Entry 4: World Response

World Response to the Bosnian Genocide

          

    By the time the Bosnian conflict had drawn to a close in November 1995, over 200,000 Muslim civilians had been murdered, more than 20,000 were missing and feared dead and 2,000,000 had become refugees.  

How did peace come about? What made the fighting end?  Even though the Muslim Bosniacs received weapons from neighboring Muslim countries like Pakistan, it was ineffective.  

 During his campaigning, Bill Clinton had promised to come to the aid of the Bosnian Muslims, and the time to act was at hand.  The U.S. entered into diplomatic talks to join the Bosnian Muslims with the Croats to fight against the Serbs, but that didn’t work. The Serbs continued bombing the Muslim “safe havens” set up by the United Nations and even took U.N. aid worker as hostages, using them as human shields.  When the realization hit that there was no other choice, the U.S. let a massive military strike against the Serbs.  This was in August, 1995.   

My Dad, Nathan Smith

 

When the Serbs realized they were finished, that sat down to carry out peace talks and agree to a cease fire.  After the talks concluded, NATO sent 60,000 troops to the area for a peace keeping mission. 20,000 of them were U.S. Troops, including my father, Nathan Smith, who deployed to the area of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Hungary from August 1996-February 1997.  “According to Richard Holbrooke, the chief architect of the Dayton Peace Agreement, the country would not have survived without the presence of the troops.” (“Bosnian Genocide”) 

    

 That’s how the battling ended, but what happened to the refugees?  Around 1 million of the refugees stayed within the borders of the former Yugoslavia, but more than 400,000 fled to other countries.  Germany has admitted the largest number of refugees, 200,000; however, they were allowed to stay temporarily and were tolerated rather than welcomed. Hungary took in about 60,000, Austria- 50,000, Sweden- 44,000.  The United States took in nearly 20,000. Many other countries helped with the refugee crisis as well; England, Australia, and Denmark, just to name a few.