The state known to millions of people around the world as Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia – does not exist anymore. Yugoslavia burned out in a terrible fire which no one could have extinguished. On its ground, at the ashes of common state, seven new countries emerged. Among them is Bosnia and Herzegovina which revived its statehood. I am coming from Bosnia and Herzegovina and I will tell you today about difficult faith of my people who survived an exterminating war.

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TUĐMAN DID NOT HIDE THAT HE WANTED TO SHARE
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA (5):
But trouble never comes alone. Bosnian-Croatian conflict started in the spring of following 1993. The president of Croatia Franjo Tuđman did not hide that he wanted to share Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which he had wholehearted support of puppet authorities of Bosnian Croats who were previously armed by neighboring Croatia. ^[1] For Croatian president Franjo Tuđman, Bosnia and Herzegovina did not factually exist anymore. This conclusion of mine was confirmed by a High Representative of international community in BiH Paddy Ashdown, who testified in my latest book Memories of Alija Izetbegović about important discussions he had with Croatian president Tuđman in London Guildhall in April 1995. He said:

“I was shocked by the information given to me by Tuđman about the plan (for which I later found out was the plan from Karađorđevo) forged between Tuđman and Milošević in hunters cabin, to divide Bosnia in two parts between Croatia and Serbia…”

In the areas where Croats were the majority Tuđman formed parastate creation Herceg- Bosnia and according to Ashdown’s conclusion, that was actually the implementation of the secret plan made between him and Milošević about division of Bosnia and Herzegovina. ^[2]

"I was shocked by the information that Tuđman gave me about the plan to divide Bosnia into two parts between Croatia and Serbia..." - said Paddy Ashdown to Adamir Jerković,9.01.2006 (personal archive)

President Alija Izetbegović openly writes in his letter to Franjo Tuđman dated 28.01.1993 regarding the conflict of the Army of Republic Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Croatian Defense Council:
“...Deeper reason for conflict in the area of central Bosnia is efforts of some people from the Croatian Defense Council to continue with installation of one type of state community within the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is a real cause of tensions and growing distrust of two people, and we have to face that fact…”

As the end of the war was not even at the horizon, the world became tired of Bosnian war. In the spring of 1995, Americans forced Bosniaks-Muslims and Croats to accept the Washington Agreement ^[3]. In the military plan a balance of forces was reached so Bosniak-Croatian units managed to reverse the war to their benefit. The forces of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, populated mostly by Bosniaks, and the Croatian Defense Council whose members were Croats, launched a crucial offensive military attack near Bosnian town Bihać, and practically defeated Serbian forces who left Banja Luka in panic flight. But in that moment, the government of the USA, scared by Milošević’s announcement that he will send five divisions to Bosnian battlefield, asked Alija Izetbegović to stop the troupes. President Izetbegović did not want to comply with this American ultimatum. After the visit of American Ambassador John K. Menzies five days later, when he warned him that American airplanes will bomb Bosnian positions in the same decisive manner as they did to Serbs in September, Izetbegović issued the order on discontinuation of military actions. That was an end of a completely promising chance of conquering the most significant Serbian city, Banja Luka.

In the summer 1995, Serbs attacked Srebrenica and Žepa, the protected zones of the United Nations. Holland battalion cowardly abandoned Srebrenica to them.^[4] As the Muslims submitted previously their weapons to the United Nations troupes and couldn’t defend themselves anymore, Serbs caught them in the woods around Srebrenica and in that horrible slaughter around 9000 Bosniaks-Muslims were killed. They were murdered only because they were Muslims. That event was apparently a turning point in Bosnian war. After the fall of Srebrenica, the administration of the president Bill Clinton decided to establish peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

FOOTNOTE
^1] Franjo Tudjman, Croat politician who led the country to independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 and who was president until his death. Having joined the Partisans in 1941.
Tudjman was outspoken on nationalist issues, including the charge that Yugoslav authorities had inflated the crimes committed by Croatian Nazis (Ustaša) during World War II. His criticism of the government led to his expulsion from the Communist Party in 1967 and dismissal from his job, and twice, in 1972 and in 1981, he was sentenced to prison terms for antigovernment activities.
In 1989 Tudjman founded the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), which won Croatia’s first free parliamentary elections in 1990. Named president, he pressed for the creation of a homogenous Croat state. When Serb areas of Eastern and Western Slavonia and the Krajina revolted, they were occupied by the Yugoslav army. Beginning in 1995, Tudjman reasserted control over these areas and established virtual control over portions of Bosnia and Herzegovina with majority Croat populations.In a final verdict of war crimes trial of former high-ranking officials of Herceg-Bosnia, the ICTY stated that Tuđman shared in their joint criminal enterprise goal of establishing an entity to reunite the Croatian people which was to be implemented through the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims. However it did not find him guilty of any specific crimes. Although he signed the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement on Bosnia, his authoritarian style, along with his refusal to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, led to the international isolation of Croatia.

^2] The Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia was first a geopolitical entity and then an unrecognized quasi-state in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was proclaimed on 18 November 1991 under the name Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia as a "political, cultural, economic and territorial whole" in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and abolished on 14 August 1996. The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina declared Herzeg-Bosnia unconstitutional on 14 September 1992. Herzeg-Bosnia formally recognized the Government of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and functioned as a state within a state, while some in its leadership advocated the secession of the entity and its unification with Croatia. On 28 August 1993, Herzeg-Bosnia was declared a republic following the proposal of the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan, envisioning Bosnia and Herzegovina as a union of three republics. Its capital city was Mostar, which was then a war zone, and the effective control center was in Grude. In March 1994, the Washington Agreement was signed that ended the conflict between Croats and Bosniaks. Under the agreement, Herzeg-Bosnia was to be joined into the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but it continued to exist until it was formally abolished in 1996.

^3] The Washington Agreement was a ceasefire agreement between the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia, signed in Washington, D.C., on 18 March 1994 in Vienna. It was signed by Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdžić, Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Granić and President of Herzeg-Bosnia Krešimir Zubak. Under the agreement, the combined territory held by the Croat and Bosnian government forces was divided into ten autonomous cantons, establishing the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and ending the Croat-Bosniak War. The cantonal system was selected to prevent dominance by one ethnic group over another.
Washington Framework Agreement had the creation of a loose federation (or confederation) between Croatia and Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina as one of its goals.

^4] Srebrenica massacre, slaying of more than 8,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) boys and men, perpetrated by Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica, a town in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, in July 1995. In addition to the killings, more than 20,000 civilians were expelled from the area—a process known as ethnic cleansing. The massacre, which was the worst episode of mass murder within Europe since World War II, helped galvanize the West to press for a cease-fire that ended three years of warfare on Bosnia’s territory. However, it left deep emotional scars on survivors and created enduring obstacles to political reconciliation among Bosnia’s ethnic groups.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia—established before the massacre to scrutinize ongoing military conduct—concluded that the killings at Srebrenica, compounded by the mass expulsion of Bosniak civilians, amounted to genocide. It pinned principal responsibility on senior officers in the Bosnian Serb army. But the United Nations (UN) and its Western supporters also accepted a portion of the blame for having failed to protect the Bosniak men, women, and children in Srebrenica, which in 1993 the UN Security Council had formally designated a “safe area.” In a critical internal review in 1999, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan wrote, “Through error, misjudgment and an inability to recognize the scope of the evil confronting us, we failed to do our part to help save the people of Srebrenica from the [Bosnian] Serb campaign of mass murder.” Although Serbia was not legally implicated in the massacre, in 2010 the Serbian National Assembly narrowly passed a resolution that apologized for having failed to prevent the killings.