b Between 1994 and 1995, the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was supported by, and was representative of, both ethnic Bosniaks and ethnic Bosnian Croats. This was primarily because of the Washington Agreement.
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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) [1] as well as Croatia.[2] 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.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5] 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).[6][7][8] The research from June 2007 has shown that most of the 97,207[9] documented casualties (civilians and soldiers) during Bosnian War were Bosniaks (66%), with Serbs in second (25%) and Croats (8%) in third place.[10] 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[11]. 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.[12][13][13][14][15]
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.[16] In 2005, the United States Congress passed a resolution declaring that "the Serbian policies of aggression and ethnic cleansing meet the terms defining genocide".[17] 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.[18] 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.[19]
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Times Online (blog)
But it is in some ways unfortunate that the name of Srebrenica has come to define the Bosnian war of 1992-95. Srebrenica was the atrocity that finally ...
