Bosnian War Case Study

Since the end of World War Two, no conflict in Europe was as barbarous as the Civil War that took place in Bosnia, formerly known as Yugoslavia. In 1992, Bosnians officially declared their independence from Yugoslavia erupting the whole territory into a brutal conflict that left nearly 100,000 dead and 2.2 million displaced people. This disastrous ethnic cleansing involved the breakup of Yugoslavia into six smaller states including: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Macedonia. Upon this division of Yugoslavia, the Bosnians and Croats were able to gain independence from the Serbs through international backing and militaristic strategic advantages from organizations such as the UN and NATO. The main cause of the Bosnian

On April 6,1992 the Bosnian War began,leading to the breakup of Yugoslavia. Serbian forces invaded Bosnia,throwing many people out of their homes and displacing them throughout the country. The actions of the soldiers traumatized the people of Bosnia in numerous ways, causing peril throughout the country.

In 1992 when Bosnia declared its independence from the Yugoslav, Orthodox-Christian Serbians were losing power to the Muslim Bosniaks. The Bosnian-Serb forces did not want to be outnumbered by Bosniaks at all. Especially when it came to things like politics. The Serbs that lived in Bosnia & Herzegovina felt threatened by the numerous amount of Muslim power, so they decided to exterminate them. This resulted in a genocide. A genocide is the deliberate killing of a large group of people. This genocide is known as the Bosnia and Herzegovina Genocide.

Throughout the years there has unfortunately been several instances of genocide and one of the most horrifying and tragic genocides was with the Nazi Holocaust that took place from 1938 until 1945. Another one of the horrifying genocides in history was the Bosnia-Herzegovina genocide that took place from 1992 until 1995. A genocide is essentially a systematic murder. Genocide is basically an attempted murder on individuals based on social or political reasons. Bosnia-Herzegovina was responsible for 200,000 deaths and the Nazi Holocaust was responsible for 6,000,000 deaths! Just because the amount of deaths between the two are drastically different does not mean that they did not both do a tremendous amount of damage and take a great deal of

Genocide is the systematic annihilation of a group (“Bosnia”). Many have lost their entire families, including children, belongings, and opportunities. The Bosnian genocide is a tragic event that led to the death of 8,000 men and boys. Bosnia's current population is 3.8 million with a 48 percent of Bosnian muslims, 14 percent of Croats, and a 37 percent of Serbs. Those responsible for the genocide focused on what they deemed as “ethnic cleansing”. It is important to share this horrific event with the world, so it does not happen again, as it has occured in so many other nations.

The Bosnian Genocide was the worst act of mass killings since the Nazis destruction of 6 million Jews. It resulted in a 100,000 deaths of both mostly Bosniak Muslims and Croatians. The horrific events that took place in Bosnia are currently shown in the Middle East today through dehumanization, nationalism and imperialism. These factors are what make the Bosnian Genocide recurrent for Muslims in history.

According to Godwin (2009), during Bill Clinton's initial annual message, economic status of the US was a major issue that stood out. He linked the relatively poor economic growth for the US with little productivity, budget insufficiency, low growth, sluggish increase in wages, and excessive healthcare costs among others. Bill Clinton outlined crucial elements of his economic strategy which included shifting emphasis from expenditure to investment, improving the tax code, making the public policy to favor families and laborers, reducing budget deficits, reducing government expenditure, and creating jobs for the American citizens (Godwin, 2009). Bill Clinton was also in favor of the international trade and was committed to the North America Free Trade Agreement

This unilateral approach to foreign policy extended to supranational unions as well, which were treated with mixed reactions contingent upon their value to US interests. President Bush wanted to oppose all unnecessary restrictions to ensure domestic security and to effectively deal with foreign threats. However, his decision to refuse foreign aid and reject the framework mandated by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ultimately resulted in damaged transatlantic relations.

The war and genocide in Bosnia was unpredictable and tragic. Or was it? Let’s start by stating that obviously the war was tragic; however, was it truly unpredictable. Many argue that, “...the outbreak of fighting in the 1990s was merely the latest chapter in a long history of an ethnic conflict that is too complex for outsiders to understand and too intractable to be resolved” (Johnston & Eastvold, 2004). So if that is true then we should come to expect religiously motivated conflicts like the Bosnian Genocide to continue to happen on an endless timeline. Except that there were certain key moments in Bosnia that tilted this situation past the breaking point. Continuing on with that point, Muslims played a pivotal role in starting the war and for that they were particularly targeted by the genocide.

The Genocide in Bosnia was the outcome of misleadership and late intervention by the world. The Bosnian conflict was a war that led to the death of over 100,000 soldiers and civilians(War Crime). The war consisted consisted of two sides: the Bosnian-Serbs and the Bosnian-Croats. The conflict was handled improperly. It even came close to home as one american soldier was stranded in Bosnia in the middle of the war witnessing all that the UN and the government of the Bosnian-Serbs would pronounce to be false.

Although the Holocaust and Bosnian conflict are both life altering events. The two had differing death totals, public’s response, and purpose. The Holocaust is the most recognizable genocide in history. The Bosnian conflict and the Holocaust occurred at different times in history. The Bosnian genocide lasted from 11 July 1995 to 13 July 1995. (Bosnia-Herzegovina).

During a press conference President Clinton talked about the American Role in Rwanda. “Whether we get involved in any of the world’s ethnic conflicts

“I mean, you know, this idea that somebody we disagree with on economic or social policy or something we have to turn into some kind of ogre or demon, I think, is a mistake. I mean, it's like telling the American people or half the American people that don't agree with you they're all fools. That's just not true.” Bill Clinton followed this quote up with with his foreign policy ideas. While Bill Clinton’s policy might be viewed as he entered places to late; his presidency was based around domestic and not foreign policy. In doing this he did not change much in terms of foreign policy from Bush. He all did when he thought it would help the economy or when he got forced to.

From stepping out of your home to buy groceries, to seeing an armored tank in front of your house, to giving your child to a stranger seems like a nightmare. According to a Ted Talk given by war correspondent Janine di Giovanni on Wednesday in New York City, this nightmare was someone’s real life.

John Shattuck, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights stated, “Bosnia was in one of its real crisis modes. The Europeans didn’t want to authorize American air strikes for fear that it would endanger troops, and US was not about to authorize any troops for Bosnia. So it was a terrible stalemate there. And thousands and thousands of Haitian boat people were taking to the high seas and trying to get away from Haiti (PBS, America’s Response)