The Bosnian War (Serbo-Croatian: Rat u Bosni i Hercegovini / Рат у Босни и Херцеговини) was an armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina, from 1992 until 1995. Following several earlier violent incidents, the war is commonly seen as having started on 6 April 1992 when the newly independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was internationally recognized. It ended on 21 November 1995 when the Dayton Accords were initialed. The main belligerents were the forces of the government of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and those of the breakaway proto-states of the Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia and the Republika Srpska which were led and supplied by Croatia and Serbia, respectively.
The war was part of the breakup of Yugoslavia. Following the Slovenian and Croatian secessions from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991, the multi-ethnic Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina – which was inhabited by mainly Muslim Bosniaks (44%), Orthodox Serbs (32.5%) and Catholic Croats (17%) – passed a referendum for independence on 29 February 1992. Political representatives of the Bosnian Serbs boycotted the referendum and rejected its outcome. Anticipating the outcome of the referendum, the Bosnian Serb leadership proclaimed the "Republic of the Serb People of Bosnia and Herzegovina" on 9 January 1992 (Republika srpskoga naroda Bosne i Hercegovine), effectively laying the foundation of today's Republika Srpska.
Following the independence declaration of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina on 1 March 1992, the Bosnian Serbs, led by Radovan Karadžić, supported by the government of the president of Serbia Slobodan Milošević, and supplied by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), mobilized their forces inside Bosnia and Herzegovina and over the following months seized control of approximately 70% of the country's territory in a campaign characterized by widespread ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks.
The conflict was initially between Yugoslav Army units in Bosnia which later transformed into the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) on the one side, and the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH), predominantly composed of Bosniaks, and the Croat forces in the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) on the other side. Tensions between Croats and Bosniaks increased throughout late 1992, resulting in the escalation of the Croat–Bosniak War in early 1993. The Bosnian War was characterised by bitter fighting, indiscriminate shelling of cities and towns, ethnic cleansing, and systematic mass rape, mainly perpetrated by Serb, and to a lesser extent, Croat and Bosniak forces. Events such as the siege of Sarajevo and the July 1995 Srebrenica genocide later became iconic of the conflict. The massacre of over 8,000 Bosniak males by Serb forces in Srebrenica is the only incident in Europe to have been recognized as a genocide since World War II.
The Serbs, although initially militarily superior due to the weapons and resources provided by the JNA, eventually lost momentum as the Bosniaks and Croats allied against the Republika Srpska in 1994 with the creation of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina following the Washington Agreement. Pakistan ignored the United Nations' ban on the supply of arms and airlifted anti-tank missiles to the Bosnian Muslims, while after the Srebrenica and Markale massacres, NATO intervened in 1995 with Operation Deliberate Force, targeting the positions of the Army of the Republika Srpska, which proved key in ending the war. After cease-fires had previously been agreed on September 14 and October 5, 1995, peace negotiations were held in Dayton, Ohio, and the war ended when the Dayton Accords were initialed on 21 November 1995.
By early 2008, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia had convicted forty-five Serbs, twelve Croats, and four Bosniaks of war crimes in connection with the war in Bosnia. Estimates suggest over 100,000 people were killed during the war. Over 2.2 million people were displaced, making it, at the time, the most violent conflict in Europe since the end of World War II. In addition, an estimated 12,000–50,000 women were raped, mainly carried out by Serb forces, with most of the victims being Bosniak women.
Chronology
Clashes between Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs in Bosnia started in late February 1992, and "full-scale hostilities had broken out by 6 April", the same day the US and European Economic Community (EEC) recognised Bosnia and Herzegovina. Misha Glenny gives a date of 22 March, Tom Gallagher gives 2 April, while Mary Kaldor, and Laura Silber and Allan Little give 6 April. Philip Hammond claimed the most common view is that the war started on 6 April.
Serbs consider the Sarajevo wedding shooting, when a groom's father was killed on the second day of the Bosnian independence referendum, 1 March 1992, as the first death of the war. The Sijekovac killings of Serbs took place on 26 March and the Bijeljina massacre on 1–2 April. On 5 April, after protesters approached a barricade, a demonstrator was killed by Serb forces.
The war was formally brought to an end by the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, negotiated at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio between 1 and 21 November 1995 when the Agreement was initialed, and was formally signed in Paris on 14 December. Cease-fire agreements had previously been agreed on September 14 and October 5, 1995.
Background
Breakup of Yugoslavia
The war came about as a result of the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. A crisis emerged in Yugoslavia as a result of the weakening of the confederation system at the end of the Cold War. In Yugoslavia, the national communist party, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, lost ideological potency. Meanwhile, ethnic nationalism experienced a renaissance in the 1980s after violence in Kosovo. While the goal of Serbian nationalists was the centralisation of Yugoslavia, other nationalities aspired to the federalisation and the decentralisation of the state.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, a historically multi-ethnic region with medieval statehood and later Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian rule, has historically been ethnically diverse. According to the 1991 census, 44% of the population considered themselves Muslim (Bosniak), 33% Serb, and 17% Croat, with 6% describing themselves as Yugoslav.
In March 1989, the crisis in Yugoslavia deepened after the adoption of amendments to the Serbian Constitution allowing the government of Serbia to dominate the autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina. Until then, Kosovo and Vojvodina's decision-making was independent, and each autonomous province had a vote at the Yugoslav federal level. Serbia, under newly elected President Slobodan Milošević, gained control over three out of eight votes in the Yugoslav presidency. With additional votes from Montenegro, Serbia was thus able to heavily influence the decisions of the federal government. This situation led to objections from the other republics and calls for the reform of the Yugoslav federation.
At the 14th Extraordinary Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, on 20 January 1990, the delegations of the republics could not agree on the main issues facing the Yugoslav federation. As a result, the Slovene and Croatian delegates left the Congress. The Slovene delegation, headed by Milan Kučan, demanded democratic changes and a looser federation, while the Serbian delegation, headed by Milošević, opposed it.
In the first multi-party election in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in November 1990, votes were cast largely according to ethnicity, leading to the success of the Bosniak Party of Democratic Action (SDA), the Serb Democratic Party (SDS), and the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ BiH).
As a result, political power was distributed along ethnic lines. The president of the Presidency of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was a Bosniak, the president of the Parliament was a Serb, and the prime minister was a Croat. Similar patterns of nationalist and separatist party dominance emerged in other republics, including Croatia and Slovenia.
Beginning of the Yugoslav Wars
Meetings were held in early 1991 between the leaders of the six Yugoslav republics, and the two autonomous regions, to discuss the crisis. The Serbian leadership favoured a federal solution, whereas the Croatian and Slovenian leadership favoured an alliance of sovereign states. Bosnian leader Alija Izetbegović proposed an asymmetrical federation in February, where Slovenia and Croatia would maintain loose ties with the four remaining republics. Shortly after, he changed his position and opted for a sovereign Bosnia as a prerequisite for such a federation.
On 25 March, Croatian President Franjo Tuđman and Serbian President Slobodan Milošević held a meeting in Karađorđevo. The meeting was controversial due to claims by some Yugoslav politicians that the two presidents agreed to the partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On 6 June, Izetbegović and Macedonian president Kiro Gligorov proposed a weak confederation between Croatia, Slovenia, and a federation of the other four republics. That was rejected by the Milošević administration.
On 25 June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence. An armed conflict in Slovenia ensued, while clashes in areas of Croatia with substantial ethnic Serb populations escalated into a full-scale war. The Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) abandoned efforts to reassert control over Slovenia in early July and redeployed its forces to support Serb rebels in Croatia, where fighting intensified until a ceasefire was agreed in January 1992. During this period, the JNA also used Bosnia and Herzegovina as a staging ground for attacks against Croatian territory.
In July 1991, representatives of the Serb Democratic Party (SDS), including SDS president Radovan Karadžić, Muhamed Filipović, and Adil Zulfikarpašić from the Muslim Bosniak Organisation (MBO), drafted an agreement known as the Zulfikarpašić–Karadžić agreement. This would leave SR Bosnia and Herzegovina in a state union with SR Serbia and SR Montenegro, effectively keeping the republic within a "rump Yugoslavia." The agreement was denounced by Croat political parties and did not receive support from the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) leadership as a whole. While Izetbegović was kept informed of the meetings, the initiative was viewed as a move to undermine the official government; the Izetbegović administration ultimately dismissed the agreement as a false solution that compromised Bosnian sovereignty.
Between September and November 1991, the SDS organised the creation of six "Serb Autonomous Regions" (SAOs). This was in response to the Bosniaks' steps toward seceding from Yugoslavia. Similar steps were taken by the Bosnian Croats.
In August 1991, the European Economic Community hosted a conference in an attempt to prevent Bosnia and Herzegovina from sliding into war. On 25 September 1991, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 713, imposing an arms embargo on all former Yugoslav territories. The embargo had little effect on the JNA and Serb forces, while Croat forces had already built up a considerable arsenal from seized JNA equipment and could smuggle other weaponry across its borders with neighboring countries. The embargo had a significant impact in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the start of the Bosnian War. The Serb forces inherited the armaments and the equipment of the JNA, while the Croat and Bosniak forces obtained arms through Croatia in violation of the embargo.
On 19 September 1991, the JNA moved extra troops to the area around the city of Mostar. This was protested by the local government. On 20 September 1991, the JNA transferred troops to the front at Vukovar via the Višegrad region of northeastern Bosnia. In response, local Croats and Bosniaks set up barricades and machine-gun posts. They halted a column of 60 JNA tanks, but were dispersed by force the following day. More than 1,000 people had to flee the area. This action, nearly seven months before the start of the Bosnian War, caused the first casualties of the Yugoslav Wars in Bosnia. In the first days of October, the JNA attacked and leveled the Croat village of Ravno in eastern Herzegovina, on their way to attack Dubrovnik in southern Croatia.
On 6 October 1991, Bosnian president Alija Izetbegović gave a televised proclamation of neutrality, it included the statement "it is not our war". Izetbegović made a statement before the Bosnian parliament on 14 October with regard to the JNA: "Do not do anything against the Army. (...) the presence of the Army is a stabilizing factor to us, and we need that Army... Until now, we did not have problems with the Army, and we will not have problems later." Izetbegović had a testy exchange with Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić in parliament on that day. After Karadžić wagered that the Bosnian Muslims could not defend themselves if a state of war developed, Izetbegović observed that he found Karadžić's manner and speech offensive and it explained why the Bosniaks felt unwelcome, that his tone might explain why the others federated by Yugoslavia felt repelled, and that the threats of Karadžić were unworthy of the Serbian people.
Throughout 1990, the RAM Plan was developed by SDB and a group of selected Serb officers of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), with the purpose of organizing Serbs outside Serbia, consolidating control of the fledgling SDS parties, and the positioning of arms and ammunition. The plan was meant to prepare the framework for a third Yugoslavia in which all Serbs with their territories would live together in the same state.
Journalist Giuseppe Zaccaria summarised a meeting of Serb army officers in Belgrade in 1992, reporting they had adopted an explicit policy to target women and children as the vulnerable portion of the Muslim social structure. According to some sources, the RAM plan was crafted in the 1980s. Its existence was leaked by Ante Marković, the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia, an ethnic Croat from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The existence and possible implementation of it alarmed the Bosnian government.
Final political crisis
On 15 October 1991, the parliament of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo passed a "Memorandum on the Sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina" by a simple majority. The Memorandum was hotly contested by the Bosnian Serb members of parliament, arguing the Constitution required procedural safeguards and a two-thirds majority for such issues. The Memorandum was debated anyway, leading to a boycott of the parliament by the Bosnian Serbs, and the legislation was passed. The Serb political representatives proclaimed the Assembly of the Serb People of Bosnia and Herzegovina on 24 October 1991, declaring that the Serb people wished to remain in Yugoslavia. The Party of Democratic Action (SDA), led by Alija Izetbegović, was determined to pursue independence and was supported by Europe and the US The SDS made it clear that if independence was declared, Serbs would secede as it was their right to exercise self-determination.
The HDZ BiH was established as a branch of the ruling party in Croatia, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). While it called for the independence of the country, there was a split in the party with some advocating secession of Croat-majority areas. In November 1991, the Croat leadership organised autonomous communities in areas with a Croat majority. On 12 November 1991, the Croatian Community of Bosnian Posavina was established in Bosanski Brod. It covered 8 municipalities in northern Bosnia. On 18 November 1991, the Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia was established in Mostar. Mate Boban was chosen as its president. Its founding document said: "The Community will respect the democratically elected government of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina for as long as exists the state independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina in relation to the former, or any other, Yugoslavia".
Borisav Jović's memoirs show that on 5 December 1991 Milošević ordered the JNA troops in BiH to be reorganised and its non-Bosnian personnel to be withdrawn, in case recognition would result in the perception of the JNA as a foreign force; Bosnian Serbs would remain to form the nucleus of a Bosnian Serb army. Accordingly, by the end of the month only 10–15% of the personnel in the JNA in BiH were from outside the republic. Silber and Little note that Milošević secretly ordered all Bosnian-born JNA soldiers to be transferred to BiH. Jović's memoirs suggest that Milošević planned for an attack on Bosnia well in advance.
On 19 December 1991, a secret document entitled "Instruction for Organization and Activity of Organs for the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Extraordinary Circumstances" (Variant A/B Instructions) was issued by the main board of the SDS and distributed to SDS leaders the next day. The instructions contained two variants: Variant A and Variant B. Variant A planned for a takeover of municipalities where Serbs formed a majority and was to be implemented immediately upon adoption of the document. Conversely, Variant B applied to municipalities where Serbs formed a minority and was adopted only on 14 February 1992, after a Bosnian independence referendum was called. Variant A called for a crisis committee which would be headed by the President of the Assembly as an ad hoc municipal government with a small number of members charged with making expedited decisions, and coordinating activities with the army, police and other higher institutions. In Variant B, the crisis committee would be headed by the president of the SDS.
On 9 January 1992, the Bosnian Serbs proclaimed the "Republic of the Serbian People in Bosnia-Herzegovina" (SR BiH, later Republika Srpska), but did not officially declare independence. The Arbitration Commission of the Peace Conference on Yugoslavia in its 11 January 1992 Opinion No. 4 on Bosnia and Herzegovina stated that the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina should not be recognised because the country had not yet held a referendum on independence.
On 25 January 1992, an hour after the session of parliament was adjourned, the parliament called for a referendum on independence on 29 February and 1 March. The debate had ended after Serb deputies withdrew after the majority Bosniak–Croat delegates turned down a motion that the referendum question be placed before the not yet established Council of National Equality. The referendum proposal was adopted in the form as proposed by Muslim deputies, in the absence of SDS members. As Burg and Shoup note, "the decision placed the Bosnian government and the Serbs on a collision course". The upcoming referendum caused international concern in February.
The Croatian War would result in United Nations Security Council Resolution 743 on 21 February 1992, which created the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR). During talks in Lisbon on 21–22 February a peace plan was presented by EC mediator José Cutileiro, which proposed the independent state of Bosnia to be divided into three constituent units. Agreement was denounced by the Bosniak leadership on 25 February. On 28 February 1992, the Constitution of the SR BiH declared that the territory of that Republic included "the territories of the Serbian Autonomous Regions and Districts and of other Serbian ethnic entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, including the regions in which the Serbian people remained in the minority due to the genocide conducted against it in World War II", and it was declared to be a part of Yugoslavia.
The Bosnian Serb assembly members advised Serbs to boycott the referendums held on 29 February and 1 March 1992. The turnout to the referendums was reported as 64%, with 93% of voters voting in favour of independence (implying that Bosnian Serbs, who made up approximately 34% of the population, largely boycotted the referendum). The Serb political leadership used the referendums as a pretext to set up roadblocks in protest. Independence was formally declared by the Bosnian parliament on 3 March 1992.
March 1992 unrest
During the referendum on 1 March, Sarajevo was quiet except for a Serbian wedding being fired upon. The brandishing of Serbian flags in the Baščaršija was seen by Muslims as a deliberate provocation on the day of the referendum. Nikola Gardović, the bridegroom's father, was killed, and a Serbian Orthodox priest was wounded. Witnesses identified the killer as Ramiz Delalić, a gangster who had become a brazen criminal since the fall of communism and was stated to have been a member of the Bosniak paramilitary group the "Green Berets". Arrest warrants were issued against him and another suspected assailant. SDS denounced the killing and claimed the failure to arrest him was due to SDA or Bosnian government complicity. A SDS spokesman stated it was evidence that Serbs were in mortal danger and would be further so in an independent Bosnia, which was rejected by Sefer Halilović, founder of the Patriotic League, an early pro-government defence organization, who stated it was not a wedding but a provocation and accused the wedding guests of being SDS activists. Barricades appeared the following morning at key transit points across the city and were manned by armed and masked SDS supporters.
Following Bosnia and Herzegovina's declaration of independence from Yugoslavia on 3 March 1992, sporadic fighting broke out between Serbs and government forces all across the territory. On 18 March 1992, all three sides signed the Lisbon Agreement: Alija Izetbegović for the Bosniaks, Radovan Karadžić for the Serbs and Mate Boban for the Croats. However, on 28 March 1992, Izetbegović, after meeting with the US ambassador to Yugoslavia Warren Zimmermann in Sarajevo, withdrew his signature and declared his opposition to any type of ethnic division of Bosnia.
What was said and by whom remains unclear. Zimmerman denies that he told Izetbegovic that if he withdrew his signature, the United States would grant recognition to Bosnia as an independent state. What is indisputable is that Izetbegovic, that same day, withdrew his signature and renounced the agreement.
In late March 1992, there was fighting between Serbs and combined Croat and Bosniak forces in and near Bosanski Brod, resulting in the killing of Serbs in Sijekovac. Serb paramilitaries committed the Bijeljina massacre, most of the victims were Bosniaks, on 1–2 April 1992.
Factions
There were three factions in the Bosnian War:
Bosnian (mainly ethnically Bosniak), loyal to the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Croat, loyal to the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia and Croatia
Serb/Yugoslav, loyal to the Republika Srpska and Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The three ethnic groups predominantly supported their respective ethnic or national faction: Bosniaks mainly the ARBiH, Croats the HVO, Serbs the VRS. There were foreign volunteers in each faction.
Bosnian
The Bosnians mainly organised into the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Armija Republike Bosne i Hercegovine, ARBiH) as the armed forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina were divided into five Corps. 1st Corps operated in the region of Sarajevo and Goražde, while the stronger 5th Corps was positioned in the western Bosanska Krajina pocket, which cooperated with HVO units in and around Bihać. The Bosnian government forces were poorly equipped and unprepared for war.
Sefer Halilović, Chief of Staff of the Bosnian Territorial Defense, claimed in June 1992 that his forces were 70% Muslim, 18% Croat and 12% Serb. The percentage of Serb and Croat soldiers in the Bosnian Army was particularly high in Sarajevo, Mostar and Tuzla. The deputy commander of the Bosnian Army's Headquarters, was general Jovan Divjak, the highest-ranking ethnic Serb in the Bosnian Army. General Stjepan Šiber, an ethnic Croat was the second deputy commander. Izetbegović also appointed colonel Blaž Kraljević, commander of the Croatian Defence Forces in Herzegovina, to be a member of Bosnian Army's Headquarters, seven days before Kraljević's assassination, in order to assemble a multi-ethnic pro-Bosnian defense front. This diversity was to reduce over the course of the war.
The Bosnian government lobbied to have the arms embargo lifted, but that was opposed by the United Kingdom, France and Russia. U.S. proposals to pursue this policy were known as lift and strike. The U.S. Congress passed two resolutions calling for the embargo to be lifted, but both were vetoed by President Bill Clinton for fear of creating a rift between the US and the aforementioned countries. Nonetheless, the United States used both "black" C-130 transport planes and back channels, including Islamist groups, to smuggle weapons to Bosnian-Muslim forces, as well as allowed Iranian-supplied arms to transit through Croatia to Bosnia. However, in light of widespread NATO opposition to American (and possibly Turkish) endeavors in coordinating the "black flights of Tuzla", the United Kingdom and Norway expressed disapproval of these measures and their counterproductive effects on NATO enforcement of the arms embargo.
During 1992–1995, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence secretly supplied the Muslim fighters with arms, ammunition and guided anti-tank missiles to give them a chance against the Serbs. Pakistan was thus defying the UN arms embargo. General Javed Nasir later claimed that the ISI had airlifted anti-tank guided missiles to Bosnia, which ultimately turned the tide in favour of Bosnian Muslims and forced the Serbs to lift the siege.
In his book The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President from 2009, historian and author Taylor Branch, a friend of U.S. President Bill Clinton, made public more than 70 recorded sessions with the president during his presidency from 1993 through 2001. According to a session taped on 14 October 1993, it is stated that:Clinton said U.S. allies in Europe blocked proposals to adjust or remove the embargo. They justified their opposition on plausible humanitarian grounds, arguing that more arms would only fuel the bloodshed, but privately, said the president, key allies objected that an independent Bosnia would be "unnatural" as the only Muslim nation in Europe. He said they favored the embargo precisely because it locked in Bosnia's disadvantage. [..] When I expressed shock at such cynicism, reminiscent of the blind-eye diplomacy regarding the plight of Europe's Jews during World War II, President Clinton only shrugged. He said President François Mitterrand of France had been especially blunt in saying that Bosnia did not belong, and that British officials also spoke of a painful but realistic restoration of Christian Europe. Against Britain and France, he said, German chancellor Helmut Kohl among others had supported moves to reconsider the United Nations arms embargo, failing in part because Germany did not hold a seat on the U.N. Security Council.
Croat
The Croats started organizing their military forces in late 1991. On 8 April 1992, the Croatian Defence Council (Hrvatsko vijeće obrane, HVO) was founded as the "supreme body of Croatian defence in Herzeg-Bosnia". The HVO was organised in four Operative Zones with headquarters in Mostar, Tomislavgrad, Vitez and Orašje. In February 1993, the HVO Main Staff estimated the strength of the HVO at 34,080 officers and men. Its armaments included around 50 main battle tanks, mainly T-34 and T-55, and 500 various artillery weapons.
At the beginning of the war, the Croatian government helped arm both the Croat and Bosniak forces. Logistics centres were established in Zagreb and Rijeka for the recruitment of soldiers for the ARBiH. The Croatian National Guard (Zbor Narodne Garde, ZNG), later renamed officially to Croatian Army (Hrvatska vojska, HV) was engaged in Bosnian Posavina, Herzegovina and Western Bosnia against the Serb forces. During the Croat-Bosniak conflict, the Croatian government provided arms for the HVO and organised the sending of units of volunteers, with origins from Bosnia and Herzegovina, to the HVO.
The Croatian Defence Forces (HOS), the paramilitary wing of the Croatian Party of Rights, fought against the Serb forces together with the HVO and ARBiH. The HOS was disbanded shortly after the death of their commander Blaž Kraljević and incorporated into the HVO and ARBiH.
Serb
The Army of Republika Srpska (Vojska Republike Srpske, VRS) was established on 12 May 1992. It was loyal to Republika Srpska, the Serbian-populated portion of Bosnia which did not wish to break away from Yugoslavia. Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadžić stated "Our optimum is a Greater Serbia, and if not that, then a Federal Yugoslavia".