5th February, Sarajevo, Bosnia: The capital had been under siege for almost two years. Thousands had died in the city killed by sniper and shell attacks. But this was a dark day even by the standards of the Bosnian war. Secret Wars Uncovered: Battleground Bosnia, History 2020
Western powers were divided over how or whether to intervene. ibid.
The war had already ripped apart a nation. It would go on to threaten the credibility of Nato and the UN. It would force foreign powers into secret and unsavoury alliances. And it would lead to the worst act of genocide in Europe since the Holocaust. ibid.
‘Yugoslavia had succeeded against all the odds in reconciling most of these nationalities roughly into a state. When Tito died, it fell apart and that natural quilt – that patchwork quilt of nationalities – became a source of great instability.’ ibid. Michael Clarke, military specialist
The Federation splintered along national and ethnic lines … Bosnia & Hertzegovina was the most diverse of the Yugoslav republics. ibid.
On 3rd March 1992 the Bosnian parliament in Sarajevo formally declared the country’s independence. ibid.
A plan directed from Belgrade by [Radovan] Karadzic’s key ally – Slobodan Milosevic posed as a strong man. The President of the Serbian republic, he had seized power on a wave of nationalism. Now he sought to carve out a greater Serbia from the remains of Yugoslavia. ibid.
What would the rest of the world do about it? ibid.
In the early days of the war the Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniacs were allies against the Bosnian Serbs … They began fighting each other instead. ibid.
A secret weapons conduit was developed to try to bolster the Bosnian government. Donations from the Middle East were used to buy weapons from Hungary, Argentina, the former USSR and Pakistan … The investigation was a whitewash. ibid.
The people of Bosnia were the ones to suffer. The cost of that international indecision was about to become horrifyingly clear. ibid.
Bosnian Serbs seized 400 UN troops and held them hostage as human shields. ibid.
Peace talks began and a ceasefire was declared. ibid.
The worms coming to life in the Balkans were particularly poisonous for they were driven both by long resentment and by ethnic hatred. Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? s1e2: Bosnia: Our Soldiers Are Not Toy Soldiers
The Republics wanted their independence and began declaring it. ibid.
Some 1.3 Bosnians have been displaced. ibid. US document
Serb soldiers began rampaging through Bosnia. ibid.
‘And he [Colin Powell] got really mad at me and said, ‘Our soldiers are not toy soldiers.’’ ibid. Albright
The Serbs saw weakness. To Milosevic and his generals, the West’s so-called new world order looked like vacillation and incompetence, and they ruthlessly seized the moment. ibid.
The Kosovar Muslims’ struggle for independence from Serbia ... ‘We were going to intervene in Kosovo.’ Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? s1e4: Kosovo: In the Name of Our Future
If Milosevik does not halt his ethnic cleansing of Kosovo the western powers are willing to use their military might to stop him. ibid.
The bombing of Belgrade was a bit of a shock for some of us at the State Department. ibid.
We did do the right thing. ibid. Albright