Bosnian War Begins
The Bosnian War (April 1992-November 1995) was the worst European conflict since WWII, killing approximately 100,000 people and displacing 2.2 million. Serbian forces under the Republika Srpska leadership of Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic pursued a strategy of ethnic cleansing — mass murder, rape, and forced deportation of Bosniak Muslims and Croats — aimed at creating ethnically homogeneous territory. The 44-month siege of Sarajevo, during which civilian life continued under constant sniper fire and shelling, was the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare. The July 1995 Srebrenica massacre — 8,000 Bosniak men and boys executed over three days by Serbian forces while Dutch UNPROFOR troops watched — was the worst act of genocide in Europe since the Holocaust. It occurred within a UN 'safe area' under nominal UN protection, demonstrating the fatal gap between UN peacekeeping mandates and the military capacity and political will to enforce them. NATO's bombing campaign (August-September 1995) rapidly changed the military balance; the Dayton Accords (November 1995) ended the war but institutionalised the ethnic partition that ethnic cleansing had created.
- Year: 1992 CE
- Category: Military
