The Bosnian Civil War, 1992–1995

Abstract

This book has so far made the claim that alliances in multiparty civil wars are power-determined, motivated by concerns for victory and the maximization of postwar political control. It has illustrated the theory through the 1992–1998 Afghan intra-mujahedin war, which was largely fought along ethnic lines, and has showed it to hold in the 1978–1989 Afghan civil war, which pitted communists against mujahedin. The theory has also proved robust to different levels of analysis: It is relative power – rather than shared identity – that largely drives alliances, be they among groups or district-level actors, with a notable overall convergence to group directives. What this chapter aspires to do is show that this is not just a story about Afghanistan. Taking us through the 1992–1995 civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), we will witness the alliances and intragroup dynamics at play in this very different context, while recognizing their consistency with the proposed framework. This, in turn, begins to suggest that the theory at hand can offer insight on alliances and group fractionalization in multiparty civil wars more broadly. The Bosnian conflict was bloody and intense, but it was not selected for examination merely because of its infamy. Rather – as argued in Chapter 1 – it offers interesting variation in alliance patterns, while constituting the simplest case to examine civil war alliance formation. It had three ethnic groups of different demographic sizes and military power, and one notable identity cleavage, that of religion. If there is any case where identity cleavages should determine alliance choices, it would be Bosnia. This case in turn allows for an examination of the role of character of war, because Bosnia also experienced a war from 1941 to 1945, fought along lines with ideological dimensions, as discussed in Chapter 7. The analysis of the Bosnian civil war (1992–1995) that follows draws closely from primary sources collected over nine months in the field, which include semi-structured interviews with local political and military elites and convicted war criminals; wartime alliance agreements, declarations, and memoirs; articles from the local and international press; prewar demographic data; and data on wartime casualties and territorial control. I also closely consult the extensive secondary literature on the conflict.