Channels, Fall 2016

Page 12 Dotson • The Successes and Failures of the Battle of Mogadishu from Yugoslavia. Over the next several years, Bosnian Serb forces, with the backing of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army, targeted both Bosniak and Croatian civilians. This resulted in the deaths of roughly 100,000 people by 1995, of which eighty percent were Bosniak. 33 Far from seeking independence for Bosnia, Bosnian Serbs wanted to create a dominant Serbian state in the Balkans known as the “Greater Serbia” that Serbian separatists had long envisioned. In early 1992, the United States and the European Community recognized Bosnia’s independence. Only two days later, a Serb-dominated Yugoslav army, along with Bosnian Serb forces, bombarded Bosnia’s capital, Sarajevo. The army attacked Muslim- dominated towns in eastern Bosnia, including Zvornik, Foca, and Visegrad, effectively removing Bosniak civilians from the region in a brutal process that later was identified as “ethnic cleansing.” Ethnic cleansing differs from genocide in that its primary goal is the expulsion of a people from a geographical area and not the actual physical destruction of that group, even though the same methods, including murder, rape, torture and forcible displacement, may be used. Despite the Bosnian government forces’ valiant effort to defend the territory, Bosnian Serb forces controlled nearly three-quarters of the country by the end of 1993 and set up their own Republika Srpska in the East. The United Nations refused to intervene in the Bosnian conflict, but its High Commissioner for Refugees spearheaded a campaign providing humanitarian aid to many victims. Two years later, in the summer of 1995, three towns in eastern Bosnia–Srebrenica, Zepa and Gorazde–remained under control of the Bosnian government. The UN had established safe havens in these cities in 1993. They would be disarmed and protected by international peacekeeping forces. On July 11, however, Bosnian Serb forces advanced on Srebrenica, overwhelming the battalion of Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed there. Serbian forces subsequently separated the Bosniak civilians at Srebrenica, putting the women and girls on buses and sending them to Bosnian-held territory while the men and boys were killed immediately or bussed to mass killing sites. Serb forces killed what is estimated to be 7,000 to more than 8,000 Bosniaks at Srebrenica. 34 Only a month later, Bosnian Serb forces captured Zepa and bombed a market within Sarajevo. Soon after, the international community began to respond more forcefully to the ongoing conflict and its ever-growing civilian death toll. After the Serbs refused to comply with a UN ultimatum that same month, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) joined with Bosnian and Croatian forces to bomb Bosnian Serb positions and a ground offensive for three weeks. Serbia was unable to sustain three years of warfare because of UN placed trade sanctions and assaults on its military forces in Bosnia. Because of this, Serbia agreed to enter negotiations in October. In 33 “Bosnian Genocide,” World Without Genocide, accessed March 23, 2016, http://worldwithoutgenocide.org/genocides-and-conflicts/bosnian-genocide . 34 Ibid.