Bosnian War in the context of "Operation Storm"

Bosnia and Herzegovina, often referred to as Bosnia-Herzegovina or short as Bosnia, is a country in Southeast Europe. Situated on the Balkan Peninsula, it borders Serbia to the east, Montenegro to the southeast, and Croatia to the north and southwest, with a 20-kilometre-long (12-mile) coast on the Adriatic Sea in the south. Bosnia has a moderate continental climate with hot summers and cold, snowy winters. Its geography is largely mountainous, particularly in the central and eastern regions, which are dominated by the Dinaric Alps. Herzegovina, the smaller, southern region, has a Mediterranean climate and is mostly mountainous. Sarajevo is the capital and the largest city.

The area has been inhabited since at least the Upper Palaeolithic, with permanent human settlement traced to the Neolithic cultures of Butmir, Kakanj, and Vučedol. After the arrival of the first Indo-Europeans, the area was populated by several Illyrian and Celtic civilisations. Most of modern Bosnia was incorporated into the Roman province of Dalmatia by the mid-first century BCE. The ancestors of the modern South Slavic peoples arrived between the sixth and ninth centuries. In the 12th century, the Banate of Bosnia was established as the first independent Bosnian polity. It gradually evolved and expanded into the Kingdom of Bosnia, which became the most powerful state in the western Balkans by the 14th century. The Ottoman Empire annexed the region in 1463 and introduced Islam. From the late 19th century until World War I, the country was annexed into the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. In the interwar period, Bosnia and Herzegovina was part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. After World War II, it was granted full republic status in the newly formed Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In 1992, following the breakup of Yugoslavia, the republic proclaimed independence. This was followed by the Bosnian War, which lasted until late 1995 and ended with the signing of the Dayton Agreement.

Bosniaks, often referred to as Bosnian Muslims, are a South Slavic ethnic group and nation native to Bosnia and Herzegovina. They share a common ancestry, culture, history and the Bosnian language; and traditionally and predominantly adhere to Sunni Islam. The Bosniaks constitute significant native communities in Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Kosovo as well. Largely due to displacement stemming from the Bosnian War and Genocide in the 1990s, they also form a significant diaspora with several Bosniak communities across Europe, the Americas and Oceania.

Bosniaks are typically characterised by their historic ties to the Bosnian historical region, adherence to Islam since the 15th and 16th centuries, and the Bosnian language. Bosniaks have also frequently been denoted Bosnian Muslims in the Anglosphere mainly owing to this having been the primary verbiage used in the media coverage of the Bosnian War during the 1990s. Bosniaks self-identified simply as Muslims in a national sense until 1993, when their leading political Party of Democratic Action adopted the term Bosniak. The earlier term, Bosnian Muslim, is considered problematic today when used as an ethnic descriptor rather than a religious one. Bosniaks may also often simply be referred to as Bosnians. However, this term is understood to denote all inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina (regardless of ethnic identity) or apply to citizens of the country.

After a period of political and economic crisis in the 1980s, the constituent republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia split apart in the early 1990s. Unresolved issues from the breakup caused a series of inter-ethnic Yugoslav Wars from 1991 to 2001 which primarily affected Bosnia and Herzegovina, neighbouring parts of Croatia and, some years later, Kosovo.

Following the Allied victory in World War II, Yugoslavia was set up as a federation of six republics, with borders drawn along ethnic and historical lines: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. In addition, two autonomous provinces were established within Serbia: Vojvodina and Kosovo. Each of the republics had its own branch of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia party and a ruling elite, and any tensions were solved on the federal level. The Yugoslav model of state organisation, as well as a "middle way" between planned and liberal economy, had been a relative success, and the country experienced a period of strong economic growth and relative political stability up to the 1980s, under Josip Broz Tito. After his death in 1980, the weakened system of federal government was left unable to cope with rising economic and political challenges.

The Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Croatian: Hrvati Bosne i Hercegovine), often referred to as Bosnian Croats (bosanski Hrvati) or Herzegovinian Croats (hercegovački Hrvati), are native to Bosnia and Herzegovina and constitute the third most populous ethnic group, after Bosniaks and Serbs. They are one of the three constitutive nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina have made significant contributions to the culture of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Most Croats identify themselves as Catholics and speak Croatian language.

Croats have been present in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the Slavic migrations to the Balkans. The Kingdom of Croatia under native rulers and later in personal union with Hungary encompassed large parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the west until the 16th century. The Croats also lived under the Kingdom of Bosnia until it fell to the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the 15th century. Between the 15th and 19th centuries, Catholics in Ottoman Bosnia and Herzegovina were often persecuted by the Ottomans, prompting many to flee the area, especially during the Great Turkish War and the Morean War in the second half of the 17th century, when their numbers were reduced to 30,000. At the end of the 17th century and in the early 18th century, the number of Catholics began to increase, with many of those who had fled returning. In the second half of the 19th century, especially during the Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Croats became active political subjects, participating in Croatian national revival. The 20th century brought political turmoil, and poor economic conditions led to increased emigration. Ethnic cleansing within Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s saw Croats forced to go to different parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite having lived in numerous regions before the Bosnian War. The 2013 population census in Bosnia and Herzegovina recorded 544,780 residents registering as of Croat ethnicity.

The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Serbo-Croatian: Федерација Босне и Херцеговине, romanized: Federacija Bosne i Hercegovine; pronounced [federǎːtsija bôsneː i xěrtseɡoʋineː] ) is one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being Republika Srpska. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina consists of ten autonomous cantons with their governments and legislatures.

The Federation was created by the 1994 Washington Agreement, which ended the Croat–Bosniak War within the Bosnian War, and established a constituent assembly that continued its work until October 1996. The Federation has a capital, government, president, parliament, customs and police departments and two postal systems. It occupies about half of the land of Bosnia and Herzegovina. From 1996 until 2005 it had its own army, the Army of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, later merged in the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The capital and largest city is Sarajevo with 275,524 inhabitants.

Republika Srpska (Serbian Cyrillic: Република Српска [repǔblika sr̩̂pskaː] ), also referred to as the Republic of Srpska or the Serb Republic, is one of the three political divisions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the others being the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Brčko District. Situated in the northern and eastern regions of the country, it recorded a population of 1,228,423 in the 2013 census. Its largest city and administrative hub is Banja Luka, located on the banks of the Vrbas River.

Republika Srpska was established in 1992 at the onset of the Bosnian War with the stated purpose of safeguarding the interests of the Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the conflict, the expulsion of the majority of Croats and Bosniaks from territories controlled by Republika Srpska occurred, while the majority of Serbs were displaced or expelled from the present-day Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Republika Srpska. The 1995 Dayton Agreement created Republika Srpska as one of Bosnia and Herzegovina's two constituent entities. Today, it is inhabited by the Serb population of the country.

The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as the Dayton Agreement or the Dayton Accords (Serbo-Croatian: Dejtonski mirovni sporazum / Дејтонски мировни споразум), and colloquially known as the Dayton (Bosnian: Dejton; Serbian: Дејтон / Dejton), is the peace agreement ending the three-and-a-half-year-long Bosnian War, an armed conflict part of the larger Yugoslav Wars. It was signed on 21 November 1995 in Dayton, Ohio, United States, at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It was re-signed ceremonially in Paris, France on 14 December 1995.

The warring parties agreed to peace and to a single sovereign state known as Bosnia and Herzegovina composed of two parts: the largely Serb-populated Republika Srpska and mainly Croat-Bosniak-populated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnia and Herzegovina entered into the related arms control treaty, the Florence Agreement, in 1996 under the Accords. The Dayton followed the Washington Agreement, signed the year prior, in collective efforts to delineate the country's geography.

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".

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, Bin Laden participated in the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War of the 1980s, and supported the Bosnian mujahideen during the Bosnian War of the 1990s. Opposed to American foreign policy in the Middle East, Bin Laden declared war on the United States in 1996 and supervised numerous terrorist attacks in various countries, including the September 11 attacks in 2001 in the U.S.

Born in Riyadh to the aristocratic bin Laden family, he studied at Saudi and foreign universities until 1979, when he joined the mujahideen fighting against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In 1984, he co-founded Maktab al-Khidamat, which recruited foreign mujahideen into the war. As the Soviet war in Afghanistan came to an end, Bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in 1988 to carry out worldwide jihad. In the Gulf War, Bin Laden's offer of support to Saudi Arabia against Iraq was rejected by the Saudi royal family, which instead sought American aid.