- It's 1991 and the Soviet Union is fracturing. And down here, another communist party is failing. Yugoslavia, a federation of six countries is ripping itself apart. Their economy is in ruin and they're replacing communism with nationalism, the kind that thrives on focusing on ethnic and religious differences. By the end of 1991, Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia have all declared independence. Macedonia is allowed to leave peacefully, but Slovenia and Croatia fight wars to be independent from Yugoslavia. And then you have Serbia, populated primarily by Christian Serbs and they were not going to let Yugoslavia fully fall apart. Together with Montenegro, they attempt to become the successor state to Yugoslavia. After all, it was they who held the most power in Yugoslavia and who comprised the majority of the Yugoslav army. They didn't want independent states, they wanted to hold onto their majority, to their power. Another country in this crumbling federation was the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Almost half of this country were Bosnian Muslims called Bosniaks and about a third were Christian Serbs, similar to the Christian Serbs living up here, but living in Bosnia. The other 17% were Croats. For a long time, these groups had lived side by side in relative peace. They had a common ideology, communism, the idea of Yugoslavia. But as all these new countries were being created, no one wanted to end up in a new nation controlled by the other side. So it's late 1991 and a largely Croat region declares itself an independent state from Bosnia. It wasn't recognized internationally. While some Croat leaders want to secede from the country entirely, they first agree to cooperate with the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, acting like a state within a state. The next year, Bosnia holds an independence vote. 63% of the population turns out and the results are that 99% of the voters say yes, they want to be independent from Yugoslavia. These numbers imply that it was mostly Bosniaks that voted, with the Bosnian Serbs boycotting the vote as most were against becoming a minority in a new Bosnia. So after the independence vote passed, the Bosnian Serbs declared their own state within the borders of Bosnia. It was called Republika Srpska. No one recognized this new self-declared country besides one and it was the one that mattered. Serbia and Montenegro now had this leader, an important part of the story. His name was Slobodan Milosevic. He recognizes the new Serb state within Bosnia and this marks the start of the Bosnian war. (dramatic music) Hey, before we dive into this, I just need to tell you that we don't have a sponsor for today because it's sort of hard to find sponsors for videos like this. Luckily, the subscribers over at Nebula help make these videos possible. We publish our videos there every week, a week early. So our next week's video about Antarctica, one of my favorite videos we've ever made ever, it's freaking beautiful, is up now on Nebula. You can go watch it. It's $2.50 a month and it helps support us making videos like this. I'll give more detail on that at the end of the video. For now, let's dive into this. Now, before we go on, we have to look back up here at Serbia, this leader, Slobodan Milosevic. This guy was a hyper nationalist. He made his career stirring up ethnic tensions between Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks. So he's seen all of this as a good thing, as an opportunity to further his vision of creating a new greater Serbian nation across the former Yugoslavia. And remember, Serbia is where the capital of the former Yugoslavia was. The Yugoslav army is dominated by Serbs, so Milosevic is able to direct this professional army to launch an offensive, to help the Serbians in Bosnia secure their new claimed territory. (guns firing) To fight back, the Bosniaks and Croats form an alliance to protect their own chances of independence. But Serbs have this large professional army on their side. It's much more powerful and it quickly surrounds the Bosnian capital city, positioning tanks, artillery and snipers on the hills around the city, blocking roads and supply routes. Their goal is to take the capital as fast as possible and to end this war quickly. They start firing indiscriminately, attacking civilian populations with tanks, artillery and sniper fire, killing thousands in a siege that would last for years. And while this city was majority Bosniak, Croats and Serbs lived there too, but the Serbs pummeled it anyway. The UN quickly attempts to negotiate with Milosevic and Serb forces and they reach a quick agreement to withdraw the Yugoslav army. But what really happens is the Yugoslav army just gives up control of around 100,000 Serb troops who mostly continue fighting for the Serbs in Bosnia. As Yugoslav forces withdraw from Sarajevo as part of this agreement, the retreating forces are attacked by Bosniak troops. An unknown number of Yugoslav army personnel are killed. Bosniak commanders would later be charged with war crimes for this attack. As the war rages on, Serbs escalate the brutality all over the country, routinely identifying Bosniak homes, ransacking and burning them down, rounding up civilians, separating the men from the women and sending the men to concentration camps or executing them. Women are sent to prisons where they suffer abuses and human rights violations that I'm not going to describe here for how atrocious they are. You can go to the sources for details. The point here is that what the Serbs are doing is starting to look like an ethnic cleansing of the land they claimed. Meanwhile, the international community is hesitant to get too involved beyond cutting off the Yugoslav economy with sanctions. And the UN sends food, medicine and peacekeeping soldiers, they also cut off the flow of weapons from the outside. But the UN mostly sticks to its peacekeeping principles, not interfering in the conflict, not stopping the advance of the Serbs or the ongoing ethnic cleansing that has begun. But the situation in Bosnia is getting worse. The alliance between Bosniaks and Croats is falling apart. They start fighting each other. So now, Bosniak forces are fighting the Serbs on one side and their former allies, the Croats, on the other, a war within a war. As this new complicated stage of the conflict starts, Croat forces surround and begin an attack in the city of Mostar, a city that the two had once defended together back in 1992 against the Serbs. Croat forces capture large portions of the city. They blow up Bosniak mosques and murder Bosniak civilians in their wake. Things are getting bad and in response to these worsening conditions in Bosnia, the UN gets NATO forces to come to Bosnia to enforce a no-fly zone, basically committing them to shoot down any planes flying over the country. But this does nothing to stop the ethnic cleansing that continues to escalate on the ground. So the next year, the UN establishes safe zones across the country to protect civilians fleeing the war, particularly Bosniaks who are fleeing ethnic cleansing by the Serb armies. But the UN is only as powerful as its member nations are willing to let them be. And it turns out member nations are not willing to commit enough troops to actually fortify these safe zones. Serb forces regularly show up and attack the civilians in these safe zones. The United States who's still trying to stay out of this war helps negotiate peace between the Croats and the Bosniaks, thus ending the war within the war. They sign an agreement in March of 1994 reestablishing the Federal Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and most importantly, they renew their alliance to fight against the Serbs. Things slowly start to change in 1994. Bosnian Serbs decline a peace deal offered by the UN. In response, Milosevic, who's now feeling the consequences of being cut off from the global economy now cuts ties with the Bosnian Serbs, refusing to send them more weapons and money. He wants to remain in power, controlling his new Yugoslavia in hopes that cutting ties with the Bosnian Serbs who are doing all these terrible things will convince the West to begin trading with him again. So Milosevic's support is now gone, but even still, the Bosnian Serbs continue their campaign of horror, committing atrocities all over the country. But it's not just the Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats have also devolved into committing terrible violent human rights abuses against civilians. As the war rages on, NATO continues to enforce their no-fly zone, shooting down a Serb jet and getting more and more pulled into this conflict as Serb forces get bolder. Former President Jimmy Carter travels to Bosnia and negotiates a four-month ceasefire. It mostly holds with a few exceptions, but the ceasefire expires. They can't agree on a new one and the fighting starts again. Serb forces are able to steal heavy weapons from the UN and then use them to kill civilians. NATO continues to ramp up airstrikes. Serb forces respond by taking UN peacekeepers hostage and shooting down a US F-16. Serb forces are feeling emboldened at this point. They have consistently held around 70% of the land in Bosnia and even pushed back UN peacekeepers without major consequences. And they see an opportunity for one last big offensive to end the war and secure all of this land. They just need to take over the UN safe zones, kick the UN out and then take Sarajevo with overwhelming force. (playful music) (explosions boom) So they target the town of Srebrenica, a UN safe zone where nearly 10,000 Bosniaks are seeking refuge. The UN had taken away their weapons. They were totally unarmed, but protected by UN forces. On July 11th, 1995, 2,000 Serb Soldiers march into the town. They meet no resistance from the UN soldiers who decided to maintain their neutrality and defend supplies and food for their refugees instead of the people themselves. But these UN soldiers were really just 370 Dutch soldiers. They were outmatched anyway. So some retreat, others are captured. The Serb forces then round up 8,000 Bosniak men and boys and then they systematically execute them, comprising the deadliest genocide on European soil since World War II. (speaker speaks in a foreign language) The surviving refugees abandoned by the international community flee the violence in Srebrenica. They fled to other areas telling the stories of this mass murder. The UN would later report that all sides violated the Geneva Conventions, but described the Serb offensive as, quote, systematic ethnic cleansing. And at this point, the United States can no longer stand by and watch this happen. So in late 1995, the Clinton administration pursues a new strategy. They plan for the UN to eventually pull out of Bosnia, the US and NATO would keep them safe. The plan also ensured that the US would be allowed to send weapons to the Bosnian government. The US then proposed the peace plan, one that divided Bosnia into two entities, one for Serbs and one for Bosniaks. These regions would have some autonomy and Bosniaks would control 51% of the country. Both sides considered the US' plan, but the fighting continued. But now with the international community squarely on their side, the Croats conduct a successful offensive in 1995 that takes back significant land from the Serbs and the Bosniaks gain momentum in the war. The balance of power is shifting, which forces the Serbs back to the negotiating table to cut their losses. After many rounds of negotiation and with the Serb forces seeing the tide of the war turn against them, the Dayton Accords are signed in December, 1995, by the presidents of Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia. - On behalf of all of us who would come to see this peace take hold, you have seen what war has wrought. You know what peace can bring. - It was this agreement that eventually gave us these modern borders that divide the country into two. You have the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina which is composed mostly of Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats. And over here, the Republika Srpska composed mostly of Bosnian Serbs, which is somewhat independent with its own political system and its own judiciary, but it's still a part of Bosnia and her Herzegovina. So the war is over. Around 100,000 people died during this violence and many more millions were forced to flee from their homes, the majority of which were Bosnian Muslims. A United Nations criminal tribunal eventually tried 161 people for various war crimes committed during this war. Slobodan Milosevic went to jail for the rest of his life because of his crimes against humanity, his war crimes and genocide. He died before the end of his trial. The war reshaped this country, solidifying the ethnic divides that had been at the root of the conflict. Today, Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats live in relative peace, though the country faces new threats to that peace, threats that are facing lots of parts of the world, rising nationalism, a reverence for former Serb war criminals and more calls for Serb independence. The memory of the atrocities committed during this conflict still haunts this place, both in the physical scars on the land, but most powerfully in the bodies and minds of its people. (somber music) This is a complicated story and there are lots of feelings about it. People watching this probably disagree with the way that I frame certain things, but we did our best to be fair and factual and to give the best overview we could. As I said earlier, finding sponsors for videos like this is difficult and I really value those who subscribe to Nebula. Nebula is a place where I put all of my videos ad-free and a week early. 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And again, a portion of that subscription goes directly to us creators to allow us to continue to do this. I gotta tell you about next week's video. It's about mapping Antarctica and it truly is one of the most ambitious videos I have ever made in my entire career. We tried all this new mapping techniques with this paper globe that is then geo-referenced with Captain Cook's journeys throughout the south. It truly is an amazing piece of work that we have been working on for a long time. And it's live right now, you can go watch it right now on Nebula. So more than ever, clicking the link in my description that goes to Nebula and signing up really helps to support this channel. I appreciate you all watching. I hope you enjoyed this map video. We're wanting to do more of these. I used to do these a lot back in the old days when I was at Vox and I sort of moved away from it and I want to get back to it. 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