In the tense aftermath of the 1992–1995 Bosnian War, U.S. diplomat Bill Farrand was assigned the daunting task of implementing the Dayton Peace Accords in the ethnically divided Balkan territory of Brcko in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Serb, Muslim, and Croat political leaders alike had blocked agreement over Brcko’s political status, thus threatening first to derail U.S.-brokered peace talks and then to prevent peace from taking hold in the postconflict period. This compelling narrative pulls the reader intimately into the author’s world where, over three tumultuous years, he was given wide authority to restore travel across former ceasefire lines, return thousands to their destroyed and confiscated homes, conduct free and fair elections, and reestablish multiethnic government bodies—all in a climate of fear and obstruction. “If we can get it right in Brcko,” the U.S. State Department told him, “we have a chance of making the Dayton peace process work throughout Bosnia.” Indeed, the new Brcko District is a Balkan success story. Farrand highlights the complex challenges peace builders confront, especially the role of civilian leadership in a postconflict zone torn apart by ethnic cleansing. Analytic and prescriptive, the book explains in vivid detail the groundbreaking roles of arbitration and of civilian peace workers living among the people. His story is rich in lessons for all those studying or engaged in peace building abroad.

After suffering years of war, Bosnia is now the target of international efforts to reconstruct and democratize a culturally divided society. The global community's strategy has focused on reforming political institutions, influencing the behavior of elite populations, and cultivating nongovernmental organizations. But expensive efforts to promote a stable peace and a multiethnic democracy can be successful only if they resonate among ordinary people. Otherwise, such projects will produce fragile institutions and alienated citizens who will be susceptible to extremists eager to send them back into war. Paula M. Pickering challenges the conventional wisdom that common people are merely passive recipients of peacebuilding projects. Instead, in Peacebuilding in the Balkans, she shows how ordinary people, particularly minorities in Bosnia, understand elite rhetoric and actively shape reconstruction. Pickering's years of fieldwork—direct observation, interviews, and analysis of many surveys—has yielded a precise understanding of how ordinary citizens react to and influence peacebuilding programs in their neighborhoods, workplaces, municipal agencies, and other real-life social settings. The evidence suggests that international efforts to rebuild an inclusive Bosnia will be futile unless they pay sufficient attention to citizens' varying ties to ethnic groups, indigenous forms of civic activity, and the development of nondiscriminatory employment and responsive political institutions. Pickering's insights from reconstruction in the Balkans have important implications for peacebuilding elsewhere in Eurasia.

This open access book focuses on the origins, consequences and aftermath of the 1995 and 1999 Western military interventions that led to the end of the most recent Balkan wars. Though challenging problems remain in Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, and Serbia, the conflict prevention and state-building efforts thereafter were partly successful as countries of the region are on separate tracks towards European Union membership. This study highlights lessons that can be applied to the Middle East and Ukraine, where similar conflicts are likewise challenging sovereignty and territorial integrity. It is an accessible treatment of what makes war and how to make peace ideal for all readers interested in how violent international conflicts can be managed, informed by the experience of a practitioner.

In most post-conflict countries nongovernmental organizations are everywhere, but their presence is misunderstood. In The NGO Game Patrice McMahon investigates the unintended outcomes of what she calls the NGO boom in Bosnia and Kosovo. Using her years of fieldwork and interviews, McMahon argues that when international actors try to rebuild and reconstruct post-conflict countries, they often rely on and look to NGOs. Although policymakers and scholars tend to accept and even celebrate NGO involvement in post-conflict and transitioning countries, they rarely examine why NGOs have become so popular, what NGOs do, or how they affect everyday life.After a conflict, international NGOs descend on a country, local NGOs pop up everywhere, and money and energy flow into strengthening the organizations. In time, the frenzy of activity slows, the internationals go home, local groups disappear from sight, and the NGO boom goes bust. Instead of peace and stability, the embrace of NGOs and the enthusiasm for international peacebuilding turns to disappointment, if not cynicism. For many in the Balkans and other post-conflict environments, NGOs are not an aid to building a lasting peace but are part of the problem because of the turmoil they foster during their life cycles in a given country. The NGO Game will be useful to practitioners and policymakers interested in improving peacebuilding, the role of NGOs in peace and development, and the sustainability of local initiatives in post-conflict countries.

In November 2007 Adam Moore was conducting fieldwork in Mostar when the southern Bosnian city was rocked by two days of violent clashes between Croat and Bosniak youth. It was not the city’s only experience of ethnic conflict in recent years. Indeed, Mostar’s problems are often cited as emblematic of the failure of international efforts to overcome deep divisions that continue to stymie the postwar peace process in Bosnia. Yet not all of Bosnia has been plagued by such troubles. Mostar remains mired in distrust and division, but the Brcko District in the northeast corner of the country has become a model of what Bosnia could be. Its multiethnic institutions operate well compared to other municipalities, and are broadly supported by those who live there; it also boasts the only fully integrated school system in the country. What accounts for the striking divergence in postwar peacebuilding in these two towns? Moore argues that a conjunction of four factors explains the contrast in outcomes in Mostar and Brcko: The design of political institutions, the sequencing of political and economic reforms, local and regional legacies from the war, and the practice and organization of international peacebuilding efforts in the two towns. Differences in the latter, in particular, have profoundly shaped relations between local political elites and international officials. Through a grounded analysis of localized peacebuilding dynamics in these two cities Moore generates a powerful argument concerning the need to rethink how peacebuilding is done—that is, a shift in the habitus or culture that governs international peacebuilding activities and priorities today.

As a conflict ends and the parties begin working towards a durable peace, practitioners and peacebuilders are faced with the thrilling possibilities and challenges of building new or reformed political, security, judicial, social, and economic structures. This Handbook analyzes these elements of post-conflict state building through the lens of international law, which provides a framework through which the authors contextualize and examine the many facets of state building in relation to the legal norms, processes, and procedures that guide such efforts across the globe. The volume aims to provide not only an introduction to and explanation of prominent topics in state building, but also a perceptive analysis that augments ongoing conversations among researchers, lawyers, and advocates engaged in the field.

When a country emerges from violent conflict, the management of the environment and natural resources has important implications for short-term peacebuilding and long-term stability, particularly if natural resources were a factor in the conflict, play a major role in the national economy, or broadly support livelihoods. Only recently, however, have the assessment, harnessing, and restoration of the natural resource base become essential components of postconflict peacebuilding. This book, by thirty-five authors, examines the experiences of more than twenty countries and territories in assessing post-conflict environmental damage and natural resource degradation and their implications for human health, livelihoods, and security. The book also illustrates how an understanding of both the risks and opportunities associated with natural resources can help decision makers manage natural resources in ways that create jobs, sustain livelihoods, and contribute to economic recovery and reconciliation, without creating new grievances or significant environmental degradation. Finally, the book offers lessons from the remediation of environmental hot spots, restoration of damaged ecosystems, and reconstruction of the environmental services and infrastructure necessary for a sustainable peace. Assessing and Restoring Natural Resources in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding is part of a global initiative to identify and analyze lessons in post-conflict peacebuilding and natural resource management. The project has generated six books of case studies and analyses, with contributions by practitioners, policy makers, and researchers. Other books address highvalue resources, land, water, livelihoods, and governance.