Ten years ago, the U.S.-brokered Dayton Accords ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the worst ethnic conflict in Europe since World War II.
After a majority of the citizens of Bosnia had voted for independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, the historic harmony of Bosnia was shattered when Bosnian Serbs (Orthodox Christians), with the backing of the Yugoslav army, took over most of the small towns and rural areas. They drove Bosniaks (Muslims) and Croats (Catholic Christians) from the communities in which their families had been living for hundreds of years, and attacked the multiethnic cities.
About 102,000 Bosnians lost their lives, and more than 2 million people were driven from their homes.
The term “ethnic cleansing” was coined by Serb academics, who later became politicians, to describe their means of achieving an ethnically pure Serb nation carved out of the historically multicultural Bosnia.
In the Serb-controlled area, the ethnic cleansing was carried out in two ways. First, all non-Serbs were rounded up and sent to concentration camps, where the economic, political and religious leaders were separated out. The leaders were sent to special concentration camps to be tortured and killed. The remaining women, children and old men were expelled across the battle lines into Bosnian-controlled cities, or across the border with Croatia. Young men who were not leaders were kept as a kind of slave labor.
The second aspect of the ethnic cleansing campaign was the deliberate destruction of non-Serb cultural artifacts: Catholic churches and historic mosques, Islamic architecture, libraries and schools. (While the Bosnian government did not participate in ethnic cleansing, Croat militia, which controlled some sections of Bosnia, systematically destroyed Orthodox churches as well as mosques and historic Islamic architecture such as the Old Bridge in Mostar.)
Having visited Bosnia during the war and worked in a program that brought 160 Bosnian students out of the war zone and into U.S. colleges, I was eager to return to see what had become of the country and the students who had returned.
The Dayton Accords have been a relative success.
A multilateral effort
The bitter ethnic warfare has ended. The U.S. played a major role in the development of the Dayton Accords, but unlike in Iraq, our efforts in Bosnia were clearly multilateral, resulting in an agreement that was signed by all of the warring parties and witnessed by representatives of the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and a European Union special negotiator.
Unlike in Iraq, where U.S. forces led a pre-emptive strike, in Bosnia U.S. troops went in as the core of a NATO force that had been authorized by the warring parties after a cease-fire. Thousands of U.S. troops have served in Bosnia in the past decade without a single casualty.
The Dayton Accords had weaknesses that are reflected in some of the problems that still exist in Bosnia. While giving lip service to multicultural values and the right of all Bosnians to return to the homes from which they had been expelled, the accords seemed to reinforce the ethnic divisions by dividing the country into ethnic “entities.”
The Federation, populated by Bosniaks and Croats, was given 51 percent of the territory, and the Serb Republic, populated by Serbs, was given 49 percent of the territory. The entities had their own police, military and governing bodies, while there would also be a weak federal government for all of Bosnia. A high representative (Paddy Ashdown, a British citizen) was mandated to coordinate and facilitate civilian aspects of the peace settlement and supervise the holding of free elections.
The political structures that Dayton put in place have not served the country well, but fortunately countervailing forces are also at work. Although the nationalist political parties that led the country to war are still very popular in elections, Bosnians are discovering that racism, religious bigotry and ethnic nationalism are disastrous for the economy and relations with the European Union. The only thriving part of the Bosnian economy is the new economy linked to the corporations and non-governmental organizations of the European Union.
EU seen as crucial
Bosnians of all political persuasions are realizing that the route to economic recovery and prosperity leads only through the European Union, which in turn has demanded compliance with international human-rights standards and democratic transparent government at all levels. The Europeans have not been willing to let market forces alone move the country toward Western standards for democracy. For a decade now the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has worked for democratization, education, human rights, public administration reform and security cooperation at all levels throughout Bosnia.
Sarajevo is in the middle of a reconstruction boom, funded largely by the influx of European companies that arrived only after significant reform of laws and institutions regulating banking and commerce.
The Serb Republic and other areas of Bosnia where ethnic parties held out against reform have seen their economies stagnate and wither. But even in the Serb Republic, the old guard has not been able to hold against the economic and political pressures from the outside world.
Prijedor, a city of 94,000 in the heart of the Serb Republic that had destroyed every mosque and Catholic church in the city and sent all of its non-Serb population to several nearby concentration camps, now has two rebuilt mosques and one partially rebuilt Catholic church.
The old Ottoman sector of the city that had been leveled because of its Muslim population and architecture now has many new homes and coffee shops, rebuilt by Bosniaks who returned with the savings they earned while they were refugees in Europe or the U.S.
A celebration
On the last day of Ramadan, I was invited to an Eid celebration feast in Prijedor.
The celebration was hosted by the Bosniak restaurant owner and city councilman, Muharem Murselovic, a survivor of two of Prijedor’s most notorious concentration camps. He had invited Prijedor’s most prominent citizens to his elaborate feast.
The guests included the mayor of Prijedor (a leader in the Serb nationalist political party), the previous mayor (also a Serb, who had been installed after they killed the Bosniak mayor at the beginning of the war), a Catholic priest, Prijedor’s senior imam, and several Bosniak and Croat survivors of Prijedor’s concentration camps.
Murselovic opened the 12-course feast with a toast that made no mention of the past but reminded all of their common humanity, their pride in their city and their future as a united Bosnia in the heart of Europe.
