The Bosnian War came to end when NATO forces intervened and began a bombing campaign against the Serbs. This campaign was the first ever live engagement by a NATO force. The bombing led the Serbs to accept the Dayton Agreement. Under the terms of this agreement and the earlier Washington Agreement Serbia renounced its claims to BiH and a new political structure for BiH was put in place.
The Bosnian War was mindbogglingly complex. Like so many modern conflicts, the narrative depends on who you ask. Whether it was a civil war or one of outside aggression, who bears moral responsibility, and more issues do not have clear answers. Time has helped groups to reconcile and justice to be administered. All of the individuals indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia have been captured and several have been convicted. Still, progress remains to be had. The war disrupted the lives of an entire country. 20 years since the end of the conflict can feel like a lot of time or not nearly enough.
BiH formally consists of two political entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (consisting of mostly Bosniaks and Croats) and Republika Srpska (mostly Serbs). Each entity has significant autonomy within its borders, but the system is designed so that decisions at the national level are done by consensus. Naturally, this leads to very little being achieved, as each group has effective veto powers. The extremely complicated system is designed to placate each group. At the same time it has the effect of codifying the ethnic divisions and freezing them rather than trying to advance past them.
While I mention the religious groups above, it is only to show that country is diverse rather than spiritually rigid, dogmatic, and divided. Like its neighbors, Bosnia is markedly secular and historically the region has been extremely tolerant of different religions. Sarajevo is noted for having had an Islamic mosque, a Catholic cathedral, an Orthodox church, and a Jewish synagogue all within a radius of less than a half mile. These coexisted easily during the 19th century, well before any similar arrangement would be found elsewhere in Europe. Tragically, the synagogue exists only as a Jewish museum these days as a legacy of the Holocaust. Nearly all of Sarajevo’s Jewish population, nearly one quarter of the city, was eliminated during Nazi occupation.