On Nov. 21, 1995, in the conference room of the Hope Hotel on the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, the leaders of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia initialed an agreement that brought the three-and-a-half-year war in Bosnia to an end. Three weeks later, the General Framework Agreement, known as the Dayton Peace Accords, was signed.
The war over Bosnia was the most brutal and devastating of the wars spawned by the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Attacked from the moment it moved toward independence in early 1992 by militias supported by the neighboring nations of Croatia and Serbia, Bosnia was born under fire and nearly perished. Half of its population of 4.4 million were forcefully displaced, and over 100,000 people died during the conflict.
