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DAYTON PEACE ACCORD |
I INTRODUCTION
Dayton Peace Accord, peace agreement between leaders of the Muslim, Serb, and Croat ethnic groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina that officially ended the three-year war in that country (see Yugoslav Succession, Wars of). The agreement was initialed in Dayton, Ohio, on November 21, 1995, and signed in Paris on December 1. The accord was designed to guarantee a lasting peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (commonly referred to as Bosnia) and to lay the foundations for a reintegration of the country's divided ethnic communities.
II BACKGROUND TO THE DAYTON ACCORD
War broke out in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s after the Yugoslav federation (comprising Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia) began to dissolve. Ethnic Serbs launched armed struggles in Croatia (June 1991) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (April 1992) after those republics declared their independence from Yugoslavia. The Serbs, who did not want to secede from Serb-controlled Yugoslavia, fought to carve out separate Serb-controlled territories within Croatia and Bosnia. The Serb separatists were given military support by Slobodan Miloševiæ, the leader of the republic of Serbia. Around the same time, Croats and Muslims in Bosnia also began fighting a brutal war over territory. The war in Croatia lasted until January 1992, when an unconditional cease-fire established an uneasy peace between the Croatian government and ethnic Serbs. The war between Croats and Muslims in Bosnia halted with the signing of the Washington agreement in March 1994, which established a Muslim-Croat federation in Bosnia. Fighting between Croat-Muslim forces and the Serbs continued, however, despite international efforts to establish a lasting cease-fire.
In the summer of 1995 the tide began to turn against the Serbs, as Muslim-Croat forces recaptured some of the Serb-held territory in Bosnia. Around that time, the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) initiated aggressive efforts to bring the war to an end. In November, Bosnian president Alija Izetbegoviæ, Serbian president Miloševiæ, Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, and representatives from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and the European Union (EU) met at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base on the outskirts of Dayton. Several weeks later, Izetbegoviæ, Miloševiæ, and Tudjman initialed the comprehensive peace agreement that became known as the Dayton peace accord. The accord was signed formally in Paris on December 1.
III PROVISIONS OF THE ACCORD
The three sides stood to gain in different ways from the provisions of the Dayton accord and the end to the Bosnian war. The Bosnian Muslims believed they would receive substantial economic and military assistance following the lifting of the United Nations (UN) embargoes that had been imposed on the Yugoslav republics in the early 1990s. The Serbs calculated that an end to the war would forestall further territorial losses at the hands of Croat and Bosnian forces and legitimize the country's division. And the Croats gained the prospect of economic assistance and increased integration of Croatia into Western Europe, as well as a larger share of Bosnian territory than the Croat proportion of the Bosnian population warranted.
Specifically, the Dayton accord contained military, political, and civil provisions. In its military aspects, Dayton obligated Bosnia's warring parties to withdraw their forces behind a cease-fire line and established demilitarized zones of separation. In January 1996 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) placed an Implementation Force (I-FOR) in Bosnia on a one-year mandate to monitor the cease-fire. At its peak, I-FOR consisted of about 60,000 troops from more than 20 nations, including about 20,000 U.S. soldiers and large numbers of French and British troops. In January 1997 NATO launched a new Stabilization Force (S-FOR) to replace I-FOR, and the troop contingent was decreased by half. Although NATO leaders planned to cut troop numbers further during the summer of 1998, the mission itself was expected to be extended indefinitely.
On the political side, Dayton was intended to ensure that Bosnia remain a single state composed of two entities, the Muslim-Croat federation (officially called the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina) and the Serb Republic. The Muslim-Croat federation would administer 51 percent of Bosnia's territory, and the Serb Republic would control 49 percent. The agreement outlined a new national constitution specifying relations between Muslims, Serbs, and Croats. It provided for federal institutions representing all three nationalities-including a collective presidency and a shared central legislature-as well as separate governmental structures for the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic. The accord also required that elections be held throughout the country by September 1996.
In its civil aspects, the Dayton accord contained provisions relating to humanitarian aid, economic reconstruction, and the promotion of human rights. As part of these provisions, all citizens were supposed to have the right to move freely throughout the country, and refugees were to have the right to return to their homes. The UN appointed a special representative to facilitate civilian aspects of the Dayton accord.
IV EFFECTIVENESS
Although the Dayton accord was supposed to ensure the integrity of Bosnia, Muslim and Serb leaders had differing objectives in this regard. While Muslim leaders considered the accord a guarantee of the reintegration of Bosnia under a central government, Serb leaders viewed the agreement as a stepping stone to the creation of two separate states within Bosnia. The Croats' stance was somewhere in between these two positions, with the dominant element in the Croatian government leaving open the possibility of partitioning Bosnia along ethnic lines.
All three sides implemented Dayton's military components, but compliance with the civil and political aspects proved more problematic. The NATO forces failed to guarantee safe passage for citizens traveling within the country, and nationalist Serbs and Croats resisted the reintegration of communities divided by the war. Nationalist parties maintained their hold on power, scoring well in each contest in Bosnia's elections of 1996 compared to parties representing liberal, multiethnic, and democratic positions. The success of the nationalist parties discouraged the emergence of civil democracy in Bosnia and helped to consolidate the country's ethnic divisions. Finally, although the Dayton accord required that Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian leaders cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, set up to prosecute war criminals, these leaders did little to assist the tribunal. As a result, most prominent suspects of war crimes remained free in late 1997 despite international pressure to secure their arrests.
Contributed By:
Janusz Bugajski
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