Bosnian War

The Bosnian War (Serbo-Croatian: Rat u Bosni i Hercegovini / Рат у Босни и Херцеговини) was an armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina, from 1992 until 1995. Following several earlier violent incidents, the war is commonly seen as having started on 6 April 1992 when the newly independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was internationally recognized. It ended on 21 November 1995 when the Dayton Accords were initialed. The main belligerents were the forces of the government of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and those of the breakaway proto-states of the Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia and the Republika Srpska which were led and supplied by Croatia and Serbia, respectively. The war was part of the breakup of Yugoslavia. Following the Slovenian and Croatian secessions from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991, the multi-ethnic Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina – which was inhabited by mainly Muslim Bosniaks (44%), Orthodox Serbs (32.5%) and Catholic Croats (17%) – passed a referendum for independence on 29 February 1992. Political representatives of the Bosnian Serbs boycotted the referendum and rejected its outcome. Anticipating the outcome of the referendum, the Bosnian Serb leadership proclaimed the "Republic of the Serb People of Bosnia and Herzegovina" on 9 January 1992 (Republika srpskoga naroda Bosne i Hercegovine), effectively laying the foundation of today's Republika Srpska. Following the independence declaration of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina on 1 March 1992, the Bosnian Serbs, led by Radovan Karadžić, supported by the government of the president of Serbia Slobodan Milošević, and supplied by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), mobilized their forces inside Bosnia and Herzegovina and over the following months seized control of approximately 70% of the country's territory in a campaign characterized by widespread ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks. The conflict was...