NOVEMBER 21

On this date in 1995, the Dayton Agreement was finalized and initialed by all concerned parties.  This agreement, which ended the war in Bosnia, was formally signed in Paris three weeks later.  The pact was called the Dayton Agreement because it was hammered out over a three week period at Wright Patterson AFB near Dayton, Ohio.  Representatives of Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia Herzegovina were the main participants.  The war had gone on for 3 1/2 years.

When I was going to school, there was just Yugoslavia: a large country on the Adriatic Sea in south eastern Europe.  A big blob on a map - I didn't think much about it.  It had been there for years.

After World War II, Yugoslavia was a federation of several socialist states; Bosnia, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro.  These states were made up of people with different ethnic values and people of various religions and people who spoke dialects of the same language.  Its hard to hold that together in a post-soviet union world.

In 1990, Yugoslavia was dissolved - these states were independent.  On 1992, war broke out in Bosnia between the Serbs and Croats of that country.  Bosnia was made up of 44% Muslim Bosnians, 32% of Orthodox Serbs and 17% Catholic Croats.   NATO forces were called in to stalemate the war. Almost 60,000 Bosnians were killed during the fighting.  

Ethnic/Religious wars have been waged on this planet for thousands of years.  I see no end to that tragedy.
O.)O