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home Europe Bosnia and Herzegovina History ... Postwar Bosnia History, Postwar Bosnia The war in Bosnia was finally ended in late 1995 by a combination of efforts. These efforts entailed vigorous diplomacy led by U.S. assistant secretary of state Richard Holbrooke, a successful joint Muslim-Croat offensive in western Bosnia (the first serious Serb defeat in the war), and a major air attack on Bosnian Serb positions by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In November 1995 the warring parties initialed a peace accord at a U.S. Air Force base near Dayton, Ohio, after three weeks of intensive negotiations and pressure by the United States. Tudjman, Izetbegovic, and Milosevic (who represented the Bosnian Serbs with their reluctant agreement) signed the Dayton peace accord in Paris in December. In addition to dictating a new constitution for Bosnia and providing for internationally organized elections, the accord established a formally united Bosnia made up of two entities, the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic. It included provisions for the unhindered return of refugees (estimated at 2.3 million of the prewar population of 4,364,574) to their places of origin. The UNPROFOR was to be replaced with a multinational but primarily NATO Implementation Force (I-FOR) of 60,000 troops, initially for one year but soon extended indefinitely, to keep the peace and oversee the agreement’s military and civilian security provisions. In 1997 the I-FOR became the Stabilization Force (S-FOR) and was reduced to 31,000 troops. | |
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