Word: daytons
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This Saturday, as prescribed nine months ago by the Dayton peace accords, Bosnians are to go to the polls in national elections. But many cannot even vote in their hometowns, including Esad, who asked that his real name not be used. "There's no way I'll go to vote in Doboj," says the gaunt, soft-spoken former factory worker, sitting in the tiny room he shares with his wife and two daughters in Muslim-held territory south of the city, "I'm still too shocked from the beating I got the last time I tried to cross." Wherever they...
...State for European Affairs, John Kornblum. "You can approach them idealistically, as an exercise in pure democracy. Or you can view them as a building block in a flawed but so far very successful peace process." Some observers are less optimistic. Says Richard Holbrooke, the architect of the Dayton accords: "Suppose a reasonably free and fair election chooses people who are pledged to separatism, when the Dayton accords call for a single country? These people--or at least their leaders--just don't want to live together...
...matter how flawed, the elections must go ahead. While the Serbs have been the major culprits in flouting the Dayton guarantees of freedom of movement and return of refugees, Croats and Muslims joined in as well. The Croats blocked the return of refugees to territory they hold in the southwest of the country, and the Muslims prevented Serbs from coming back to their homes in the suburbs of the once proudly multi-ethnic capital of Bosnia, Sarajevo. All three groups have actively trampled other preconditions for fair elections as well: blocking freedom of association and freedom of expression. Forty miles...
...places IFOR in a novel position: acting to support the free movement of peoples. The force has often stood by as Serb thugs, for example, beat up Muslim refugees trying to return home. Such decisions not to intervene came from the highest levels. "The defining moment of the post-Dayton process was the flat refusal of NATO to do anything other than defend itself and enforce the military separation line," says a former U.S. diplomat. "NATO had this enormous amount of force on the ground, facing a group of bullies who respected NATO but nothing else. The reason...
...inhabitants of Bosnia, the Dayton process is fundamentally flawed and a cause for dejection. "The elections won't change anything. The parties in power will win again," says Biljana, a Serb living in Doboj. The Muslim wife of Esad, Kujundzic's victim, also sees little gain from this Saturday's exercise. "For four years we have begged for shelter and dug up other people's potatoes. We want to go home," says Asmira, 36. "If we can't, we might as well go back...