History of the Bosnia War [Part 1] – Thirty Years After Srebrenica

It was clear that Yugoslavia would either reform, rupture, or both: Croatia, led by Tudjman, and Slovenia favoured rupture; both Bosnia, where Izetbegovic had recently come to power, and Serbia ironically opposed secession, for opposite reasons: Izetbegovic favoured a federalist Yugoslavia with reforms, especially since ethnic secession would hit Bosnia hardest; Milosevic marketed himself as the champion of Yugoslav unity, portraying any reform as treasonous; by the year’s end a series of palace intrigues had collapsed the government and put him in charge of not only Serbia but the collapsing Yugoslavia state. There were three major prongs: in the centre, Kukanjac and Karadzic laid siege to Sarajevo; in the west, Mladic thundered south from the Croatian battlefield through the Kupres and Neretva river valleys; and in the east, Dragoljub Ojdanic crossed the eastern border and swept south through Zvornik, hoping to cross southern Bosnia and meet up with Mladic in the southwest. Yet behind the scenes the respective Croat and Serb ethnonationalist leaders, Boban and Karadzic, decided that it was best to split Bosnia, whose defence was easily the weakest and whose Muslim population both despised, between them: an early hint of this conspiracy came with the murder of Kraljevic, and it exploded to the fore in autumn 1992.

Author: Ibrahim Moiz

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