Dayton Accords Signed: Balkan Peace After War
The presidents of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia initialed the Dayton Accords on November 21, 1995, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, ending three and a half years of war that killed roughly 100,000 people and displaced over two million in the former Yugoslavia. Richard Holbrooke, the chief American negotiator, confined the three leaders in the same building for 21 days until they agreed. The accords divided Bosnia into two entities: the Bosniak-Croat Federation and the Republika Srpska, governed by a rotating three-member presidency. NATO deployed 60,000 troops to enforce the peace. The agreement stopped the killing but preserved ethnic divisions and created one of the world's most complex governance structures. Bosnia remains divided along ethnic lines, and the Dayton framework is widely criticized as unsustainable.
November 21, 1995
31 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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