The Bosnian War

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The Bosnian War was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. The main belligerents were the forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and those of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat entities within Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska and Herzeg-Bosnia, which were led and supplied by Serbia and Croatia, respectively.¹

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 percent), as well as Orthodox Serbs (32.5 percent) and Catholic Croats (17 percent) – passed a referendum for independence on 29 February 1992. This was rejected by the political representatives of the Bosnian Serbs, who had boycotted the referendum. Following Bosnia and Herzegovina’s declaration of independence which gained international recognition, the Bosnian Serbs and the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), mobilized their forces inside Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to secure ethnic Serb territory, then war soon spread across the country, accompanied by ethnic cleansing.

The Bosnian War was characterized 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 Bosnian forces. Events such as the Siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre later became iconic of the conflict.

The Serbs, although initially militarily superior due to the weapons and resources provided by the JNA, eventually lost momentum as the Bosnians and Croats allied themselves against the Republika Srpska in 1994 with the creation of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina following the Washington agreement. The NATO intervened in 1995 with Operation Deliberate Force targeting the positions of the Army of the Republika Srpska,² which proved key in ending the war. The war was brought to an end after the signing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Paris on 14 December 1995.

The most recent estimates suggest that around 100,000 people were killed during the war. Over 2.2 million people were displaced, making it the most devastating conflict in Europe since the end of World War II.

In the case of Slovenia, specifically in the period of former Yugoslavia, there was mostly internal migration, as the migrants came mostly from the countries of former Yugoslavia. The refugee wave from the Bosnian War after the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991 hit Slovenia shortly after the end of its own short war of independence in the summer of 1991. Around 600,000 people had to leave the country and a part of them decided to run to Slovenia already in the first few months of conflict. While there were around 2,500 Croatian refugees registered in Slovenia at the beginning of September 1991, there were already 20,000 one month later, and the most, 23,000, in December 1991.

In order to receive the first refugee wave from the collapsed Yugoslavia, Slovenia established eleven processing centres. As the number of refugees began to decline in the first half of 1992, the centres were gradually closed.

It is interesting that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) did not even consider the people who had fled from the war in Croatia refugees. At the time of their arrival and the peak of the wave, Slovenia and Croatia were not yet internationally recognized countries, therefore these people were seen as internally displaced, meaning as people who left their homes because of war or some other reason but stayed in their own country.

A much higher number of refugees came to Slovenia from Bosnia and Herzegovina. As many as 2.2 million people, which is half of the population, left their homes during the war. They started to arrive in Slovenia after the start of the Bosnian bloodshed in the spring of 1992. The most came in 1993. At that time, there were 45,000 refugees from BiH registered at the Red Cross. In addition to that, there were approximately 25,000 unregistered refugees living with relatives or friends in Slovenia.

In addition to approximately two million citizens, Slovenia hosted around 70,000 refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina. They represented about three percent of the total population. Most, more than seven tenths, were Muslims, as they were called in Yugoslavia, or Bosnians, as they are called now.

Among them were almost only women and children. Less than one tenth of the BiH refugees were from the category that is usually assessed as men (and boys) capable of combat, that is, aged 16 to 60 years. This probably means that the great majority of men fought in the war.

Shortly after the start of the third Balkan war, one could sense that sooner or later, BiH would be the site of the bloodiest bursts, which is why Slovenia had already been preparing for the refugees before the arrival of the first in April 1992 by establishing 64 processing centres.

More recently, Slovenia has been (and is) a destination country principally for nationals of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, the Republic of North Macedonia, Montenegro, China, the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Over 130 000 non-EU nationals reside in Slovenia, with majority holding a permanent residence permit. Slovenia is also a destination country for irregular seasonal migration as well as a transit country for asylum seekers and migrants in an irregular situation.³

1. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/1992-09-01/war-balkans
2. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Deliberate_Force
3. Asylum applicants from the Western Balkans Comparative analysis of trends, push–pull factors and responses. Retrieved from: (https://www.easo.europa.eu/sites/default/files/public/BZ0213708ENC.pdf)