Following the declaration of independence, Bosnian Serb forces, supported by the Serbian government of Slobodan Milošević and the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), attacked the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to secure and unify the territory under Serb control, and to create an ethnically Serb state of Republica Srpska. In the subsequent struggle for territorial control, the non-Serb populations from areas under Serbian control, especially the Bosniak population in Eastern Bosnia, near the Serbian borders, were subject to ethnic cleansing.