In 2001 the National Science Foundation funded the project described below

Displaced Serbs construct a new home on socially owned land in Doboj for a Serb war widow mother.

RE-MAKING BOSNIA: THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY AND THE REFUGEE RETURN PROCESS IN THREE BOSNIAN MUNICIPALITIES

Dr Gerard Toal, School of Public and International Affairs, Virginia Tech, and Dr Carl Dahlman, Department of Geography, Miami University of Ohio. In 1999 Dr Gerard Toal applied for research funding from the National Science Foundation to study the returns process in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Dr Carl Dahlman joined the project in 2000. The NSF funded the project described below in 2001:This project investigates the refugee returnee process developed by the international community to implement Annex 7 of the Dayton Peace Accords, the peace treaty that brought the Bosnian war to an end in 1995. The central research question is: how has the international community sought to reconstitute multi-ethnic Bosnian places and how have local authorities mediated this process? Field-research is grounded in three ethnically cleansed Bosnian localities. In answering the research question, data is collected from three sources: policy decisions, reports, and operational procedures generated by institutional actors involved in implementing Annex 7 of the Dayton Peace Accords; semi-structured interviews with key international, national, and local decision-makers in the returnee policy process; and focus group sessions with returnees in the selected research sites. Multiple methodological strategies will be used to study the data gathered including mapping the geographies of displacement and return, charting the reconstruction and return policy process, discourse analysis of policy-maker and implementation storylines at various scales, and discourse analysis of the perspectives of returnees themselves. This research investigates a nascent contradiction in the Dayton Peace Accords, which, on the one hand, pledged to reverse ethnic cleansing, but, on the other hand, sanctioned a segregated Bosnia created by ethnic cleansing and ruled by local authorities committed to ethnonationalism. This contradiction has given rise to a struggle between the international community and local authorities to define the ethnic and political geography of Bosnia. The study focuses on local municipalities to analyze how the extensive efforts of the international community to reverse ethnic cleansing in Bosnia impacted particular places. More broadly, it develops a conceptual understanding of the problems associated with the rebuilding of post-conflict states, especially the political geographic aspects of ethnic identity. It offers insight into how post-conflict plans conceived in international peace agreements are mediated and thereby transformed by the local contexts of their implementation.

The summer of 2002 was spent conducting fieldwork in Bosnia. Based in Tuzla, we studied the towns of Zvornik, Doboj and Jajce in detail while collecting data on the returns process at many more locations across the country. A total of 40 policy maker interviews were conducted during the 2002 trip. Further fieldwork visits to Bosnia were undertaken in March and June of 2004, and May and November 2005 bringing total field interviews to over 50. Funds for this collaborative research project formally ended May 2005 but the publication of research continues.

BOSNIA PROJECT PUBLICATIONS (in order of publication)

G. Ó Tuathail, C. Dahlman (2004),The Clash of Govermentalities: Displacement and Return in Bosnia-Herzegovina (PDF file). Chapter 7 in Global Governmentality, eds. W. Lerner and W. Walker, Routledge.

G. Ó Tuathail, C. Dahlman (2004) The Effort to Reverse Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina: The Limits of Return. Eurasian Geography and Economics. 45, 6, 439-464. Available through IngentaConnect.com

G. Ó Tuathail (2005) Embedding Bosnia-Herzegovina in Euro-Atlantic Structures: From Dayton to Brussels. Eurasian Geography and Economics. 46, 1, 51-67. Available through IngentaConnect.com

C. Dahlman, G. Ó Tuathail (2005) The Legacy of Ethnic Cleansing: The Returns Process in Post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina. Political Geography, 24 (2005), 569-599. Available from Elsevier's Science Direct: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09626298

C. Dahlman, G. Ó Tuathail (2005) Broken Bosnia: The Localized Geopolitics of Displacement and Return in Two Bosnian Places. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95 (2005), 644-662. Available online through Blackwell-Synergy.com

G. Ó Tuathail (2005) “La Republika Srpska est-elle européenne? La grande stratégie du Bureau du Haut-Représentant pour ancrer la Bosnie-Herzégovine dans l'espace géopolitique européen.” Dans L’ex-Yougoslavie Dix Ans Après Dayton. De Nouveaux Etats Entre Déchirements Communautaires et Intégration Européenne, eds. André-Louis Sanguin, Emmanuelle Chaveneau and Amaël Cattaruzza. Paris: Editions L'Harmattan.

G. Ó Tuathail, C. Dahlman, (2006) Post-Domicide Bosnia-Herzegovina: Homes, Homelands and One Million Returns. International Peacekeeping. 13, 2, 242-260. Available online through Taylor and Francis Journals at metapress.com.

C. Dahlman, G. Ó Tuathail (2006) Bosnia’s Third Geopolitical Space: Nationalist Separatism and International Supervision in Bosnia’s Brcko District. Geopolitics, 11, (4). Available online through Taylor and Francis Journals at metapress.com.

G. Ó Tuathail, C. Dahlman (2006) “The West Bank of the Drina”: Land Allocation and Ethnic Engineering in Republika Srpska. Transactions, Institute of British Geographers 31, 304-322. Available online through Taylor and Francis Journals at metapress.com.

G. Ó Tuathail, C. Dahlman (2006) “Has Ethnic Cleansing Succeeded? Geographies of Minority Return and Its Meaning in Bosnia-Herzegovina.” In Dayton Ten Years After: Conflict Resolution, Co-operation Perspectives, edited by Anton Gosar. Primorska, Slovenia.

A book manuscript based on this research project will be completed in 2007 and published in 2008.

EU Reconstruction Sign in previously multiethnic Derventa, Republika Srpska, marked by Cyrillic initials of the Serb Democratic Party (founded by Radovan Karadzic) and shorthand for the slogan 'Only Unity will Save the Serbs.' Summer 2002.