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The Major Causes Of The Bosnian Civil War

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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 …show more content…

Also, during this time “Ethnic Fault Lines” were created resulting in stronger violence along these areas. Reference the attached map of Yugoslavia in the Cited Sources section to view the map of ethnic majorities within the Yugoslavian region. This is a perfect example of how all the ethnicities were spread out across the region and not simply contained to one area allowing for the violent ethnic fault lines. Along with the historical perspective of ethnic tensions causing nationalism in Yugoslavia, new evidence from historians have shown that the Bosnian Civil War was not a one-time deal in the area. This had been considered a very active region, in the case of violence, during the 20th century making some historians to think that this conflict was bound to happen as it had occurred various other times in the past. Historically, another reason for the ethnic tensions occurred due to the fall of Communism. Although this is somewhat indirect, different ethnicities side with different governmental views causing deeper tensions to rise after the vacuum of the major world power in the Eastern Europe region. As stated earlier, Slobodan Milosevic believed he could push his agenda without any international policing of his actions due to the recent fall of communism and power vacuum. On this note, governmental influences are also another way that nationalism caused the Bosnian Civil War. Next, governmental influences, in not only the physical

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