Army of Republika Srpska in the context of "Bosnian mujahideen"

The Bosnian genocide took place during the Bosnian War of 1992–1995 and includes the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 or the wider crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing campaign perpetrated throughout areas controlled by the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS). The events in Srebrenica in 1995 included the killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys, as well as the mass expulsion of another 25000–30000 Bosniak civilians by VRS units under the command of General Ratko Mladić.

The ethnic cleansing that took place in VRS-controlled areas targeted Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats. The ethnic cleansing campaign included extermination, unlawful confinement, genocidal rape, sexual assault, torture, plunder and destruction of private and public property, and inhumane treatment of civilians; the targeting of political leaders, intellectuals, and professionals; the unlawful deportation and transfer of civilians; the unlawful shelling of civilians; the unlawful appropriation and plunder of real and personal property; the destruction of homes and businesses; and the destruction of places of worship. The acts have been found to have satisfied the requirements for "guilty acts" of genocide and that "some physical perpetrators held the intent to physically destroy the protected groups of Bosnian Muslims and Croats".

Ethnic cleansing occurred during the Bosnian War (1992–95) as large numbers of Bosniaks and Croats were forced to flee their homes or were expelled by the Army of Republika Srpska and Serb paramilitaries. Bosnian Serbs had also been forced to flee or were expelled by Bosniaks and Bosnian Croat forces, though on a restricted scale and in lesser numbers. A lot of Bosnian Croats were also expelled by the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but once again, on a restricted scale. The UN Security Council Final Report (1994) states while Bosniaks also engaged in "grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and other violations of international humanitarian law", they "have not engaged in "systematic ethnic cleansing". According to the report, "there is no factual basis for arguing that there is a 'moral equivalence' between the warring factions".

Beginning in 1991, political upheavals in Bosnia and Herzegovina displaced about 2.7 million people by mid-1992, of which over 700,000 sought asylum in other European countries, making it the largest exodus in Europe at the time since World War II. It is estimated between 1.0 and 1.3 million people were uprooted in these ethnic cleansing campaigns, and that tens of thousands were killed.

The Croat–Bosniak War or Croat–Muslim War was a conflict between the Bosniak-dominated Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia, supported by Croatia, that lasted from 18 October 1992 to 23 February 1994.It is often referred to as a "war within a war" because it was part of the larger Bosnian War. In the beginning, the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) and the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) fought together in an alliance against the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS). By the end of 1992, however, tensions between the ARBiH and the HVO increased. The first armed incidents between them occurred in October 1992 in central Bosnia. The military alliance continued until early 1993, when it mostly fell apart and the two former allies engaged in open conflict.

The Croat–Bosniak War escalated in central Bosnia and soon spread to Herzegovina, with most of the fighting taking place in those two regions. The war generally consisted of sporadic conflicts with numerous short ceasefires. However, it was not an all-out war between Bosniaks and Croats and they remained allied in other regions – mainly Bihać, Sarajevo and Tešanj. Several peace plans were proposed by the international community during the war, but each of them failed. On 23 February 1994, a lasting ceasefire was agreed, and an agreement ending the hostilities was signed in Washington on 18 March 1994, by which time the HVO had suffered significant territorial losses. The agreement led to the establishment of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the resumption of joint operations against Serb forces, which helped alter the military balance and bring the Bosnian War to an end.

The Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Serbo-Croatian: Oružane snage Bosne i Hercegovine, Оружане снаге Босне и Херцеговине; abbreviated as OSBiH, ОСБиХ) is the official military force of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The BiH armed forces were officially unified in 2005 and are composed of two founding armies: the Bosniak and Bosnian Croat Army of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (VFBiH) and the Bosnian Serbs' Army of Republika Srpska (VRS).

The Ministry of Defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, founded in 2004, is in charge of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Republika Srpska (RS; Serbian Cyrillic: Република Српска, lit. 'Serbian Republic', pronounced [repǔblika sr̩̂pskaː] ) was an unrecognized geopolitical entity and a self-proclaimed quasi-state in Southeastern Europe under the control of the Army of Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War. It claimed to be a sovereign state, though this claim was only partially recognized by the Bosnian government (whose territory the RS was recognized as nominally being a part of) in the Geneva agreement, the United Nations, and FR Yugoslavia. For the first six months of its existence, it was known as the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Serbian: Српска Република Босна и Херцеговина / Srpska Republika Bosna i Hercegovina).

After 1995, the Republika Srpska was recognized as one of the two political entities composing Bosnia and Herzegovina. The borders of the post-1995 RS are, with a few negotiated modifications, based on the front lines and situation on the ground at the time of the signing of the Dayton Agreement on 14 December 1995. As such, the entity is primarily a result of the Bosnian War without any direct historical precedent. Its territory encompasses a number of Bosnia and Herzegovina's numerous historical geographic regions, but (due to the above-mentioned nature of the inter-entity boundary line) it contains very few of them in entirety. Likewise, various political units existed within Republika Srpska's territory in the past but very few existed entirely within the region.

The Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia (Croatian: Hrvatska Republika Herceg-Bosna) was an unrecognized geopolitical entity and quasi-state in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was proclaimed on 18 November 1991 under the name Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia (Croatian: Hrvatska Zajednica Herceg-Bosna) as a "political, cultural, economic and territorial whole" in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and abolished on 14 August 1996.

The Croatian Community of Bosnian Posavina, proclaimed in northern Bosnia on 12 November 1991, was joined with Herzeg-Bosnia in October 1992. In its proclaimed borders, Herzeg-Bosnia encompassed about 30% of the country, but did not have effective control over the entire territory as parts of it were lost to the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) at the beginning of the Bosnian War. The armed forces of Herzeg-Bosnia, the Croatian Defence Council (HVO), were formed on 8 April 1992 and initially fought in an alliance with the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their relations deteriorated throughout late 1992, which led to the Croat–Bosniak War.

The Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide, was the July 1995 genocidal killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys in and around the town of Srebrenica during the Bosnian War. It was mainly perpetrated by units of the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska under Ratko Mladić, though the Serb paramilitary unit Scorpions also participated. The massacre constitutes the first legally recognised genocide in Europe since the end of World War II.

Before the massacre, the United Nations (UN) had declared the besieged enclave of Srebrenica a "safe area" under its protection. A UN Protection Force contingent of 370 lightly armed Dutch soldiers failed to deter the town's capture and subsequent massacre. On 13 July, peacekeepers handed over some 5,000 Muslims sheltering at the Dutch base in exchange for the release of 14 Dutch peacekeepers held by the Bosnian Serbs.

Ratko Mladić (Serbian Cyrillic: Ратко Младић, pronounced [râtko mlǎːdit͡ɕ]; born 12 March 1942) is a Serbian former military officer who led the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) during the Yugoslav Wars. In 2017, he was found guilty of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He is serving a life sentence for these crimes in The Hague.

A long-time member of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, Mladić began his career in the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) in 1965. He came to prominence during the Yugoslav Wars, initially as a high-ranking officer of the JNA and subsequently as the Chief of Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska in the Bosnian War of 1992–1995. In July 1996, the Trial Chamber of the ICTY, proceeding in the absence of Mladić under the ICTY's Rule 61, confirmed all counts of the original indictments, finding there were reasonable grounds to believe he had committed the alleged crimes, and issued an international arrest warrant. The Serbian and United States' governments offered €5 million for information leading to Mladić's capture and arrest, but he remained at large for nearly sixteen years, initially sheltered by Serbian and Bosnian Serb security forces and later by family.

Although the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) existed as an alliance and conducted joint military exercises throughout the Cold War period, it engaged in no military operations during this time. All of its military operations occurred in the post-Cold War era. The first of these was in Bosnia, where NATO engaged to an increasing extent. This engagement culminated in NATO's 1995 air campaign, Operation Deliberate Force, which targeted the Army of Republika Srpska, whose presence in Bosnia posed a danger to United Nations Safe Areas. This engagement ultimately helped to bring about the Dayton Accords.

The organization played a prominent role in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks, when the United States invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which interprets an external attack on any member to be an attack on all NATO members under the idea of collective defense. NATO has participated in a wide range of roles elsewhere, including relief efforts, counter-piracy, enforcing no-fly zones and naval blockades.