Inside the fraught diplomacy, internal rivalries, and last-minute brinkmanship that paved the way to Dayton.
The 30th anniversary of the Dayton Peace Agreement invites renewed scrutiny of its far-reaching impact on Bosnia and Herzegovina and the wider Balkans. In a series of articles published weekly, longtime Transitions contributor Tihomir Loza examines key turning points that led to Dayton, as well as some of the major challenges facing Bosnia today.
The ceasefire agreement – signed on 5 October 1995 and set to take effect on 10 October – was announced by President Clinton, reinforcing the sense that his administration was now fully committed to bringing the conflict in Bosnia to a close. Clinton also used the opportunity to confirm that the governments of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia had agreed to come to a “proximity talks” conference in the United States later that month, even if neither the exact place and start date, nor the precise format had been fully determined yet. (“Proximity talks” meant that the negotiating parties were in the same place, but not in the same room at first. Only when the shuttling mediators thought they were ready would they negotiate face to face.)
Unsurprisingly, the final stretch of the road to the ceasefire revealed that the machinery of war – the sentiments that powered it in particular – could not simply be switched off, even if the parties shared a sense that this push for peace was more substantial than any before. Perhaps precisely because the moment felt more consequential, some of those sentiments went into overdrive.
Read the first four parts of “A New Bosnia” here:
Prior to and in parallel to working on the ceasefire, the U.S. administration developed a set of “further basic principles,” which were mostly about the future institutional framework of the country. Of course, the issue was what kind of national level institutions could be agreed upon and how their powers could be balanced with those of the two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (predominantly Bosniak and Croat) and Republika Srpska (predominantly Serb). In addition, the U.S. mediators were keen on mapping provisions for postwar elections as well as introducing a constitutional court in what was a clear sign of their nation-building ambitions. Chief U.S. negotiator Richard Holbrooke’s plan was that the three foreign ministers would meet in New York on 26 September in the presence of the Contact Group representatives and adopt this additional set of principles to complement and build on those they adopted in Geneva earlier that month. (The five-nation Contact Group was composed of the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany).
Speaking Terms
In theory, Holbrooke and his team no longer needed to engage with the Bosnian Serbs now that they had formally authorized Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to decide on their behalf. Yet both the mediators and Milosevic felt it important to preserve the appearance of Bosnian Serb involvement, lest their exclusion somehow rock the boat. Accordingly, a quiet meeting was arranged in Belgrade for 23 September between a number of Holbrooke’s colleagues and the Bosnian Serb leadership.
At the outset, Republika Srpska political leader Radovan Karadzic and three of his colleagues rejected virtually everything on the table. They spurned even the Geneva Principles that Milosevic’s foreign minister had already accepted for them. They refused to countenance a joint presidency or direct elections to the state-level parliament – least of all elections held simultaneously in both entities.
Having buoyed Milosevic with news that a peace conference would indeed be announced imminently, the U.S. envoys asked him to intervene. By the following morning, Karadzic’s delegation had accepted most of the proposals they had vehemently rejected the previous day, though not without relatively significant concessions from the mediators.
The episode was reassuring insofar as it once again demonstrated Milosevic’s ability to deliver the Bosnian Serbs; at the same time, it raised questions about the likely obstructionism of Karadzic and his cohort of extremists during the implementation of the comprehensive peace agreement that the U.S. administration hoped to conclude at the conference that was now widely expected to take place within weeks. While the Americans had no choice but to bank on Milosevic, the administration had good intelligence on the Bosnian Serb leaders’ capacity to cause them trouble down the road. Clearly, Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military leader, remained unreconciled with the very notion of sharing state institutions with the other two groups, the Bosniaks in particular. Indeed, a strong and often dominant strand of Bosnian Serb politics since the early 1990s has been fixated on separation from the Bosniaks – if not from Bosnia itself – a tendency that has continued to plague the country’s development until today.
Along with outright racist takes – such as those of the former RS president, Biljana Plavsic – Serb leaders often deployed demographic arguments to justify their separatism. After Karadzic was indicted for war crimes, he complained before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) that the Bosniaks regarded the Serbs and Croats, who before the war together constituted a majority of the population, as guests in Bosnia. He then asked the judges to imagine how the “Christian majority” would suffer if the Bosniaks were allowed to “increase their birth rate by political means.”
When opening new strands of their peace initiative – such as the push for an agreement on the principles upon which a new Bosnia was to be constituted – the U.S. mediators mostly followed a specific strategy: they would first talk to the Bosniaks and incorporate their proposals into draft texts. Only then would they turn to Milosevic to determine which of those demands he was prepared to accept. This sequencing did not reflect a specific pro-Bosniak bias on the part of Holbrooke’s team, even if members inevitably empathized with the group most severely affected by the war. Rather, the Clinton administration had to tread carefully on the domestic front, where congressional opinion was distinctly pro-Bosniak. Yet, as we have seen, when faced with strong disagreements, especially on peripheral issues or those they believed could be approved later, they tended to put pressure on the Bosniaks, rather than Milosevic.
Prior to their meetings with Karadzic’s team and Milosevic in Belgrade, Holbrooke and colleagues held several meetings with Bosnian Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey in Washington to work on further principles. In fact, much of the detail in the draft document Holbrooke’s colleagues presented to the Serbs in Belgrade came directly from Sacirbey, including the bits that the Serbs were likely to reject – and indeed rejected – such as a direct popular vote for the national parliament held simultaneously in both entities and broad revenue-raising powers for the central government.
When the news reached Sacirbey on 24 September that Holbrooke’s people went to Belgrade with the draft principles he had helped shape, he did not like it at all. According to the Secret History of Dayton, a 1997 State Department internal study, Sacirbey protested to U.S. National Security Advisor Anthony Lake that the mediators were spending too much time with the Serbs and had thus been “contaminated with ‘Belgrade air.’” They needed to spend more time in Sarajevo, the Bosnian foreign minister argued.
Within hours, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic announced that Sacirbey would not take part in the meeting of the three foreign ministers in New York on 26 September, “given that the Serb side did not respond positively to our constructive proposals,” according to a short statement from the president’s office. Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic told Oslobodenje the reason for this change of mind was to do with “our vital interests,” which he described as guarantees for the “future state of Bosnia and Herzegovina” with no right of secession for “one or more parts.”
Alija Izetbegovic. U.S. Defense Department photo.
This was confusing as the issue hadn’t even been raised in discussions on further principles, except for a promptly rebuffed question on the right to secession from Karadzic’s crew earlier that day of which Silajdzic wouldn’t have had any means of knowing about at the time.
Back to the Balkans
On their way back to Washington from Belgrade, Holbrooke’s colleagues landed in Ireland to refuel, which is where their boss reached them by phone and asked them to return to the Balkans – to Sarajevo for talks with Izetbegovic and Silajdzic.
When they met the two Bosniak leaders the next morning, they were surprised to discover that the two put forward different objections to the draft of the further principles. While Izetbegovic largely limited his objections to the removal of the word “direct” in reference to the elections for the national assembly, Silajdzic was more interested in reversing some of the revisions made by Sacirbey, particularly those in relation to the powers of the joint presidency and national government. While the mediators tended to address disagreements over such issues through “deferral and ambiguity,” Sacirbey insisted on everything being clear-cut and detailed. Naturally, the Americans had expected to deal with differences among the three parties, although not among the leaders of one of them.
Over this period, Holbrooke and his team came to view the Bosnian foreign minister’s inflexibility as the lesser of their problems on the Bosniak side of the equation. They became convinced that the rivalry among the three top Bosniak leaders – Izetbegovic, Sacirbey, and Silajdzic – was so great that it extended right into the peace process they were trying to foster. They would agree something with Sacirbey or Izetbegovic only to discover that Silajdzic had other ideas. This time the prime minister objected to strong powers being given to the collective presidency, the body to which, almost inevitably, Izetbegovic would be elected. Silajdzic favored something closer to parliamentary democracy with executive powers vested with the governmental cabinet, where Silajdzic possibly saw himself. Both sides disregarded the reality that the Serbs – and possibly the Croats – would not agree to either form of government. The Bosniak leaders also did not seem to accept the incremental logic of the negotiating process: at this point, to move things forward it was sufficient to say only that there would be a presidency, a state-level government, and elections. The U.S. government took the resulting confusion in Sarajevo seriously enough to commission an interagency task force intelligence report.
Haris Silajdzic on a visit to the European Commission in 1995. EC photo.
In August, Silajdzic had submitted his resignation after a series of disagreements with Izetbegovic and Sacirbey. When a few days later Izetbegovic asked him to withdraw the resignation, he did. In the meantime, Sacirbey was asked to comment on the potential negative consequences of Silajdzic’s resignation given the prime minister’s prominence internationally. “Believe me, Bosnia and Herzegovina is much more important than any individual, for people don’t have sympathies for Bosnia because of individuals, but rather because of the suffering that our people endure and the principles we defend,” he told Oslobodjenje.
While the rivalry was real and bitter, the Americans possibly made a bit too much of it when imagining the possible damage to the peace process. While Silajdzic, Sacirbey, and a number of other figures in Izetbegovic’s orbit had significant maneuvring space and weight, the Bosniak leader called the shots on all key matters. Far from being capable of derailing the peace process, the internal rivalries manifested themselves primarily through a certain lack of focus and occasionally proper seriousness among Izetbegovic’s team.
The three foreign ministers adopted the “Further Agreed Basic Principles” on 26 September in New York, though not without a last-minute drama with Sacirbey in the starring role.
In an early morning call, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Holbrooke obtained Izetbegovic’s green light to drop from the draft the words “exclusive” (foreign policy competences of the presidency) and “direct” (elections). (Milosevic had insisted on both points, hinting he might later be able to concede on the latter.) A meeting of the Contact Group’s foreign ministers was soon to start, at which the further principles were to be adopted by Sacirbey and the foreign ministers of Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Mate Granic and Milan Milutinovic. President Clinton was scheduled to announce the good news from the White House at 4 p.m. – except that Sacirbey was soon on the phone to the U.S. mediators to say the deal was off. He said he had just persuaded Izetbegovic to renege on the deal, according to the Secret History of Dayton (the 1997 U.S. State Department study, declassified in 2003, that forms the core of The Secret History of Dayton: U.S. Diplomacy and the Bosnia Peace Process 1995, also published as The Road to the Dayton Accords: A Study of American Statecraft).
Unable to persuade Sacirbey, Christopher had to open the Contact Group meeting as scheduled only to quickly adjourn it to allow time for more talks with Sacirbey. The Contact Group ministers had no idea what was going on. Sacirbey in the end, of course, backed down, obtaining in exchange permission to speak of an undivided Sarajevo in his address after the adoption of the principles. Amusing as it is, this episode of brinkmanship had little point beside making a point. The concession on Sarajevo that Sacirbey got in return was rather hollow as by now U.S., British, French, and German top officials had all explicitly and publicly said that Sarajevo would indeed be undivided.
After the meeting, Sacirbey held a press conference. He spoke at length about the provisions in the agreement pertaining to elections, saying he had received assurances, presumably from the mediators, that the words “free and democratic elections, in fact, mean direct elections.” The foreign minister also spelled out the conditions that the parties had agreed to fulfill in order to create an environment conducive to holding elections, among them the requirement “that war criminals are delivered to the war crimes tribunal.” Yet, the further principles agreement made no mention of either war crimes or the ICTY.
Tihomir Loza, a former deputy director of Transitions, manages the organization’s projects in the Balkans. Tihomir also coordinates SEENPM, a network of media organizations in Central and Southeast Europe.