic within Yugoslavia (making up nearly 41% of Yugoslavia’s total population, compared to ~21% for next-biggest Croatia). After Tito’s death, prominent Serbian leaders of the ethnonationalist movement (most notably Slobodan Milošević), sought to increase Serbia’s power within Yugoslavia. This angered the Slovenes and Croats, who preferred greater decentralization, with more power given to individual republics rather than the federal government. This Slovene and Croat resistance quickly turned into a full-blown independence movement, with the republics seceding from Yugoslavia in 1991. The southerly Republic of Macedonia quickly followed suit.

Serbs, though concentrated in Serbia, were scattered across the various Yugoslav republics (up to 3 million living outside of Serbia). Naturally, the Slovene and Croatian secessions sparked fears of violence against the Serbs living in those territories. The Serb-dominated Yugoslavia People’s Army (JNA) therefore attempted to thwart these independence movements, sparking the first of the Yugoslav Wars.

Slovenia, located at the northern edge of Yugoslavia, and with relatively few Serbs, managed to secede with relative ease, after the brief Ten-Day War. In Croatia, however, a broader war erupted between the newly-formed Croatian Army, the JNA, and a Croatian Serb breakaway state. The Croatian War of Independence would rage until an eventual Croatian victory in 1995.

In Bosnia & Herzegovina, (demographically 30% Serb, 44% Bosniak, 17% Croat, and 6% Other), the Serb minority sought to create an independent Serb republic (the Republika Srpska, or Serb Republic), allied with neighboring Serbia. Given the ethnic geography of Serb settlements (see image below), this move would effectively split Bosnia in two; it was unsurprisingly declared unconstitutional by Bosnia’s government. Soon afterwards, in 1992, the government held an independence referendum; this vote was boycotted by Bosnian Serbs (who sought to remain part of Yugoslavia), and therefore passed with an overwhelming 92% of the vote. On 3 March, 1992, Bosnia & Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia.

With 4 of the 6 constituent Yugoslav republics having seceded, only Serbia and Montenegro remained of Tito's empire. At this point, Yugoslavia had effectively ceased to exist.

VI. The Bosnian War

Upon the declaration of Bosnian independence, war quickly broke out within the country. Bosnian Serbs, led by Radovan Karadžić, quickly formed the Republika Srpska, and with the help of the Yugoslav People’s Army (which by now was essentially the army of Serbia), quickly moved to establish their territory. An essential part of this was the removal of any non-Serbs within this territory (giving rise to the now-infamous term “ethnic cleansing”) .

Pitted against the Serbs was the newly-formed Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH), which was allied with the Croatian Defense Council (Hrvatsko vijeće obrane, HVO), made up of Bosnian Croats. These armies were quickly pinned down as they attempted to maintain Bosniak and Croat territory in the country. Sarajevo was quickly besieged by the Army of the Republika Srpska (Vojska Republike Srpske, VRS). By June 1992, over 2.5 million civilians had fled from their homes and become refugees .

Though the Bosniaks and the Croats were allied against the Serbs at the war’s start, tensions between the two sides began to build over the course of 1992, and in 1993 this tension boiled over into open conflict. The Croat-Bosniak war, which would last roughly one year, was a bizarre conflict, with both sides fighting one war against a common enemy, and another against each other. Reminiscent of the convoluted state of affairs during WWII, this war featured the ARBiH and HVO at times in open conflict, at others temporarily uniting to fight the Serbs, and at times even allying with the Serb army against the other side!

In the early phases of the Bosnian War, the Bosniaks were understandably overmatched and underequipped compared to their opponents, with their supply lines stretched thin. A UN embargo on arms sales in the region, intended to limit violence, instead hamstrung the ARBiH while leaving its enemies untouched. While the ARBiH was prevented from purchasing weapons, the Republika Srpska received its weapons from the Yugoslav National Army (by now essentially the army of Serbia), and the Bosnian Croats got theirs from the Republic of Croatia. Thus handicapped, the Bosniaks were forced to source their arms from black-market smugglers, Muslim nations like Pakistan and Iran, and erratic shipments from the Republic of Croatia.

The year 1993 was largely dominated by the Croat-Bosniak conflict, but in 1994 the winds of war began to change. The ARBiH had overcome its early manpower and weapons shortages and begun to amass strength. In February, the Bosniaks and Croats made peace and once again formed a united front against the Republika Srpska, building momentum over the course of 1994 and early 1995. They were aided by UN and NATO military action (prompted by international reaction to Republika Srpska massacres), the lifting of the arms embargo in November 1994, and support from Croatia after it won its war of independence in 1995. However, before the ARBiH could begin a true offensive war against the Republika Srpska, international pressure pushed the three parties to agree on a ceasefire, leading to the signing of the Dayton Accords in late 1995. The Bosnian War had come to an end.

The war, as with most ethnic conflicts, was characterized by searing violence and brutality. It featured hunger, starvation, mass rape, murder, and genocide. An estimated 101K people perished over the three-and-a-half year conflict, roughly 35% of them civilians. Millions of people were displaced, some fleeing for their lives, others violently forced from their homes. War crimes were committed by all sides, but it is widely accepted in the international community that the Bosnian Serb forces committed the vast majority of atrocities (the UN and the CIA estimate this number to be as high as 90%). Bosniaks bore the brunt of the violence, as clearly seen in the statistical breakdown of casualties.

During the war, two specific events received the most international attention, and are perhaps the most widely-known:

The capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, besieged from 1992-1995 in the longest siege in the history of modern warfare. The siege was brutal, with the civilian population trapped and unable to escape, kept alive by a meager lifeline of international aid and smuggled supplies. Serb forces shelled the city continuously, with snipers active throughout the hills, taking aim at soldiers and civilians alike. Notable for the story of Romeo & Juliet in Sarajevo, the Holiday Inn, and the cellist of Sarajevo, who played at night amongst the city’s ruins

Srebrenica (pronounced Sre-bre-nee-tza) was the site of the bloodiest incident of the Bosnian War’s ethnic violence. The town was a small Bosniak enclave occupying an important strategic position in Republika Srpska territory. Marked as a “safe area” by the UN, it was protected by a contingent of Dutch peacekeepers (Dutchbat).

In 1994, the Serbs, led by General Ratko Mladić, besieged the enclave, cutting off any external humanitarian aid. The UN refused to send additional support, and the Bosniak inhabitants began dying of starvation. In July 1995, the Serb forces advanced on the enclave, and despite being outnumbered, quickly forced the Dutchbat to withdraw. Over the next week, the Serbs murdered 8,372 innocent men and boys with blades, guns, and ropes. At the same time, they violently raped thousands of women and girls, often in broad daylight.

All the while, the Dutchbat and the UN stood by silently, unable—or unwilling—to stop the violence.

The Srebrenica massacre was the bloodiest act of violence on European soil since the 1940s, and was ruled to be an act of genocide by the International Criminal Court.

Here is a link to the faces of those killed in the genocide.

The Republika Srpska sought to eliminate the numerous Bosniak and Croat enclaves (green & orange) in majority-Serb territories (orange)

The war's front lines, as of September 1994 (after the conclusion of the Bosniak-Croat war)

The signing of the final peace agreement in Paris

Bosniaks made up the majority of the Bosnian War's casualties

The Siege of Sarajevo

The Srebrenica Massacre

VII. Bosnia Today

The Dayton Accords established the present-day Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Republic is made up of 2 equally-sized autonomous entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (largely Bosniak and Croat) and the Republika Srpska (largely Serb). The two entities are essentially spiritual descendants of the warring parties from twenty-five years ago, and occupy land areas roughly corresponding to the front lines at the war’s end. Each has significant autonomy and significant powers relative to the federal government. The federal state is led by a rotating presidency, with a Serb, Bosniak, and Croat leader cycling every eight months. Each ethnic group votes in its own elections, selecting its own set of leaders at the municipal and entity level. With limited power and political parties divided not along ideological lines but ethnic ones, the federal government is weak and dysfunctional.

There have been no further outbreaks of violence since 1995, but there have also been no solutions to the underlying ethnic rancor that sparked the war. Bosnia is the one of the five poorest countries in Europe, with a GDP per capita (PPP) roughly equivalent to that of Libya. The underlying ethnic tensions simmer under the surface, and efforts to promote peace and reconciliation have proven limited at best. Indeed, the current Serb member of the rotating presidency is an authoritarian nationalist who has claimed that the real genocide at Srebrenica was waged against Serbs living in the area. Russia and Serbia also have their hands in this internal tension, their support for Republika Srpska adding yet more fuel to the fire.

Indeed, the most powerful political authority in Bosnia is not its president—but rather its High Representative. As per the Dayton Accords, this Representative is selected by the international community to ensure the maintenance of peace and stability. In this endeavour, the Representative has viceroy-like power, able to effectively veto legislation and even remove elected officials from office. The Office of the High Representative was designed to be closed once it was no longer needed, once the underlying conditions had improved to the point that sustainable abidance by the Accords was likely. Twenty-five years since the Accords were signed, the High Representative is still in power, with no signs of going anywhere.

Though the Bosnian War is now a fading memory, Bosnia is a country that has not—and perhaps cannot—move on.

Notes & Sources

(*) - It is important to note that the each ethnic group's response to the outbreak of violence was by no means homogeneous. For example, though the Bosniak leadership was firmly anti-Nazi and Ustaše, and ~23% of Partisans were Bosniak, several thousand Bosniaks nonetheless joined a Balkan division of the Waffen-SS

(**) - The two other major ethnic groups present in Yugoslavia were the Macedonians (largely concentrated in present-day North Macedonia) and the Albanians (a significant non-Slavic ethnic minority especially prevalent in Kosovo).