Last November and December, a series of events and conferences marked the 20th anniversary of the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995, the negotiated agreement that ended the Bosnian war and devised a complex governance structure for the country.
The Dayton agreement was not a democratic agreement. It was not even an agreement negotiated by Bosnians or written in Bosnian. Pushed by the U.S. and European powers, the agreement between the authoritarian presidents of Croatia (Franjo Tudjman) and Serbia (Slobodan Milošević) carved up the territory of the third president in the talks, Alija Izetbegović of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). His country was recognized as a unified state but divided 49 percent/51 percent into two ethnoterritorial zones, a Republika Srpska for Bosnian Serbs and a Bosnian Federation for Bosnia’s Muslims (Bosniaks) and Croats.
Read Washington Post article by Gerard Toal and John O'Loughlin.