Bosnia Civil War Essay -- History, The Serbs, Genocide

The genocide in Bosnia started in 1992 and lasted until 1995 and it involved the massacre of the Muslims by the Serbs . The United Nations and the Great Powers of the world failed Bosnia in providing support and aid. To understand what went wrong during the crisis in Bosnia one must first look at the situation that existed there before the conflict. Bosnia is made up of three different ethnicities, the Muslims made up forty-five percent of the population, the Serbs made up thirty-three percent of the population and the Croats consisted of the remaining sixteen percent . The major difference between these ethnicities is not their language but their religions. The Muslims generally practice Islam, the Serbs were traditionally Orthodox and the Croats were mainly Roman Catholic, but the conflict between them was not so much based on their religion as much as nationalism (pg691) . The different ethnicities were not separated within Bosnia; instead they were all mixed together . For exampl e, villages that were made up of mostly Serbs may surround a largely Muslim town . The different ethnicities would not interact with one another on a regular basis but they also were not separated into different and exclusive areas (pg691) . The tensions between these three ethnicities had been steadily rising throughout history but they were generally kept under control by outside forces . They were originally forced to co-exist under the Ottoman Empire, then a Serb monarchy forced them to cooperate and lastly it was Tito who installed order through Yugoslavia . After Tito passed away they each started to embrace the freedom they never had and that is when the violent ethnic conflicts started (pg691) . As well as the different ethnicity another part o... ...to prove themselves because of the failures of previous peacekeeping operations including Somalia. Furthermore, the rules and the structure of the U.N. creates many difficulties that make it hard to accomplish any goals. Lastly, the peacekeepers faced many obstacles that were unable to overcome. There were problems within the actual peacekeeping force that limited what they were able to accomplish, and although the attempted to complete the tasks set out for them it was impossible to do with the resources they were given. The situation in Srebrenica is an example of the impact that the failures of the U.N. have on an actual mission of the peacekeeping operation. The Bosnian civil war is an unfortunate crisis that the U.N. should take as an opportunity to learn from their mistakes, because unfortunately their mistakes cost the lives of a numerous amount of people.