THE Dayton Peace Settlement started well. Ifor, the Implementation Force, deployed with heavy weapons, immediate air support and an unconstrained mandate. Bombardment of towns and food denying blockades seemed over at least for the next 10 months. The period when signatures were like pop stars' autographs frequent and meaningless seemed gone.
Phrases such as "the parties understand and agree that violators shall be subject to military action by the Ifor including the use of necessary force to ensure compliance recur in the settlement. These are powerful deterrents to repetition of pre ceasefire atrocities. Patient UN type negotiations had been interpreted as weakness and the two European big powers involved were seen to lack commitment. So the disputants cannot complain if the document has a threatening undertone.
In war, transport problems, bad roads, timing failures, human stress and error, mistakes in supply, untimely mud or snow, an unpredictable opponent these are cumulative and throw experienced military machines out of gear even before hostile action causes the greatest friction of all. Ifor's friction problems are peculiar to peacekeeping.
It has done well in difficult conditions. The separation of the combatants out of small arms range always a first requirement of any ceasefire went well. The dicey Ifor takeover of areas to be transferred to "other entities" has been done. Ifor will hold these areas until March 19th to avoid face to face arguments and give time for things to settle before the new owners arrive.
But Serbs, Croats and Muslims have shown creativity in friction production before now. There are problems which fire power and macho attitudes cannot resolve. Gen Mladic is on TV again. Pale, his seat of government, pours out propaganda to the frightened Serbs in the Sarajevo, suburbs.
Snipers have fired on Ilor troops and halted the Sarajevo, bus service by killing passengers. Reunifying Mostar looks problematical snipers again. In built up areas, these are really a job for counter snipers.
Maj Gen Michael Jackson the Ifor commander of troops in the British sector, gave and upbeat interview to Jane's Defence Weekly. The treaty required that withdrawing troops were obliged to clear mines, etc., before they left. Gen Jackson said it was now recognised that this was not feasible. The three British soldiers killed tragically at the end of January were in an area due for transfer to Ifor a few days later. We cannot know if that mine would have been cleared before hand over.
But who is going to clear the estimated five million mines now?
The friction has increased with the arrest of Bosnian Serb officers road checkpoints and foot dragging by Croatian authorities in Mostar the unbalanced Bosnian proposal for policing the Bosnian Serb suburbs coming under government control the departing Bosnian Serbs burning their homes.
The situation is neither as good as Gen Jackson and the Nato secretary general have claimed nor as bad as the bald list of problems suggests. Much will depend on how the problems are handled on the ground.
The media have been kind a UN operation in this situation would be getting a rough time. No UN force has ever had such powers as Ifor. Under cover of attack aircraft US troops insisted on inspecting two "secretive" Bosnian Serb heavy weapons bases on February 17th a significant, move under the blanket "right to observe, monitor and inspect any forces, facility or activity" with military capability. This kind of problem is amenable to a show of force.
Mr Richard Holbrooke, the US negotiator, was aware that the settlement had to look beyond the early stages. The document consists of a "General Framework Agreement" and 12 annexes. Ten of the annexes deal with political/social matters.
So the jibes at the settlement are hardly just. The UN operation was dogged by a curious lack of commitment on the ground hard to verify but there. There are some signs of this in Ifor also, and indications of arguments behind the scenes.
Mr Holbrooke's criticism of "Europeans" for "sleeping" during the recent Turkish/Greek dispute drew a rejoinder from London. But the London Independent couples this with "simmering tensions between the allies over Bosnia a division so far kept well under wraps". To the outsider, Mr Holbrooke's remark that "you have to wonder why Europe does not seem capable of taking decisive action in its own theatre" seems justified. One would think that the incidents there could have been handled locally without the need for the meeting in Rome on February 17th.
Surprisingly, the Croatian government undertakes to ensure that "personnel of organisations under its control or with whom it has influence" will respect the agreement. This deprives the Croats of the familiar Middle East cop out "we have influence with them but we don't control them".
The financing of this huge operation is not clear, except for the American share. They are "reprogramming" and diverting existing funds the 9 billion details are in the military magazines. British arrangements are obscure but £4 million has been mentioned. The US quietly donated $17 million to Britain for its costs in the Rapid Reaction Force last August September.
The US has powerful political and financial leverage on all Bosnian factions. The relevance of the Dayton settlement to the Northern Ireland situation seems to lie in the mechanics of the "proximity" talks. Getting the protagonists to a sealed area, well away from the conflict zone, was the first step.
The media were excluded, so opportunities to play to home galleries were unavailable. The parties were not required to come to face to face meetings the Americans running the talks circulated between the separate rooms with drafts of sections of the settlement. Negotiations continued until the settlement was agreed. The American commitment was sustained and carried over into the implementation stage.
One would guess that the US State Department had done much homework on the outline and mechanics of the documents well in advance. The text indicates a full familiarity with the ground and the issues involved.
In 1990, Richard N. Haass, then Special Assistant to President Bush, with responsibility for the Middle East and South Asia ("Marrakesh to Bangladesh"), published a book called Conflict Unending. In it he argued persuasively that the US should not try to help to resolve conflicts unless they were "ripe". Among the conflicts he then felt were not ripe" for negotiations was Northern Ireland.
The administration has changed and Mr Haass is out of office. Are his ideas still influential? The Northern Ireland conflict is certainly more "gripe" than it was in 1990.