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Why did Serb leaders oppose the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina?

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Bosnian conflict: destruction in Sarajevo — Bosnian War Buildings and vehicles destroyed in Grbavica, a suburb of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the Bosnian conflict (1992–95).

Serb leaders opposed the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina primarily due to nationalist aspirations aimed at retaining Serb-populated territories within a rump of Yugoslavia rather than becoming a minority in an independent, multiethnic state.12

As the Yugoslavia federation disintegrated in the early 1990s, the Serb Democratic Party, led by Radovan Karadžić, sought to prevent Bosnia and Herzegovina from seceding. This opposition was driven by a desire to unite Serb-inhabited areas of Bosnia with Serbia. Consequently, Bosnian Serb leaders boycotted the 1992 independence referendum and established their own "Serb National Assembly" and autonomous regions.341

This resistance was supported by the Serbian government under Slobodan Milošević, which provided logistical and military backing to Bosnian Serb forces. The resulting conflict involved the use of ethnic cleansing to forcibly consolidate control over these territories, reflecting a broader nationalist strategy to create ethnically homogeneous areas during the collapse of the Yugoslav state.415