The Srebrenica massacre was a culmination of the ethnic tensions and conflicts that arose during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. The Bosnian War (1992-1995) pitted Bosnian Serbs, Bosniaks, and Croats against each other in a complex web of ethnic and territorial disputes. Srebrenica, located in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, was an area of strategic importance for the Bosnian Serbs, who aimed to create an ethnically pure Serbian state. The Bosniak population in Srebrenica was seen as an obstacle to this goal.