President Tito died and the economic crisis as nationalist tendencies of Yugoslavian republics spread. The tensions between ethnic groups emerged. Yugoslavia was a socialist federation of six republics since 1945: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia
Croatia separated, and Serbia and Croatia went to war. Bosnia, in the middle got involved when Serbian militias started to attack Croatian targets from Bosnian Territory
Slovenia declared independence, that was followed by a short ten days’ war.
After the dissolution of the USSR in 1989 and the Eastern bloc, Yugoslavia started also to break up. Slovenia and Croatia wanted to become independent. Bosnia –Herzegovina also tended to it. Serbia, was aiming at the establishment of a “Greater Serbia”, including all Serbs living not only in Serbia but in Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina. This set hostility among different ethnic and religious groups in Bosnia.
Bosnia-Herzegovina, composed by Serbs, Muslims Bosniaks, and Croats, did a referendum for independence. 70% of the population agreed. Serbs, 30% of the population were against
Serbia started the war against Bosnia-Herzegovina. Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia, was besieged by the Serbs for almost four years. UN peacekeepers, brought to quell the fighting, were seen as ineffective. International peace efforts to stop the war failed, the UN was humiliated and over 10,000 died.
Serbs conquered one third of Croatia and more than two thirds of Bosnia. Local fighters fought side by side with paramilitaries from Serbia and the Yugoslav army.
UN resolution created in The Hague the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, (ICTY), to judge crimes committed on the territory of former Yugoslavia since 1991. The Tribunal indicted 161 people.
Srebrenica was overrun by Muslim refugees who were protected by Dutch peacekeeping forces under UN-command. It appeared these troops were too little and very lightly armed. Without air support they were in no position to stand a chance against the Serbian troops of Ratko Mladic, who took the enclave on July 11th 1995.
After the fall of Srebrenica and the bombing of Sarajevo, NATO unleashed airstrikes on Bosnian Serb position. NATO fighter jets attacked Serb army positions
