Bosnian War.

The War in Bosnia and Herzegovina, commonly known as the Bosnian War, was an armed conflict that took place between March 1992 and November 1995. The war involved several ethnically defined factions within Bosnia and Herzegovina: Bosnian Muslims/Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats as well as a smaller faction in Western Bosnia led by Fikret Abdić. These factions changed their objectives and allegiances several times at various stages of the war.

Since the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina was a consequence of events in the wider region of former Yugoslavia, and due to the involvement of neighboring countries Croatia and Yugoslavia, there is an ongoing debate about whether the conflict was a civil war or a war of aggression. Most Bosniaks and many Croats claim that the war was a war of aggression from Serbia, while Serbs tend to consider it a civil war. The involvement of NATO, during the 1995 Operation Deliberate Force against the positions of the Army of Republika Srpska made the war an internationalized conflict.

There was a trial before the International Court of Justice, following a suit by Bosnia and Herzegovina against the Serbia and Montenegro for genocide (see Bosnian genocide case at the International Court of Justice) from 1993. On 26 February 2006 the ICJ dismissed most charges, claiming that Montenegro and Serbia are innocent, that neither of them have committed genocide nor were they a accomplice in such an event, and that thus the two should pay no war damage to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The war was brought to an end after the signing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Paris on 14 December 1995 [7]. The peace negotiations were held in Dayton, Ohio, and were finalized on 21 December 1995. The accords are known as the Dayton Agreement.

The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina came about as a result of the breakup of Yugoslavia. Crisis emerged in Yugoslavia with the weakening of the Communist system at the end of the Cold War. In Yugoslavia, the national Communist party, officially called Alliance or League of Communists of Yugoslavia, was losing its ideological potency, while the nationalist and separatist ideologies were on the rise in the late 1980s. This was particularly noticeable in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to a lesser extent in Slovenia and Macedonia.