Conflict in Bosnia

The intervention in Bosnia- Herzegovina by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1995 was neither the beginning nor the end of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Both the United Nations and NATO played large roles in the Balkan Crisis. In order to fully understand the intervention, it is necessary to grasp the key concepts in diplomatic methods and conflict resolution which played an important role in the region during the 1990s. This paper will use Mitchell and Bank's definition of conflict resolution:

An outcome in which the issues in an existing conflict are satisfactorily dealt with through a solution that is mutually acceptable to the parties, self-sustaining in the long run and productive of a new, positive relationship between parties.¹

First it is important to examine the recent history of Bosnia as a backdrop to the conflict in question. Following World War II, the communist dictator Josip Broz Tito consolidated his power in the region, establishing himself as the Marshal of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which he ruled as in a one party system of dictatorship for the thirty five years until his death. He broke with the Soviet Union's Stalin shortly after the war and then benefited from the Cold War, receiving military, economic and even diplomatic support from the West. This enabled him to turn the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) into the fourth largest force in Europe. He also reconstituted the country as a federation; Bosnia-Herzegovina became one of six constituent republics along with Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Slovenia. Under Tito's rule, nationalism was ruthlessly suppressed as it was seen as a threat to communist ideology. However it was Tito who granted Bosnian Muslims official recognition of their separate identity for the first time since the First World War, although the practice of any religion was prohibited.²