History
Bosniaks Croats Serbs Western Bosnia]]
It was founded on May 12, 1992 from the army of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from which Bosnia and Herzegovina had seceded the same year. The army counted some 80,000 personnel during the Bosnian War (1992–1995).
The VRS was made up almost entirely of Serb Orthodox officers and recruits from Bosnia-Herzegovina. The army formations that fought for Republika Srpska also included various Serb paramilitary units, as well as Russian, and other volunteers fighting for the Bosnian Serb army.
The VRS has been convicted by the International Court of Justice in the Hague as the institution that participated in the commission of genocide in Bosnia against Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats, and indicted by the ICTY as committing genocide in multiple municipalities including Srebrenica, ultimately acquitted of the charges, exempting Srebrenica. However the leaders were convicted of large crimes against humanity including acts of expulsions, persecutions and exterminations in 37 municipalities in Bosnia. The military leader of VRS was General Ratko Mladić, who is now indicted at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for genocide, as are other high-ranking Serb officers. Mladić was finally arrested in Serbia on 26 May 2011.
Read more about this topic: Army Of Republika Srpska
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books.”
—Sidney Buchman (1902–1975)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)