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The Flight of Serbs from Sarajevo: Not the Dayton Agreement’s First Failure, but its First Logical Consequence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2020

Ondřej Žíla Open the ORCID record for Ondřej Žíla [Opens in a new window]
Ondřej Žíla*
Affiliation:
The Institute of International Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
*
*Corresponding author. Email: ondrej.zila@fsv.cuni.cz
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Abstract

This study analyzes circumstances tied to the implementation of the Dayton Agreement’s provision for the reunification of Sarajevo. Three months after the signing, Sarajevo was again a united city territorially, but pre-war inhabitants of Sarajevo who identified themselves as Serbs were almost entirely absent from the reunited town under the control of the Federation government. This article addresses the causes of the flight of the Serbs, who had been living in Sarajevo’s suburbs before the start of the Bosnian war and stayed, in their view, to defend their homes. I argue that the incentives that led a majority of Sarajevan Serbs to leave the city and its surroundings were the result of actions not only of the Serb leadership but also of Bosniak leaders and the international community. Our analysis is complementary to the scholarship examining the impact of massive population migrations and displacement in the aftermath of conflicts. I analyze the dynamics of Sarajevo’s unification within the Federation and its consequences, demonstrating that once a partition is accepted at a higher level, it is almost impossible to prevent its emergence on a local level.

Keywords

postwar SarajevoDayton Agreementpopulation movementspostwar ethnic conflictBosnian Serbs
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 49 , Issue 5 , September 2021 , pp. 967 - 985
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Association for the Study of Nationalities

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