Violence Born of History/History Born of Violence: A Brief Context for Understanding the Bosnian War

Abstract

In 1943, Josip Broz Tito’s Partisans drove Axis forces from present-day Bosnia and declared the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia. Tito envisioned a nation of “brotherhood and unity” where pan-Slavic cooperation transcended ethno-national loyalties. To this end, Yugoslavia was comprised of six equal republics (e.g., Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina [BiH], and Macedonia) whose citizens were expected to reject their ethnonational identities and embrace broader Yugoslav identity. Fifty years later, Yugoslavia crumbled, leaving in its wake the physical and social rubble of Tito’s pan-Slavic dream. Yugoslavia’s wars of secession propelled the term “ethnic cleansing” into global consciousness. How all this came to pass is worth filling many volumes. The concern of this chapter is the historical, social, and political context for the Bosnian War. Beginning in March 1992 when BiH declared independence and ending in December 1995 with the Dayton Agreement, the Bosnian War left as many as 50 percent of Bosnian homes destroyed, 2 million people displaced, and 100,000 dead (Malcolm 1996, 252). Yet, these numbers neither explain the war’s causes, nor why even today, the war is so difficult for outsiders to understand.