Bosnia was once part of the former Yugoslavia.

During the Cold War, Yugoslavia was ruled by the communist dictator, Tito.

Yugoslavia had been formed in 1918 after World War I. It was reformed after the Second World War. But by the early 1990s, it was falling apart.

By 1992, Bosnia had declared its independence from Yugoslavia.

While the majority of Bosnians were Muslims, there was a Serbian Christian minority.

The Serbs in Bosnia wanted to form a greater Serbia and turned to the Serbian President of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, who ordered an attacks on Muslim civilians.

A program of “ethnic cleansing” began as over 200,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed.

Eventually, NATO peacekeeping troops arrived in 1995 and by 2000, Milosevic was ousted from power and turned over to a UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Milosevic was charged with genocide but died in the detention center before the trial concluded.

But genocide was not confined to Bosnia. Between April and June of 1994, over 800,000 Rwandans were killed when the President’s plane was shot down.

The President was a member of the Hutu ethnic group. Hutus accused Tutsis, a different ethnic group, of the killing.

Hutus began killing Tutsis. Many innocent people were killed.

Eventually, a Tutsi rebel group took over the government and the Hutu leaders fled.

In the Sudan, the government was accused of favoring the Arab pastoralists over the black African farmers.

When rebel groups attacked, the government responded with violence.

The Janjaweed, gunmen on horseback, have been accused of trying to “cleanse” black Africans from Darfur in western Sudan.

Many Africans have been killed in Darfur. In Darfur, Black Africans are either Christian or practice traditional religions. Arabs practice Islam.

Religious and ethnic conflicts continue to plague the world and sadly, genocide sometimes occur.