Croatian-Bosniak War
| date | June 19, 1992 to February 23, 1994 |
|---|---|
| place |
Central Bosnia and Mostar in Herzegovina ( Bosnia and Herzegovina ) |
| Casus Belli | Mutual attempts to conquer and secure opposing territories in order to establish their own contiguous ethnically homogeneous territory, against the background of the Vance-Owen Plan |
| output | Establishment of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina |
| Territorial changes | Merger of the areas controlled by Croats and Bosniaks into one entity |
| Peace treaty | Washington Agreement |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
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| Commander | |
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| Troop strength | |
| 50,000 soldiers | |
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As Croatian-Bosniak war is armed conflict between Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina of 19 June 1992 refers to 23 February 1994th The conflict between the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the self-proclaimed Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna is often referred to as a "war within a war" because it was part of the Bosnian War within the framework of the Yugoslav Wars . The arenas of the armed conflicts were mainly places in central Bosnia such as Vitez , Bugojno , Novi Travnik , Gornji Vakuf-Uskoplje , Prozor-Rama , Busovača , Vareš , Kreševo , Žepče and especially Mostar in Herzegovina . In other regions of the country, units of both ethnic groups continued to work together militarily. Under massive pressure from the United States, the conflict was brought to an end on March 18, 1994 by the Washington Agreement establishing the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina .
War crimes and crimes against humanity , including ethnic cleansing , massive looting and isolated massacres of civilians, have been committed on both sides . There were internment camps operated whose inmates were tortured and beaten. Women were also mistreated and raped . Members of the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) and the Armed Forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) and Mujahedin as well as leading politicians from both sides were held responsible for these crimes and were charged and convicted by the International Criminal Court (ICTY).
history
At the end of 1991, Croatians organized themselves in Kiseljak to get weapons and prepare for the coming civil war. The barracks in Kiseljak were taken over by the Yugoslav People's Army without victims. The Croatians largely armed themselves with the weapons from the barracks and later formed the HVO. The war only broke out in Kiseljak with the conflicts between the Croatians and the Bosniaks, who later organized themselves into the ARBiH. The most characteristic clashes between the HVO and the ARBiH occurred in the villages of Han Ploča , Gomionica , Kazagići i Žeželovo . The HVO won all the fights there. The fights in Kakanj , Vareš , Konjic , Bugojno were won by the ARBiH.
From April 1993 the Croatian-Bosniak conflict escalated. With the support of Croatia, the HVO demanded the withdrawal of the Bosnian government troops from the areas that were to be controlled by the Croats according to the Vance-Owen Plan . When Alija Izetbegović refused, the HVO began to occupy the areas and carried out ethnic cleansing. In April 1993, Bosniak civilians were displaced across the Lašva Valley. At first the Croatian troops were on the advance and carried out, among other things, the massacre of Ahmići on April 16 , in which HVO troops murdered around 120 Bosniak civilians and set their houses on fire. Units of the HVO went from house to house, murdered the village population and destroyed a large part of the village.
The same day the Vitez massacre was committed, in which around 120 Bosniak civilians were murdered. HVO troops besieged the village of Vitez and bombed Bosniak areas. Most of the Bosniak houses were set on fire, 172 Bosniak civilians were murdered, 5,000 were displaced and numerous prisoners were interned in the Dretelj camp. In September 1993 the International Committee of the Red Cross registered 1,200 Bosniak prisoners in the Dretelj camp, where, according to Helsinki Watch , 1,500 Serbs are also said to have been detained. Another camp was Heliodrom .
During the war there was also fighting in Mostar . The city was divided into a Croatian-western and a Bosniak-eastern part through evictions. From May 1993 to January 1994, the HVO attacked Mostar and carried out ethnic cleansing. Thousands were displaced and their homes ransacked. During the war, Mostar's landmark, the Stari most bridge , was deliberately destroyed in several hours of bombardment by Croatian forces.
In July 1993 soldiers and units of the HVO invaded Bugojno and carried out a massacre of the Bosnian Muslim population in the Vrbanja district . After the counter-offensive, Bosniak troops arrested several Croatian soldiers and armed civilians. The captured Croatians were taken to nine prison camps , most of which were cruelly tortured and killed in the city's sports stadium. In addition, a large part of the surviving Croatian civilian population was killed by supporters of the ARBiH. In September 1993, the Grabovica massacre by the Bosniaks resulted in the murder of up to 35 Croatian civilians, including young women and children.
In December 1993 the Bosniak troops committed another war crime, for example during the Križančevo selo massacre in the Lašva valley, when around 150 Croatian civilians were murdered. The war was finally ended on March 18, 1994 by the Washington Agreement.
Legal processing
Several people involved in the war, the majority of whom had fought on the Croatian side, were sentenced after the war.
Bosniaks
The high commander of the Bosniak army, Rasim Delić , was sentenced in 2008 to three years in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for various war crimes. Delić is responsible for crimes committed by the El Mujahidd military unit that mistreated prisoners in central Bosnia.
Three Bosniak collaborators of the Croatian War Party who had fled to Scandinavia and who had been active in the Dretelj camp were brought to justice independently of one another in exile :
- On November 23, 1994, Refic Sarić , a Bosniak collaborator of the camp team who fled to Denmark , was sentenced to eight years imprisonment in Copenhagen for participating in 14 tortures, two of which resulted in death.
- In March 2010, the Oslo Court of Appeal found warden Mirsad Repak guilty of war crimes against prisoners on 13 of 14 counts ; Repak announced revision . In December 2010 Norway's Supreme Court overturned the war crimes conviction, which had only been criminalized in Norway in 2005; proceedings for deprivation of liberty continued. On April 14, 2011, Repak was sentenced to eight years in prison by the Norwegian Supreme Court for deprivation of liberty and illegal arrest of civilians.
- On April 8, 2011, Ahmet Makitan , a member of the guard, was sentenced in Stockholm to a total of five years for war crimes and kidnapping .
Croatians
On July 29, 2004, Tihomir Blaškić , General of the Croatian Defense Council, was sentenced to nine years imprisonment in the Court of Appeal after the first-instance sentence had been reduced to 45 years, and was released on August 2, 2004 from the largely served prison term .
In May 2013, the criminal court sentenced six persons responsible from the Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna to long prison terms for serious war crimes and crimes against humanity, but also for the destruction of the bridge:
- Jadranko Prlić , Prime Minister of the Republic of Herceg-Bosna, for 25 years
- Bruno Stojić , its defense minister, for 20 years
- Slobodan Praljak , former general, for 20 years
- Milivoj Petković , former general, for 20 years
- Valentin Ćorić , commander of the Bosnian-Croatian military police, aged 16
- Berislav Pušić , former officer, for 10 years
Praljak committed on 29 November 2017 The Hague suicide after he was sentenced again to 20 years in prison and on appeal and his conviction had criticized. The judgments against his co-defendants were also confirmed in the second instance.
literature
- Željko Ivanković, Dunja Melčić: The Bosniak-Croatian “war within a war” . In: Dunja Melčić (Ed.): The Yugoslavia War: Handbook on Prehistory, Course and Consequences . 2nd updated and expanded edition. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007, ISBN 978-3-531-33219-2 , p. 415-438 .
- Charles R. Shrader: The Muslim-Croat Civil War in Central Bosnia: A Military History, 1992–1994 (= Eastern European studies . Volume 23 ). Texas A&M University Press, 2003, ISBN 1-58544-261-5 .
- Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] - Office of Russian and European Analysis (ed.): Balkan Battlegrounds: A Military History of the Yugoslav Conflict . tape 1 . Washington DC 2002, Chapter 46-49, pp. 200-207 .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c d Norman M. Naimark: Flaming hatred: Ethnic cleansing in the 20th century . CH Beck, Munich 2004, p. 214 ff .
- ^ A b Philipp Ther: The dark side of the nation states: "Ethnic cleansing" in modern Europe . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, p. 248 .
- ↑ Article about Ahmići on the website of the European Stability Initiative
- ^ ICTY: Kordić and Čerkez judgment. (PDF; 3.3 MB) Retrieved November 23, 2012 .
- ↑ Michael Sells: Crosses of Blood ( Memento of July 8, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), Sociology of Religion ( Memento of May 8, 1999 in the Internet Archive ), Wake Forest University , Winston-Salem , Fall 2003
- ↑ indictment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia , March 2, 2004 (counts 116 and 118)
- ↑ Mostar Bridge . Page for a television documentary by ZDF (2003) ( Memento from March 28, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ ZLOÈINI HVO-a POÈINJENI U JULU 1993. GODINE - Bosnjaci.Net
- ↑ Visit to former Bugojno detention camps ( Memento from July 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, June 6, 2008
- ↑ Ratni zločini u BiH, Bugojno ( Memento from May 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Article about Ahmići on the website of the European Stability Initiative
- ^ Report by Deutsche Welle
- ^ Bosnia Camp Guard Convicted in Denmark , New York Times , November 23, 1994
- ↑ Ba om åtte års fengsel for krigsforbrytelser , Aftenbladet, March 9, 2010
- ↑ Norway court cancels Bosnian's sentence was crimes , The Telegraph , 3 December 2010
- ↑ Mirsad Repak on TRIAL International , June 13, 2016
- ^ Profile of Ahmet Makitan t ( memento from January 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) at TRIAL Watch , accessed on June 1, 2011
- ^ UN tribunal sentenced six Bosnian Croats , Deutsche Welle , May 29, 2013
- ↑ War criminal Praljak dead after ingesting poison. Spiegel online from November 29, 2017
- ^ Poison death in The Hague - Convicted Slobodan Praljak died. Die Welt from November 29, 2017