The conflict in Bosnia is among ethnic groups in the country?

Answer 1

It was an ethnic conflict between the three major ethnic groups in the country. At the time of the conflict, the population was about 44% Bosniak, 31% Serb and 17% Croat. The Bosniaks are Muslims, the Serbs are Orthodox Christians and the Croats are Catholic Christians. The proportion of Bosniaks has increased slightly since then due to outward migration of Serbs and Croats.

Bosnia and Herzegovina (Herzegovina is the mostly Croatian region to the south) was one of the six republics of post-WWII Yugoslavia, and unlike the others had no real dominant ethnic group. While Tito was the leader of Yugoslavia, he kept the country united and stopped the country from becoming a puppet state of the USSR, although they remained Communist. After Tito died in 1980, nationalistic sentiment started to return.

It was nothing new in Bosnia. WWI had been sparked off because Gavrilo Princip had assassinated Franz Ferdinand in Bosnia while the country was part of the Austria-Hungarian Empire. Princip was a Serb who believed the Serbian parts of Bosnia rightfully belonged to Serbia.

Anyway, as communism declined, B&H made democratic reforms just like the other Yugosalvian republics and Alije Izetbegovic (a Bosniak) became President of B&H. He had been a political prisoner beforehand due to alleged (and probably untrue) links to Iran. Izetbegovic opposed the initial secession of Croatia from Yugoslavia because they were the only nation that could stand up to Slobodan Milosevic, the increasingly nationalistic President of Serbia.

After Croatia and Macedonia seceeded, Bosnia followed suit. They had a referendum in which the Bosniaks and Croats unanimously voted in favour of secession, while the Serbs boycotted it and instead set up their own "Republika Srpska" (backed by Serbia and Milosevic) in the Serbian regions. Meanwhile, Franjo Tudman, the President of Croatia, discussed with Milosevic halting their conflict between each other and joining together to split off Srpska and Herzegovina to add them onto Serbia and Croatia respectively. This is thought to be the main reason why the Bosniaks and Croats then fell out - resulting in a three-way war.

The war was mainly a territorial conflict as the three forces fought to increase the land area the controlled. Initially, the Serbs were winning, but the Bosniaks and Croats reunited and recieved NATO backing - and eventually won. Bosnia seceeded without any border changes and the war ended with the Dayton Agreement in 1995.

The war was marked by ethnic cleansing, as civilians (mostly Bosniaks) were frequently driven out of where they lived by the Serbs (the Croats too also comitted some such war crimes), and some were even murdered. In total, 100,000 died and almost half the country's population lost their home.

Answer 2

Mostly against Muslims.