On December 14, 1995, a peace agreement was signed in Paris that ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had lasted since the spring of 1992. The document, prepared after talks at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, was signed by Alija Izetbegovic, Slobodan Milosevic, and Franjo Tudjman, while Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the EU became its guarantors.
The Bosnian war was one of the bloodiest episodes of Yugoslavia’s breakup. After the independence referendum, Bosnian Serbs rejected the result and, with Belgrade’s backing, proclaimed Republika Srpska. The war was marked by ethnic cleansing, and the turning point came with the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995. After that, the US and its allies shifted to large-scale air strikes against Serb positions.
The talks began on November 1, 1995. The American delegation was led by Richard Holbrooke. Participants were isolated on a military base so they would negotiate without outside pressure. According to Holbrooke’s memoirs, Washington prepared its own map of Bosnia’s future structure and used it as the basis for bargaining.
The main dispute concerned territory. In the end, Bosnia and Herzegovina was preserved as a single state divided into two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina received 51% of the territory, and 49% went to Republika Srpska. The issue of Brcko was left for separate arbitration.
“It is an unjust peace. But my people need peace,” Alija Izetbegovic said before the deal was concluded.
The agreement stopped a war that killed at least 105,000 people; about 1.4 million were internally displaced and another 1.2 million became refugees. At the same time, the system created in Dayton, built on ethnic balance and mutual veto mechanisms, ensured an end to the fighting but made governing the state extremely difficult. For that reason, the Dayton experience is now viewed both as an example of a successful end to war and as a warning against a peace that locks in political deadlock.