The Bosnian War and the breakup of Yugoslavia

Date

April 1992 – December 1995

Category

Military & conflict

Region

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Balkans

Era

Contemporary

Significance

Following the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, war erupted in Bosnia and Herzegovina, widely dated from 6 April 1992 when the newly independent republic gained international recognition.

Bosniak, Serb and Croat forces fought a three-sided conflict marked by indiscriminate shelling of towns, mass forced displacement, systematic rape and a campaign of 'ethnic cleansing' carried out mainly by Bosnian Serb forces. The siege of Sarajevo, lasting from 1992 until early 1996, became the longest siege of a capital in modern warfare, killing thousands of civilians. Roughly 100,000 people died across the war and more than two million were displaced, making it the deadliest conflict in Europe since the Second World War to that point. The fighting drew in United Nations peacekeepers and NATO air power and ended with the Dayton Agreement, negotiated in Ohio in November 1995 and signed in Paris on 14 December 1995, which partitioned Bosnia into a Bosniak-Croat federation and a Serb republic. The war and its atrocities spurred the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Empires active in April 1992 – December 1995

• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Yugoslavia
  1918 CE – 1992 CE

Related military & conflict events

• The Srebrenica genocide
  11–22 July 1995
• The Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi
  7 April – 19 July 1994
• The September 11 attacks
  11 September 2001
• Fall of Saigon and reunification of Vietnam
  30 April 1975 (reunified 1976)
• Khmer Rouge Seize Cambodia and Declare Year Zero
  1975
• Cuban Missile Crisis
  16–28 October 1962

Also relevant

• The Gulf War And Operation Desert Storm
  1990–1991

Further reading

Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

The wider story

Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

Roger Crowley

Fast-paced narrative of Portugal's seaborne empire.

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