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This chapter examines the effect of the Dayton Peace Accords by unpacking the components of liberal peacebuilding in Bosnia and questioning if the current situation is the result of a failure of liberal peace praxis. In particular, it explores the nature of the relationship between international (sovereign) governance, the national/local political leadership, and the Bosnian peoples, which is the site of a clear disconnect, if not a continuing struggle. It shows how this lack of cooperation is derailing liberal peacebuilding and the construction of a multi-ethnic and democratic state in Bosnia. The resultant political stalemate between nationalist groups, particularly in parliament, has led to a stagnation of the liberal statebuilding process. The result may see Bosnia left to fester in a virtual form of liberal peace with the causes of the conflict left unresolved amidst a chronic socio-economic crisis and a fragile security situation.

What happened to women guerrillas after the Peace Accords ended the civil war in El Salvador? Some capitalized on their wartime activism to break gender barriers, transform their own lives, and continue their political activism. Others eschewed further activism and rejected the notion of women’s equality. This chapter demonstrates how the network locations that women occupied during the war intersected with the timing and place of their demobilization to influence women’s post-war opportunities. Those most likely to capitalize on their wartime experiences were women who had either been stationed near FMLN commanders or near international civil society workers during the war. Surprisingly, those who “bent gender” the most during the war—those who took on the most bellicose guerrilla roles—were among the least likely to experience gendered identity transformations or political gains after the war. Scholars have already demonstrated how movement activism can powerfully transform individual activists’ identities, but only a micro-level theory of mobilization provides tools to understand why some identities may transform more (or differently) than others, or why even similar identity changes may result in different post-movement outcomes.

A ceremony was held on the West Bank to mark one of the first stages in the implementation of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. This was a closed event, marked by considerable tension. Most of the people present probably had had few peaceful or pleasant encounters with members of the other side, certainly not on a more or less equal footing. A few years later an audience gathered at a crafts fair below the walls of the Old City to hear another band, Bustan Abraham. The outdoor stage was situated in a park that lies between the centuries-old stone walls and the modern city. This book is about particular people, the situations in which they find themselves, and the paths that they make for themselves in this far-from-perfect world.

This chapter continues the coverage of the guerrilla-commander (comandante) memory community after 1980/81. The narrators adhere to a rigid chronological division: 1981-1983; 1984-1989; 1989; and 1989 to the present. These divisions correspond to the rising and falling of the guerrillas’ fortunes. The first period is a time of guerrilla ascendency, when the guerrillas gain nominal control over 25% of Salvadoran territory. The second period is a time of guerrilla contraction in the face of the army’s improved capacity. The guerrillas downsize their fighting units and resort to a “war of attrition” rather than a “war of position.” The third period, 1989, is a resurgent moment. The guerrillas launch a nation-wide offensive and force the government to the bargaining table. The fourth period, after 1989, covers the peace accords and the new post-war era. The comandantes strike an optimistic tone about the war’s outcome, thereby justifying their leadership in it.

The “Serbian Adolf” figures as one of many parallels between the Nazi aggression of World War II and the more recent wars in Bosnia (1992–1995). Though many recognized and drew attention to the atrocities committed against Bosnian civilians, the stories and images of deportation, mass murder, and concentration camps failed to stir an effective response from the international community of states, which had, fifty years before, promised to defend civilians from such abuses. This occurred despite clear signals that the Serb leadership meant not only to run an expansionist campaign to divide Bosnia with Croatia but also to destroy the Bosnian Muslim population. Instead, there were arguments about whether or not the Serb campaign in Bosnia was genocide, and if it was not genocide, whether it required intervention by other governments, especially by the Western powers. This is to say that although the experiences of World War II produced institutions to limit the excesses of war, especially as it affects civilians, this experience does not seem to have significantly changed the narrow political calculus of most states. In fact, the ideals enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations or the international law that applies to the conduct of modern warfare, such as the Geneva Conventions, are often viewed as outside or antithetical to the “reality” of international politics. It is more productive for the purposes of explanation to recognize that principled institutions, such as the UN or international law, are as much a part of world politics as are the interstate norms of sovereignty or national security. Yet while the institutions that are designed to promote collective security and provide relief from the vagaries of the international state system have gained in the postwar world, they are still beset with the contradictions of those same vagaries, namely, that states must both submit to and enforce the principles that would constrain them. The failure to intervene in Bosnia, at least on behalf of the civilian population if not also for the state of Bosnia itself, is a case in which governments that should have championed principles of international law found it more convenient to demur, despite an international awareness of the war’s excesses.

Chapter 6 tells the story of Rodríguez’s move to democratic political leadership. Victory for the FMLN meant that they could now finally participate politically and bring necessary changes via the ballot box. Rodríguez tried to return to the church but conditions were placed on his that he found unacceptable and thus he returned to the FMLN to help establish it as a legal political party. Owing to his popularity and his longstanding struggles representing the interests of the campesinos, Rodríguez was nominated as a candidate for a legislative seat in the Department of La Paz, which was part of the diocese of San Vicente, a region in which he was well-known. He was elected in 1997 and re-elected in 2000; and then again in 2009 and in 2012, meaning that he will serve as a legislator until 2015. This chapter will highlight the difficulties in trying to bring structural changes to El Salvador via the electoral process. Part of the problem lies in the leaders themselves, who often become complacent once they win political office.