The United Nations refused to intervene in the conflict in Bosnia, but a campaign spearheaded by its High Commissioner for Refugees provided humanitarian aid to its many displaced, malnourished and injured victims. Several peace proposals between a Croatian-Bosniak federation and Bosnian Serbs failed when the Serbs refused to give up any territory. They attacked Bosniak-dominated towns in eastern Bosnia, including Zvornik, Foca, and Visegrad, forcibly expelling Bosniak civilians from the region in a brutal process that later was identified as “ethnic cleansing.” (Ethnic cleansing differs from genocide in that its primary goal is the expulsion of a group of people from a geographical area and not the actual physical destruction of that group, even though the same methods-including murder, rape, torture and forcible displacement-may be used.) In early May 1992, two days after the United States and the European Community (the precursor to the European Union) recognized Bosnia’s independence, Bosnian Serb forces with the backing of Milosevic and the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army launched their offensive with a bombardment of Bosnia’s capital, Sarajevo. Far from seeking independence for Bosnia, Bosnian Serbs wanted to be part of a dominant Serbian state in the Balkans-the “Greater Serbia” that Serbian separatists had long envisioned.
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