The Siege of Bihać (1992–1995)

Kapetanova kula (the Captain's Tower) on the Una in Bihać — the besieged Una-Sana pocket that held out until 1995. Photo: Julian Nyča · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

At a glance

Location: The Bihać pocket, far northwestern Bosnia (Una-Sana), on the Croatian border
Period: June 1992 – 4–5 August 1995; UN "safe area" from 1993
Perpetrators: The VRS and the Army of the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK), together with the breakaway Bosniak forces of Fikret Abdić
Victims: The besieged, mainly Bosniak population; and the Bosniak loyalists persecuted by Abdić's statelet
Killed: The RDC recorded 4,856 killed or missing across the pocket (Bihać, Bosanska Krupa, Cazin, Velika Kladuša), 1991–1995
Outcome: The pocket survived; the siege was lifted in August 1995
Legal status: War crimes (Abdić convicted in Croatia, 2002)

Summary

The Bihać pocket, in the far northwestern corner of Bosnia, was the most complicated battlefield of the war. Cut off from the rest of government-held Bosnia, the mainly Bosniak enclave was besieged for three years by the VRS and by the Serb forces of the neighbouring Republic of Serbian Krajina in occupied Croatia. It was declared a UN "safe area" in 1993 — one of six — yet remained under attack and acute humanitarian strain. And, uniquely, it was riven from within: a rival Bosniak faction led by Fikret Abdić broke away, allied with the besieging Serbs, and waged war on his own people.

A Siege and a Civil War

The pocket's defenders, the ARBiH 5th Corps, held out against encirclement under conditions of severe shortage of food, medicine, fuel, and ammunition. In September 1993, the businessman-politician Fikret Abdić proclaimed an "Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia," with its capital at Velika Kladuša, and entered into open military and economic collaboration with the VRS and the RSK against the Bosnian government's forces. Abdić's authorities detained and abused Bosniaks loyal to Sarajevo in camps such as Drmeljevo, turning the enclave into the scene of a Bosniak civil war fought inside a Serb siege. Abdić was later convicted in Croatia, in 2002, in connection with the deaths of civilians and prisoners in the region.

The siege was finally broken in the late summer of 1995, when the 5th Corps, in conjunction with the Croatian Army's offensives against the RSK, relieved the pocket. Alone among the eastern and western enclaves declared "safe areas," Bihać — like Goražde — was never overrun.

Scholarly Analysis

The enclave that complicates every narrative

Bihać resists every simplification of the Bosnian war. It was besieged by two Serb armies across an international border, demonstrating the cross-border coordination of the Serb war effort. It was a UN safe area whose safety again depended on factors the UN did not provide. And it was the site of a Bosniak-against-Bosniak conflict that defies any account of the war as a clean three-sided affair. For the student of the conflict, Bihać is a necessary corrective — proof that beneath the broad pattern of a genocidal campaign against the Bosniaks ran cross-currents of opportunism, collaboration, and internal division that an honest history must hold in view.

Collaboration and its prosecution

The case of Fikret Abdić raises, in a Bosniak register, the same problem of collaboration documented elsewhere on this site in the Serb and Croat camps: the willingness of a faction to ally with the principal perpetrators of the war against members of its own community for political and economic advantage. His conviction affirms that accountability under the law follows the crime, not the standing of the perpetrator — and that Bosniaks, too, suffered at the hands of a faction drawn from their own community.

Sources and References

"Siege of Bihać (1992–1995)," Wikipedia. Available at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Bihać

"Fikret Abdić," Wikipedia and "AP Western Bosnia," Wikipedia. Available at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fikret_Abdić · AP Western Bosnia

Casualty data: Research and Documentation Center (RDC), Sarajevo — figures for the Una-Sana communities, as cited in the above. See also the related entry on Goražde.