kdj

From the autumn of 1993, the U.S. pursued a two-track policy. While publicly lending support to the tripartite division of Bosnia that international negotiations for a Union of Three Republics were inching towards (seeBosnia’s Failed Peace Plans), the U.S. administration sought at the same time to control or limit the partition process bilaterally.

Bosnia had already suffered a three-way partition on the ground. Croatian paramilitary and regular army troops entered the war in late 1992 and by the summer of 1993 most of the Croatian majority and mixed Muslim-Croat areas of western Bosnia were under their control.

Between August 1993 and January 1994, U.S. envoy Charles Redman and ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith worked behind the scenes to broker a peace agreement between Croatian nationalists and the Bosnian government.

Spearheaded by moderate Bosnian Croats, the initiative met with stiff resistance from nationalist Croats and the Croatian government that supported them. Croatia continued to defy UN and U.S. demands to withdraw troops from Bosnia, and Croatian paramilitary groups were intent on seizing territory by force.

But when the U.S. combined incentives with pressure, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman bent. If Croatia pushed for a Muslim-Croat federation in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Tudjman was told, the U.S. would support Croatia’s applications for membership in European institutions, and would mobilize aid for the country, especially for its army. Moreover, the new federation would the option of confederation with Croatia. If, on the other hand, Croatia did not support the U.S. initiative, sanctions might be imposed against it.

The offer proved sufficiently persuasive, and at the end of February 1994 four days of proximity talks in Washington yielded a “Framework Agreement for the Bosniac-Croat Federation” (The Washington Agreement).

The Washington Agreement created a federation of two constituent nations, Croats and Muslims (now named “Bosniacs”). In return, Croatian paramilitary groups would cede control of the area they called “Herceg-Bosna” (Herzegovina), and the federation would have the right to confederate with Croatia.

Croatian paramilitary groups would merge with Bosnian army units, and the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR), which had already undertaken humanitarian aid delivery in Bosnia, would help implement the creation of a unified territory and security force across the federation. Mostar would be placed under an EU administration for a two-year interim period. Refugees and displaced people would return to areas they had been driven from. The federation would have a weak central government with most administrative powers, including policing, devolved to the cantons (clusters of municipalities, with borders based on the previous administrative units, or communes, in Bosnia).

All executive and judicial posts would be shared between Muslims and Croats: if the president was Muslim, the vice-president would have to be Croat, and vice versa. The federation’s House of Peoples (akin to the Senate) would have equal numbers of Muslims and Croats, while the House of Representatives (akin to Congress) would be in proportion to the ethnic composition of the population. So would the cantonal legislatures, courts and police.

Finally, Muslim or Croat majority cantons would be allowed to band into “Councils of Cantons.” Even the three Ombudsmen, tasked with monitoring human rights across the federation, had to comprise a Bosniac, a Croat, and an “Other” (double speak for Serb, as Serb nationalists were yet to come to the negotiating table.

The agreement yielded mixed results. A cease-fire took hold across central Bosnia and UNPROFOR troops began to be moved to the Croatian-Muslim front lines. But Croatian paramilitary groups did not cede control to UNPROFOR — or to the EU administration in Mostar — and Croatian irregulars did not merge with Bosnian government forces.

There was little return of refugees to areas under Croatian nationalist control. And the ethnic provisions of the federal constitution had a severely negative impact on the Bosnian government. The moderates lost out in most of the governing bodies, while the nationalists gained in power.

The main, and by no means insignificant, achievements of the Washington Agreement were to end the Croatian-Bosnian war, and lift the siege of Sarajevo. At the same time, the Serbian-Bosnian war continued to escalate. Though Serbian nationalists were offered inducements to enter the federation on the same terms as Croatian nationalists had, they held out for a two-way partition of Bosnia, and in early 1995 renewed their offensive to establish a Serbian republic by force.

The U.S. and the EU had hoped that after the federation agreement Croatian and Bosnian forces would form a joint front against Serbian forces, and the months between spring 1994 and summer 1995 were devoted to pushing the Croatian army and irregulars to support Bosnian government forces. Croatia, however, was concerned to reintegrate its own Serbian held territories first, which were under UN protection (seePeace Process: The UN Protected Areas).

In the summer of 1995 the Croatian army attacked the UN Protected Area of West Slavonia and captured it, and then retook Knin and the Serbian held territories along the border with western Bosnia. Some 300,000 Croatian Serb refugees fled to Bosnia.

Having achieved its end, the Croatian government finally agreed to a joint front with the Bosnian government, and in early August Bosnian and Croatian forces began to retake Serbian held territories in central and western Bosnia, while NATO provided air support by bombing Bosnian Serb command centers.

The joint offensive succeeded in wresting control over some 51 % of Bosnian territory by the end of October, when the U.S. and the EU began to push for a cessation of hostilities. During the failed negotiations over the Union of Three Republics Plan, international mediators had agreed that the Muslim republic should comprise no less than 33-34 % of Bosnia’s territory, while the Croat Republic would have 17 %. Now the two had together established military control over the combined area.

Under concerted international pressure, Bosnian and Croatian forces agreed to halt their offensive, and the U.S. and the U.N pushed the three sides into a peace agreement at Dayton, Ohio, in November 1995. Bosnia’s grueling war finally came to an end.