titioning of Bosnia was agreed upon even though no lines were actually drawn.Alija Izetbegovic, the president of Bosnia and a Muslim, seemed to be for the plan at the summit but once he returned home, quickly changed his mind. Several factors contributed to this change of heart. Izetbegovic knew that if the west did not intervene militarily, Serbs would surely take over the country and the Muslim population would be decimated. Furthermore, if he agreed to a partition of Bosnia, at least a Bosnia would still exist. Bosnia itself would have to be large enough to show up on a map or it would most certainly be absorbed by either Croatia or by Serbia (Yugoslavia). However, when Izetbegovic returned home to Sarajevo, he found that there was little to no support for the plan and that it was in his best interests to abandon it (Bennett, 236-239).What good would a division of Bosnia do? It obviously rewards the Serbs for being the aggressors and punishes the Bosnian Muslims for wanting an independence that the United States and European Community had already to recognize. Furthermore, partitioning Bosnia would have broken up the state into microstates with little to no cohesion. Pockets of Serbs would be living among pockets of Croats and pockets of Muslims. What kind of country would that be? There is no clear majority in Bosnia therefore; the government would be in a constant state of gridlock with nothing getting accomplished because each canton could be voting along ethnic lines. However, Serbs had control of most of the country. While in control, they sought to consolidate their hold on lands in eastern Bosnia as well as a section of northwestern Bosnia where large Serb populations lived. The also selected as their target a narrow corridor of land that connected the two regions of Bosnia that they controlled. Once in control, they began campaigns to rid their targeted regions of other ethnic groups. Murder and assault were som...
