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C h a p t e r F o u r Bosnia-Herzegovina The civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1991–1995) was famously described by U.S. secretary of state Warren Christopher as “the problem from hell” because of its complexity and apparent intractability.1 The war was not a symmetrical civil war between two evenly matched sides, but rather a multisided conflict fought by combinations of conventional forces, local militias, and irregular forces representing, or claiming to represent, different ethnic groups.2 Once Slovenia and Croatia declared independence in 1991, the slow-motion destruction of the multiethnic state of Yugoslavia began, as the Yugoslav army, dominated by Serb-led units, and Croatian regular forces launched operations to protect their ethnic kin.3 The war not only was a top-down affair launched by state actors but also involved the mobilization of local militias and criminal forces that emerged to organize the protection of vulnerable civilians, among other less noble goals. The violence in the civil war was directed primarily against civilians, as all three sides (Bosnian Muslim, Croat, and Serb) killed and expelled civilians in order to “cleanse” territory and produce homogeneous pockets of their ethnic kin. The war produced some of the worst violence seen in Europe since the end of the Second World War. While the precise numbers are in dispute, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people were killed, and between 900,000 and 1.2 million people became refugees, excluding 1.3 to 1.5 million people who were internally displaced.4 By some estimates, nearly half of the population of Bosnia was uprooted by the conflict.5 The peace accord that ended the Bosnian civil war—the General Framework for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but more commonly known as the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA)—forced all of the sides to accept a cease-fire and to relocate their political demands within the context of a multilayered federal state. From the outset there were serious doubts that the peace settlement would last. Between 1991 and 1994, there had been eight efforts to broker a negotiated settlement between the parties , including most notably the Vance-Owen plan, but each had failed.6 The Dayton Accords were signed under duress, as all of the parties found themselves under intense diplomatic pressure from the United States and leading European states to put an end 100 Five Case Studies of Post-Conflict Violence to the fighting. Among the most intransigent were the Bosnian Serbs, who did not take negotiations seriously until NATO began to use air strikes to reverse their territorial advances. The Dayton Accords did not resolve the fundamental issues that drove the conflict, such as the ethnic antagonisms and pervasive insecurity of small pockets of ethnic minorities. Instead, it conceded the point, creating a government composed of two distinct ethnic entities: the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, composed of Bosnian Muslims and Croats; and the Republika Srpska (RS), composed of Bosnian Serbs. While formally linked together in a single state, each entity maintained control over taxation, education, and local administration.7 Although it ended the civil war, the Dayton Accords left many final status issues—such as the status of contested cities like Brcko and Mostar, as well as the constitution of the police and army— unresolved over the short term. The agreement was marked by internal contradictions , as it “stabilized the lines of confrontation and derived political rights from them; on the other hand, it aspired to override these divisions both from above—in its joint institutions—and from below, in provisions for return.”8 Even Richard Holbrooke , the American diplomat most responsible for the Dayton Accords, admitted that it was a flawed agreement, particularly in that it left two standing armies (Serbian and Muslim-Croat) and did not immediately disarm the parties.9 In many respects, the post-conflict period was marked by failure. Bosnia effectively became a ward of the international community, as NATO enforced the peace on all of the parties, and a range of organizations, led by the UN, OSCE, and OHR, tried to build the institutions for democracy in a deeply divided society. According to one estimate in 2009, Bosnia had received nearly $14 billion in reconstruction aid right after the war, and “by the end of 1996, 17 different foreign governments, 18 UN agencies, 27 intergovernmental organizations, and about 200 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—not to mention tens of thousands of troops from across the globe—were involved in reconstruction...

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