Yugoslavia existed as a country comprised of diverse cultures, languages, and religions from 1929 until 1992 . The three main groups within the borders included the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, which all differed in language, political system, and religion. After the formation of Yugoslavia, the three ethnic groups began to become dissatisfied and the clashing of different ideologies and ideas began great conflicts. Right in the middle of this conflict was the state of Bosnia, which was comprised of almost 50% Bosniaks, 37% Serbs, and 14% Croats. Under Josip Broz Tito's rule however, the country seemed to be successfully defusing ethnic tensions across the land. Throughout World War II, Tito created a successful system of economic reform that ultimately was shorted-lived as Yugoslavia's debt soared in the late 1980s and caused widespread fear. Tito's death in 1980 restarted the cycle of the same old ethnic clashes. The power vacuum that resulted also gave rise to both Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia. Rising nationalistic fervor and a slew of propaganda made the future of Yugoslavia seem especially grim. Independence eventually began with the declarations from Slovenia and Croatia. The amounting tensions were too much however, and war promptly broke out. As Bosnia was the most ethnically heterogeneous republic, it received the harshest fate. The ethnic cleanings of all Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats by Serb populations were shielded by the face of war until the human rights violations were exposed through international mass media. One of the sites that was dealt the blunt of the trauma was Srebenica, a town with a majority Bosniak population. In 1995 almost 7,000 men and boys were massacred. |
Those that managed to escape were rounded up and sent into concentration camps scattered around Bosnia where beatings, torture, and mass execution were all part of everyday life. At the same time, women were taken to rape camps and tortured-- in fact it is estimated that between 1992 and 1995 20,000 rapes occured in Bosnia. Although journalists were reporting on the situation, intervention was hard to come about. U.N. safe areas such as Gorazde were only somewhat effective, and peacekeepers were not reliable. Only after the fall of Srebenica did Croats and Bosniaks come together in Operation Storm to push Serb forces out. In 1995 the Dayton Peace Accords were signed on December 14th, which finally ended the conflict three years later. |