“Ethnic cleansing” is a term that describes the violent extraction of populations of a specified ethnicity, from specific geographical regions; it may include the use of terror and threats thereof (Pasieka, 2015). Bosnia and Herzegovina experienced ethnic cleansing during its civil war, and a battle fought mainly between the various ethnic and religious groups in the country. The conflict was based on ethnic differences and took place between 1992 and 1995 (Collier &Sambanis, 2005). As a now independent country, Bosnia and Herzegovina used to be a Yugoslavian republic with a populace that was a mixture of multiple ethnicities, namely Croats (whose religious denomination was Catholic), Serbs (Orthodox Christians), and Bosnians (Bosnian Muslims). As postulated by Zwierzchowski and Tabeau (2010), the ethno-religious war fueled by the uncertainties in the political processes resulted in Yugoslavia’s dissolution. Federal systems moreover facilitated it with a unanimity requirement regarding primary issues among republics.

The elites from each represented ethnic faction had incompatible political aspirations. Ethnic tensions emerged and people who initially lived peacefully over the decades turned against each other. As Bosnia made attempts to secede, Serbia invaded with claims that it had the intentions to free the Serbian Christians living in Bosnia. Each of the ethnicities mobilized their citizens from the grassroots to support their desired plans utilizing channels such as distorting the content of national news coverage, the use of propaganda, and taking advantage of different citizens’ fears and using this against them. The result was a political move involving all politicians each with individual interests (Costalli&Moro, 2010). The bonds of trust among the different ethnicities were fragile and vulnerable, owing to their painstaking formation in the course of Tito’s regime. Therefore, the poison of the state-run press easily broke these bonds. Once citizens were convinced that other ethno-religious factions were creating conspiracies against them for their extermination, they readily believed that the only remaining option was to protect themselves, their families and their nation, which generally meant resorting to violence. During the following years, extreme violence broke out among the three groups and Yugoslavia’s army (Nicola, 2018). The nations from the West-imposed one last cease-fire attempt, in 1995, with the support of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), signed in Dayton, Ohio, U.S.A. This series of events is a clear indication that ethnicity can be destructive to society. This paper will analyze ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Conflict of 1992-1995 and its background and causes while demonstrating the correlation between ethnicity and violence.

Background Information and Factors that Caused the Conflict

The Austro-Hungarian Regime Disintegration

After the conclusion of World War I, the breakdown of the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman empires. The result was the existence of the Yugoslav Kingdom which incorporated various ethnic groups. Consequently, the kingdom also went by the name of Kingdom of the Croats, Slovenes, and Serbs. Its reign extended to the beginning of the Second World War, a time which saw the Germans take over the Kingdom through conquest (Walter, 2002). The constituent ethnic groups joined this kingdom with a motive: they each had a particular interest to protect. As such, the emerging unified kingdom was mostly a symbol of a marriage of convenience between the three ethnicities.

On analyzing the union of the three groups from the Croats’ perspective, forming a federation in cooperation with the Serbs presented the best option for barring Italian expansion along the Adriatic Coast. This was considered as a threat that would devour the Serbs as they were initially independent (Catic, 2008).

On the other hand, from the Serbs’ perspective, Serbia had gained independence as a nation earlier than 1914. The principal motive for this independence was to unite all Serbs under a political umbrella for the ‘Greater Serbia.’ The desire or aspiration to have all sections with widespread and significant Serb populations outside the borders of Serbia incorporated to form one country or state with Serbs constituting the population’s majority was the principal motivation for their initial backing of a union with the Southern Slavs. It was also the root of the motivation for the much later opposition to it disintegrating (Herman, Galaty, & Robertson, 2005). The vision of the Serbs was based on that of a society equal to and in harmony with brotherly states of compatriots. The members of the kingdom felt that they could be similar but not the same.

The People’s Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina became part of Yugoslavia’s Federal People’s Republic in 1946, both of them accepting socialism in 1963. Consequently, the lifestyle of Bosnia underwent a variety of alterations politically, socially, and economically, following the socialist vision of Yugoslavia’s incoming communist government (Zwierzchowski&Tabeau, 2010). This translated to the disappearance of several traditional Muslim institutions, including but not limited to, wealthy charity organizations, Dervish divine commands, and Quranic primary schools. This abolishment specifically impacted the Republic of Bosnia. The 1960s alteration of policy, however, smoothed the recognition of ‘Muslim’ as a term of national identity.

The 1961 national population census incorporated a phrase labeled Muslims as an ethnic group. This was a precedent to their recognition as a one-of-a-kind nation in 1968 under the leadership of Bosnia’s Central Committee. Muslims constituted the majority of Bosnia’s population by 1971 (Marta, 2002). The ensuing twenty years reported a diminishing number of Croats and Serbs, owing to emigration. The 1991 national census proved that Bosnia’s population divided into two-fifths Muslims, less than a third Serbs, and a sixth, Croats. The Muslims acquired the name ‘Bosniaks’ in the mid-1990s, a term still in use.

The economy of Yugoslavia experienced a rapid downturn in the 1980s, prompting nationwide discontent with the country’s political system (Lawrence, 2011). In effect, politics in the country became increasingly less stable due to politicians’ manipulating of nationalist emotions. The emergence of independent political parties by 1989 paved the way for the early 1990 multiparty elections in Croatia and Slovenia. Bosnia held its national elections in December 1990 thus new representative parties for the three ethnicities emerged. The parties won seats of a rough proportionality to the groups’ respective population (Rui&Weingast, 1999). Consequently, a joint presidency arose from the negotiations of a coalition government between three parties, headed by Alija Izetbegovic (a politician of Bosniak roots). Despite this coalition, there was mounting tension outside and within Bosnia and Herzegovina, prompting heightened challenges in cooperation between the country and Serbia’s Democratic Party led by Radovan Karadzic.

Some Serb Autonomous Regions were recognized in 1991, particular by regions that hosted mainly Serbs; the regions were self-styled. Proof existed that the Yugoslav Army of the People assumed the role of secretly delivering arms to the Serbs. These were sourced from Belgrade in Serbia. With the arms, the Serbia Democratic Party rebelled by initiating boycotts of official presidential conventions in August of the same year. This preceded an extraction of Serb deputies from the country’s national assembly, followed by the formulation of a Serb meeting situated in Banja Luka. Croatia had erupted into a full-scale war by this time, and Yugoslavia’s disintegration was underway. Bosnia’s position was highly vulnerable (Costalli& Moro, 2010). The chance of segregating the two republics had prompted a deliberation between the Serb and Croat heads of state, namely Slobodan Milosevic and TudjmanFranjo respectively, in the year’s initial months. Two Croat regions were inaugurated in Bosnia’s northern and southwestern areas in 1991, which was similar to the establishment of the Serb Autonomous Regions.

The then European Community (EC), presently called the European Union (EU), recognized the liberation of Slovenia and Croatia in December of 1991. An independence referendum took place between 9th February and 1st March in 1992. However, Karadzic’s party obstructed voting, particularly in most Serb populated regions. Consequently, the Bosnian Serbs almost presented no votes (Calic, 2012). Of the total that voted, about 66% of the electorate, nearly all tended to favor liberation, so President Izetbegović officially proclaimed independence on 3rd March 1992.

Liberation and War

The EC executed multiple unfruitful attempts to negotiate and champion for a new Bosnian partitioning into ethnic ‘cantons’ in February and March of 1992. The triple rejection of the strategy’s different versions came from the three major ethnic parties (Kasfir, 1979).  The EC alongside the USA upheld Bosnia’s liberation on the 7th of April. The Serb paramilitary forces immediately attacked Sarajevo. After that, the Bosnian Serbs’ Yugoslav army units executed a retaliation, constituting the city’s bombardment by artillery.

During April, some towns situated in eastern Bosnia suffered an attack; they contained a dense Bosnian population which included the communities of Visegrad, Foca, and Zvornik. The attackers were comprised of paramilitary forces and Yugoslav army units. Most Bosnians had to move from these regions, falling victim to the ethnic cleansing process (Rui&Weingast, 1999). Even though the Serbs constituted the principal perpetrators, and the Bosnians constituted the primary victims, each side had some Croat support or allegiance. Coordinated attacks were launched by the paramilitaries and the local Serb forces, in six weeks. Roughly two-thirds of Bosnian territory came under Serb control. Bosnia’s military equipment and units fell under Ratko Mladic’s command; the latter being a general of Bosnian Serb origin (Costalli& Moro, 2010). Some atrocities employed by the various groups during the conflict include torture, murder, arbitrary arrests of civilians, sexual assault of women and young girls, extra-judicial executions, deliberate military attacks, deporting civilians, and muzzling the media.

It is important to note that Serbs underwent terrible amounts of cruelty in World War II meted out by the fascist Croatian state, so none wanted that to happen again. In this light, the apparent plan to relegate them to a minority group prompted a rebellion, mainly since they had constituted the majority group previously. The uprising brought conflict, which resulted in genocide: the Bosnian Serb forces conducted a massacre of over 7,000 Bosnians (Genocide in Bosnia 1992-1995, n.d.). Notably, other than targeting individuals along ethnic lines, religious differences was another reason Serbs used to launch attacks. Mosques and Catholic Church buildings faced widespread destruction. In a report by Victoria (2017), it is revealed that Serb extremists dismantled 1,571 mosques; those loyal to the Croats destroyed more than 527 of them, whereas those with an allegiance to Muslims and Serbs destroyed 250 and 481 Catholic churches respectively. Houses belonging to these religions’ adherents were also damaged.

The Bosnian Genocide

The initial summer phase of 1992 saw the military characterized by a relatively static existence. After that, securing the front lines was the duty of a hastily set up army that answered to the Bosnian government. The Croat forces that had enhanced the preparation also assumed this duty. However, the army faced a gradual erosion in some eastern Bosnian regions, fostering a military weakening of Bosnia’s government, owing to an international arms embargo, coupled with the conflict faced against Croat forces between 1993 and 1994. Despite this challenge, a concurrence of Bosnians and Croats birthed a joint federation formulation later in 1994 (Tabeau&Bijack, 2005). Notably, the UN opted out of taking part in any interventions towards this conflict. However, troops belonging to the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) enabled aid delivery and ensured security in some UN-declared safe regions. Unfortunately, the organization failed to secure Srebrenica, one of the safe locations, in July of 1995. The Bosnian-Serb forces executed a massacre in this area, killing over 7,000 Bosnians.

As the war continued, there were various peace proposals, mainly unsuccessful due to the refusal of Bosnian Serbs to concede some of their territories. Notably, this group had acquired and controlled close to 70% of the entire land by 1994. NATO started using force in their operations in February of 1994, during which they shot down four aircraft belonging to the Serbs, having violated the no-fly-zone that had been put in place due to a UN imposition across the country (Walter, 2002).

Sarajevo was the scene of a most horrific European siege; the only other event that held similar or equal terror and horror was the 900 day Leningrad ordeal in World War Two. Roughly three years following the war’s commencement, there was an incident where Serb militants, on the 11th of July 1995, passed through a zone declared safe by the UN, situated in Srebrenica’s eastern towns (Tabeau&Bijack, 2005). These militants took an estimated 8,000 Muslim boys and men and segregated them from the women. This was a group that had merely sought shelter in this location. After the segregation, the militants led the males to some warehouses and fields situated in the surrounding villages (Tabeau&Bijack, 2005). The militants then spent the subsequent three days massacring of these males. During the Second World War, Serbs had been subjected to persecution the Croatians. The term “the Serbian Genocide” has become the term of reference to this deed. The Serbian Genocide is a description of widespread horrific genocidal Serb persecution (Costalli& Moro, 2010). The abuse encompassed expulsion of the Serbs, their extermination, and forceful religious conversion. These actions targeted thousands of Serbian ethnicity and were perpetrated by the regime of Ustase in the Croatian Independent State.

After that, the massacre that happened at Srebrenica, worsened by the attack on a marketplace located in Sarajevo, both of which were orchestrated by the Serbs, provoked the forces of NATO into engaging the Serbs. The troops performed air strikes of a heightening intensity late in 1995. With massive parallel attacks on Bosniak-Croat land, these actions fostered a peace-talk agreement by the Bosnian Serbs, under US sponsorship in November, Dayton being the venue. Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president, stood in for the Bosnian-Serbs (Herman, Galaty, & Robertson, 2005). The resulting peace accord, whose official signing was in December of 1995, necessitated a federalized state of Bosnia, where Croats would take up 51% of the land, with the Serb republic assuming the remaining 49%. Enforcing the pact required a 60,000 international force member deployment (Catic, 2008). Reports indicate an estimated 100,000 deaths and displacement of over 2 million individuals

Conclusion

Ethnicity can be the cause of conflict in society and violence as witnessed in the case of Bosnia. When different ethnic groups start suspecting each other of foul play, there will be attempts to wipe out the threat by eliminating the rival group. Indeed, the Bosnian War resulted from the desire by the Serbs and the Croats to annex the Bosnian territory for Serbia and Croatia respectively. Political instability prompted by varying interests from some ethnic groups created an opportunity for ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, fueled by the threat of some groups reliving the horrors of the Second World War. Ethnic cleansing then seems the only reasonable option for self-protection by the groups under threat.

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