Question 1
Basing on the major causes of the Bosnian war, the above statement by Maass is true and very applicable. This war was essentially fought because Croats and Serbs who lived in Bosnia wanted to seize the Bosnian territory for Croatia and Serbia respectively. This was trailed majorly by several mitigation factors, with ethnic tensions in addition. Slobodan Milosevic was the national leader for Serbia by then and was assertive for what he referred to as a “Greater Serbia”. The Muslims and the Croats who lived in Bosnia feared that Milosevic would endeavor to take the land that they occupied given the fact that they lived under the control of Yugoslavians who called for Bosnian independence on the other hand.
Radovan Karadzic created a rebel army within Bosnia just before the war started and received the support of Milosevic in Belgrade. The Bosnian Serbs began a policy that they referred to as “cleansing” the large areas of Bosnia which were not occupied by the Serbs. A tribunal upon the end of the conflict declared that the cleansing was actually genocide. Karadzic and his military commander were convicted of crimes. The Serbs that lived in Bosnia began their siege of Sarajevo on 1992, April 6. Croat, Serb and Muslim residents who opposed to a Greater Serbia were starved of food products, other utilities and communication links were cut off. For the citizens who lived in harmony and with plenty of food were three years later subjected to food scarcity, and the average weight loss per individual was reported to have reached thirty pounds. More than twelve thousand residents of Sarajevo were brutally killed in the period of forty three months of restriction. Nationalists of Bosnia, the Bosnian Serbs and the JNA embarked on a program of ethnic cleansing with the intention of creating a Serbian territory that is pure.
Most people in the conflict sided with the ethnic group to which they belonged with few cases of high-profile instances of people crossing the ethnic lines. Others wanted a peaceful coexistence and chose not to take part in the war, who were indeed we can say they were conscripts rather than volunteers since they found themselves carrying guns, whether they liked it or not. It is a war that turned most individuals with propensity to violence to murderers. Often many victims knew the perpetrators of the violence as they fought their neighbors. Many detained victims were killed out of personal reasons and people who had grudges against others took that opportunity to revenge. Lives of some people were spared when they had a chance to see their neighbor friend from the opposite side. One could stop you from being killed if he/she knew you. Children were not accessing education and people could not share happy moments in cafes and bars as they did before.
Question 2
There is a hotly contested debate as to whether the war was a civil one or a war of aggression on Bosnia by the nations that neighbor it. This debate was stirred by the fact that there was an involvement of both Croatia and Serbia. It was a clear-cut case of civil war as the it was an internal war that was fought by internal groups who we can say were unable to come into an agreement of sharing power. This can as well be attributed to the credible Serb fears, which is seen as the rationale for their actions that led to the war eruption. However, many Croats and Bosnians, western politicians as well as human rights organizations in contrast to the explanation of the conflict claimed that the war was a conflict between the Croatian aggression based on the Karađorđevo and Graz agreements and the Serbian, but the Serbians frequently denoted it as a civil war. The decision that granted diplomacy to Bosnia and its recognition had insinuations to the way the international population interpreted the conflict as both the Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs reveled in a considerable political and military support from Serbia and Croatia.
There are episodes of severe and brutal violence that marred the war and were ignited by the external forces and events and the local society was deeply implicated in the war. The war was marred by brutal sufferings as entire villages were destroyed and thousands of Bosnians were evicted from their homelands, tortured, raped, detained in camps, forcefully deported and killed. Rape was a tactic that was used to break the bonds of the families and the communities that were happily married earlier before the war erupted. There was also an international arms restraint that was prompted throughout the war that did not permit the government of Bosnia from acquiring the hefty arms and weaponry that were necessary to fight the more erudite arsenals of the armies of Croatian and Serbian and armies. Therefore it makes it relatively more probable to regard the Bosnian war a civil war. Ejup Ganić, who was a Bosnian Commander was detained in London in 2010 on basis of an extradition request from Serbia for alleged crimes of war. However, Judge Timothy Workman’s resolute was set free the commander after ruling that the request by Serbia was motivated politically. The Judge characterized the Bosnian war as a conflict that was armed internationally since Bosnia had been declared independent on 3 March 1992.
