B for Bosnia
#Day2 in #36daysofconflict
With the decline of the Soviet block by the 1980s and the death of Communist revolutionary — the binding force and first president of Yugoslavia, General Tito, Yugoslavia began to break up. The first ethnic groups to demand a separate nation were the Slovenians and Croatians in the year 1991. Yugoslavia, which was earlier an overwhelming multiethnic constitution of the dominant Serbians, neighbouring Kosovans, Bosniaks, Macedonians, Hungarians, Albanians, Montenegrins, Slovenes and Croatians — experienced a quick trickling effect of secessionism till 1995.
The Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was inhabited by 44% Muslim Bosniaks, 32.5% Orthodox Serbs and 17% Catholic Croats. This multi-ethnic republic passed a referendum for Independence on 29 February 1992 but the powerful Socialist Republic of Serbia put its weight behind one man, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs — Radovan Karadžić, and rejected it. This led to war in the centremost territory of Yugoslavia — Bosnia and Herzegovina were turned into a playing field for genocide.
What went on from the year 1992 to 1995, with the NATO cutting in, East-inclined Serbia refusing to budge, Bosnian Serbs attacked by NATO planes killing countless, the first secessionists joining the EU — everything, is documented international and political history. Sarajevo — the capital city of the republic, however, saw devastation and the natives went through utter trauma receiving scars that bleed even today.
The capital city saw the longest siege in the history of sieges in modern warfare — 1425 days of documented horror. Another city called Srebrenica which lay on the east-end experienced systematic mass rapes of more than 7000 Muslim women alongside the July 1995 massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys perpetrated by the Republic SRPSKA. In 1991, it only had a population of just around 36000*.
In Bosnia, even after 20 years, landmines laid during the war are found. The ethnic-cleansing brigade from the war shows itself till today in what is called the ‘paradise of landmines’. There are more than 80,000 yet left to be uncovered.
*numbers may change as per newer reports
#36daysofconflict:
Story by: Anurag Das
Written by: Anurag Das & Gulal Salil
Graphics by: Gulal Salil
