How long did the serbian war last

It had long been clear that progress toward a negotiated settlement was possible only if the Bosnian Serbs understood that not achieving a diplomatic solution would cost them dearly. For nearly a year, the United States and its Contact Group partners Britain, France, Germany, and Russia had sought to pressure the Bosnian Serb leadership headquartered in Pale into agreeing to commence serious negotiations by convincing Milosevic to cut off economic and, especially, military assistance to the Bosnian Serbs.

Despite being offered various incentives including direct negotiations with the United States and the suspension of U. This left military pressure—the threat or actual use of force against the Bosnian Serbs—as the only real lever to convince Pale that a diplomatic solution was in its interests. Yet, more than two years of trying to convince the NATO allies of this fact had led nowhere.

At each and every turn, London, Paris, and other allies had resisted the kind of forceful measures that were required to make a real impact on the Bosnian Serb leadership. In their informal discussions, Vershbow and Drew suggested that the only way to overcome this resistance was to equalize the risks between the United States on the one hand and those allies with troops on the ground on the other.

This could be achieved either by deploying U. Since the president had consistently ruled out deploying American ground forces to Bosnia except to help enforce a peace agreement, the only way significant military pressure could be brought to bear on the Bosnian Serbs would be after UNPROFOR had been withdrawn.

In June , she once again made her case, presenting Clinton with a passionately argued memorandum urging a new push for air strikes in order to get the Bosnian Serbs to the table. As Clinton well knew, the U. Instead, the emphasis should be on keeping the U. He could accept that there was no consensus for anything beyond continuing a policy of muddling through, or he could forge a new strategy and get the president to support a concerted effort seriously to tackle the Bosnia issue once and for all.

Having for over two years accepted the need for consensus as the basis of policy and, as a consequence, failed to move the ball forward, Lake now decided that the time had come to forge his own policy initiative. A consensus soon emerged on three key aspects of a workable strategy.

Second, if a deal was to be struck between the parties, it was clear that such an agreement could not fulfill all demands for justice. A diplomatic solution that reversed every Bosnian Serb gain simply was not possible. Third, the success of a last-ditch effort to get a political deal would depend crucially on bringing the threat of significant force to bear on the parties. The last three years had demonstrated that without the prospect of the decisive use of force, the parties would remain intransigent and their demands maximalist.

Lake asked Vershbow to draft a strategy paper on the basis of this discussion. The national security adviser also told the president about the direction of his thinking.

He specifically asked Clinton whether he should proceed along this path with the knowledge that in a presidential election year the United States would have to commit significant military force either to enforce an agreement or to bring about a change in the military balance of power on the ground.

Clinton told Lake to go ahead, indicating that the status quo was no longer acceptable. The strategy proposed a last-ditch effort to reach a political solution acceptable to the parties. In addition to the six republics, the two separate regions of Kosovo and Vojvodina held the status of autonomous provinces within the Republic of Serbia. Yugoslavia was a mix of ethnic groups and religions, with Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism and Islam being the main religions.

Coinciding with the collapse of communism and resurgent nationalism in Eastern Europe during the late s and early s, Yugoslavia experienced a period of intense political and economic crisis. Central government weakened while militant nationalism grew apace. There was a proliferation of political parties who, on one side, advocated the outright independence of republics and, on the other, urged greater powers for certain republics within the federation.

Political leaders used nationalist rhetoric to erode a common Yugoslav identity and fuel fear and mistrust among different ethnic groups. Serbia in turn accused the two republics of separatism.

The first of the six republics to formally leave Yugoslavia was Slovenia, declaring independence on 25 June It ended in a victory of the Slovenian forces, with the JNA withdrawing its soldiers and equipment. Croatia declared independence on the same day as Slovenia.

The sizeable ethnic Serb minority in Croatia openly rejected the authority of the newly proclaimed Croatian state citing the right to remain within Yugoslavia. Croats and other non-Serbs were expelled from its territory in a violent campaign of ethnic cleansing.

This was to be their most effective weapon against the relentless attempts to break them, and perhaps their biggest revenge. Cafes continued to open and friends continued to gather there. Women still styled their hair and painted their faces. In the streets children played among the rubble and bombed out cars, their voices mixing with the sound of gunfire.

Before the war, Bosnia had been the most diverse of all republics, a mini Yugoslavia, where friendships and romantic relationships were formed irrespective of religious or ethnic divisions. Perhaps most astounding was that, in a war marred by ethnic cleansing, the people of Sarajevo continued to practice tolerance. Bosnian Muslims continued to live a shared life with the Croats and Serbs who remained.

Residents stand in line to collect water, Sarajevo endured the suffocation of siege for for three and a half years, punctuated by daily shelling and fatalities. The signing of the Dayton Agreement ended the war in December and on 29 February the Bosnian government officially declared the siege over. He was caught, tried for war crimes, convicted, and sentenced to 40 years imprisonment. Refugees from the overrun U.

A war-damaged house is seen in an abandoned village by the main road near the town of Derventa, on March 27, A Bosnian Muslim woman cries on the coffin of a relative during a mass funeral for victims killed during war in Bosnia, whose remains were found in mass graves around the town of Prijedor and Kozarac, 50 km 31 miles northwest of Banja Luka, on July 20, A Bosnian Muslim woman from Srebrenica, sitting under pictures of victims of the genocide in the town during the Bosnian war, watches the television broadcast of Ratko Mladic's court proceedings, in Tuzla, on June 3, Former Bosnian Serb military commander Mladic said he defended his people and his country in the Bosnia war and now intended to defend himself against war crimes charges at the U.

Mladic was indicted over the month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo and the massacre of 8, Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica, close to the border with Serbia, during the Bosnian war.

A Bosnian muslim man gestures as he mourns among caskets at Potocari Memorial Cemetery near Srebrenica, on July 10, This year's mass burial, marking the 16th anniversary of the fall of Srebrenica, re-grouped bodies, collected from mass grave sites in Eastern Bosnia.

In previous years, more than bodies were buried at Srebrenica Memorial Cemetery, after being excavated from mass graves in Eastern-Bosnia and positively identified. A young Muslim girl walks past a stone memorial bearing the names of victims of the Srebrenica massacre at the Potocari cemetery and memorial near Srebrenica on July 10, in Potocari, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

At least 8, Bosnian Muslim men and boys who had sought safe heaven at the U. Zoran Laketa poses for a picture in front of a building destroyed during the war in Bosnia, after an interview with Reuters, in Mostar, on April 2, Laketa epitomizes the complexities of the Bosnian conflict that kept the West dithering over intervention in the face of mass ethnic cleansing.

Twenty years since the start of the war, ethnicity is still a deep dividing line - no more so than in Mostar, where Croats hold the west bank, Muslim Bosniaks the east, in an uncomfortable co-existence that has resisted foreign efforts to promote reintegration. Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, center, stands in the courtroom during his initial appearance at U.

He faces charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for allegedly masterminding atrocities throughout Bosnia's war. An elderly woman leaves a flower on some of 11, empty chairs on the main street of Sarajevo on April 6, More than 11, red chairs, symbolizing 11, victim of the siege, lined Sarajevo's main avenue on Friday as Bosnians marked the 20th anniversary of the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II with songs and remembrance.

Thousands of people gathered as a choir accompanied by a small classical orchestra performed an arrangement of 14 songs, most of them composed during the city's bloody siege. The anniversary finds the Balkan country still deeply divided, power shared between Serbs, Croats and Muslims in a single state ruled by ethnic quotas and united by the weakest of central governments.

A child puts flowers on some of the child-sized chairs in the collection of 11, red chairs along Titova street in Sarajevo, as the city marks the 20th anniversary of the start of the Bosnian war, April 6,