[frame="11 10"]IN THE NAME OF GOD THE COMPASSIONATE THE MERCIFUL
*THIS DAY IN HISTORY
*The 14TH of December 1995
*The Dayton “Peace Accords”
*Elapsed Time: 13 years.
The Dayton negotiations took place at a U.S. Air Force Base in Dayton , Ohio , from 1 November to 21 November 1995, the “Peace “negotiations were led by chief U.S. Negotiator Richard Holbrooke and included the “Three Lates” Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, and the Croatian President Franco Tudjman.
The accords, formally signed in Paris on the 14th of December, 1995 recognized Bosnia-Herzegovina as a sovereign state within its existing borders, but the accords created two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (51 percent of the territory) and the Republika Srpska “ a Serb entity” (49 percent). The Entities have largely autonomous powers under a “national” government in charge of foreign and fiscal policy.
According to these accords which set timetables for holding elections and gave refugees the right to vote in their original place of residence, these measures along with war crimes trials and large-scale European financial aid were intended to help stabilize a fractured country and set the stage for its later transition to a fully unified multiethnic and democratic state.
The accords went into effect when the leaders Alijia Izetbegovic of Bosnia, Franjo Tudjman of Croatia and Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia formally signed the pact in Paris on December 14.1995, NATO troops known as the Implementation Force, or IFOR, took over from United Nations troops in Bosnia on Dec. 20, known as “D-day” starting the clock on a series of deadlines running for a year and bringing some 60,000 NATO troops, nearly 20,000 of them American, to keep the “peace” in Bosnia.
But according to many Analysts the Dayton system has its critics, both at home and abroad, they charge that some of the structures set in place 13 years ago have proven dysfunctional and led to the consolidation of gains by mostly the Serbs, the Croats and to a lesser degree the Muslims on a nationalistic line basis since the first post communist elections that took place in November and December 1990.
Adding to the misery of the majority Muslim Inhabitants of Bosnia lies the area partition taken between Serbia and Croatia while the Muslims were left with a rump mini-state or the impossible “option “of joining one of the neighbours, as such critics have rightly pointed out that Dayton set up two Para-states, or entities, namely the Republika Srpska and the Croat-Muslim Federation, the Serbs in particular have been adamant defenders of the entity system knowing for sure it is working for their benefits.
The Muslims are the largest single ethnic group and, unlike the Serbs and Croats, have no nation-state outside Bosnia that they might aspire to join or look to for protection and the institution by the “ World decision makers” of the Muslim-Croat federation, was a clear bid to deter any “ Muslim initiative” regarding the future shape of a Muslim state in Bosnia and the links of these two entities with “outside” states Croatia for the federation and the Federal republic of Yugoslavia for the Serb republic were allowed short of secession, to the detriment of the orphan Bosnian Muslims who have no sponsor or parent state!!!
Knowing for sure that it was crystal clear to everyone including the World Decision makers at that time that the true war-initiators were the Serbs who held the upper hand in the former Yugoslavia and bear the whole responsibility of all losses during this war as they were the first to employ a hyper nationalistic rhetoric and because their methods violated the most basic Humanitarian principles on which society rests.
So the gruesome and gloomy Bosnian landscape after such atrocities that lasted from the 06th of April 1992 to the 21st of November 1995 looked like: more than 250.000 Bosnian Muslims dead, about 18.000 Missing, more than 50.000 Muslim Women raped, thousands of Male Muslim Prisoners in Auschwitz like concentration camps and an equal number of injured people and more than one million Refugees and an unknown number of Muslim mass graves.
The essence of the “Dayton accords” was the 51% & 49%
division agreed upon as the basis for “Peace”, so the territorial provisions of the agreement were kept as close as possible to the map on the ground at the end of fighting in another terms rewarding the Serb aggressors for their territorial gains, as such Srebrenica and Zepa were to be retained by Bosnian Serbs while Goradze was linked to the bulk of the federation territory by a land corridor.
It ‘s been 13 years since the Dayton Peace Accords were signed, and truly the international community bears a good deal of the responsibility for the present dysfunctional constitutional system and the continuation of ethnically-based politics in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and yet the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina is still little more than an United Nations protectorate although the number of UN peacekeepers has been reduced from a post-war high of 60,000 to the current level of about 6,000 and political reforms have progressed very slowly.
In fact, Bosnia is more of a patchwork than a genuine modern state, the two so-called entities the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serbian Republika Srpska remain practically irreconcilable adversaries, to this day, and this Balkan republic is a highly fragmented country, with its 10 cantons, 14 governments and 145 ministers; the administration consumes 70% of the state budget. Social services and pensions must be paid from the remainder and this in a country with an official unemployment rate of more than 40%.
That is the bitter result and the very sad plight of Muslim Bosnians victims of the great injustice imposed upon them through very unfair results of “ethnic-cleansing” by the Serbs in all parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina and especially its eastern region, balanced in view of the “peace” decision makers, with the increased stability that the new arrangement would have in terms of the viability of the two entities.
But much to the great Bosnian Muslim’s chagrin justice has not been done yet, as the main criminals responsible for the whole tragedy in Bosnia are still unharmed and protected by Serb Nationalists in Bosnia, although one of the war-criminal (Karadzic) has been arrested the other war-criminal (Mladic) is still at large !!! These two top criminals were directly responsible and were the real butchers of Srebrenica, one of the six “so called” UN safe areas where on the 11th of July 1995, more than 8000 Muslim male were hacked to death in horrible circumstances.[/frame]