Reports of mass killings and rape had slowly starting coming out of Bosnia, but once photos and videos of concentration camps were published by Western journalists, the reports captured the world’s attention. No other campaign in the twentieth century was better monitored and understood by the U.S. government than the Bosnian genocide. Despite the amount of information and the obvious evidence of genocide, the U.S. government initially chose isolationist policies. In July of 1992, the first international press reports, photos, and videos of the conflict in Bosnia were published. Despite the public outrage created by these reports, the international community still refused to intervene. A year later, after Serbian forces had taken over several Bosniak-dominated cities, the UN established six safe areas that were to be protected by international peacekeepers. However with very few weapons and orders not to fire unless in self-defense, these peacekeepers were completely ineffective. After the fall of Srebrenica, one of the UN safe areas, the Croatians and Bosniaks combined their forces to launch Operation Storm, an offensive campaign to push Serbian forces out of the Krajina region in the northwest corner of Bosnia. Bosniak and Croat forces had turned on each other two years prior to and had begun a conflict parallel to the one against the Serbs. Although Operation Storm succeeded in pushing back Serbian forces, it also created one of the largest refugee populations in Europe. The defeat of the Bosnian Serb forces led to the realization that a settlement in Bosnia and Herzegovina must be negotiated as soon as possible,leading to the Dayton Accords. The Dayton Accords, the name for the peace agreement, were signed in Dayton, Ohio on December 14, 1995, ending the conflict in Bosnia and stationing 60,000 NATO troops to keep the peace. The initial purpose of the Dayton Accords was to act as a transitory document and to freeze military confrontation but there were various shortcomings. A major criticism of the agreement was that it enabled international actors to shape the agenda of post-war transition without leaving those matters to the Bosnian people and its government.It also left the region political unstable and fractious since its implementation in 1995. Slobodan Milosevic was arrested in April 2001 and extradited to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He was accused of involvement in the genocide in Bosnia and war crimes in Croatia. His trial began in February 2002. On March 11, 2006, before the end of the trial, Milosevic died from health complications. A few of the other people responsible for war crimes and genocide during the war in Yugoslavia have been arrested and brought to trial. Western countries have put pressure on Serbia to get rid of those involved who remain in Serbia. Serbia’s cooperation over the years has been limited and sporadic. In 2007, the International Criminal Court in The Hague decided to define the Srebrenica massacre as genocide and declared that Serbia had violated its responsibility to prevent genocide. A number of Serbian government officials have been accused of war crimes and genocide. On February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared its independence. Approximately 75 countries recognize it, but Kosovo is not a member of the United Nations due to a veto from Russia, which opposes Kosovo’s membership. |