PERHAPS a quarter of a million died, close to a million refugees were created and the so-called world community was seen as unwilling to deal with the worst conflict in Europe since World War II. Now there is a peace deal, and a large Nato force to try to implement it, but there is no guarantee of success.
To get this far it took four years of embarrassing international failure and humiliation as television brought the conflict daily to living rooms throughout the world. We had a United Nations Protection Force in Bosnia that did not protect Bosnians; there were regular unfulfilled threats to bomb the Serbs if they did not desist from the latest aggression; there were westerners in suits (David Owen, Cyrus Vance and several more) shuttling around Balkan capitals putting forward peace plans to no effect.
In the end, two factors combined to bring about the peace deal. The war ground itself to a halt, and the Americans decided to get involved. The former development is likely to have influenced the latter.
The UN and the US found the will to resist the Bosnian Serbs only after Bosnian and Croat forces had first worn them down militarily. Nato air strikes around Sarajevo accelerated that process in September, but the tide of the war had by then already taken a clear turn against the Serbs.
When the war moved towards military stalemate a couple of months ago, the lines on the map of Bosnia conveniently resembled what was considered to be the best option for peace. The Bosnian Serbs held half the country; the Bosnian/Croat alliance held the other half. A European peace. plan dividing Bosnia roughly along these lines had been scuppered two years ago by an unenthusiastic US. Now the Americans put forward a very similar plan and backed it with military muscle.
The timing was right. The Bosnian Serb Army had run out of steam, and Serbia itself was suffering from UN economic sanctions. The Serb dream of a "Greater Serbia", incorporating not just Serbia but everywhere else Serbs lived, had been the major catalyst of the conflict. Now Serbian President Milosevic was ready to abandon the dream of incorporating parts of Croatia (Krajina, Eastern and Western Slavonia) and large swathes of Bosnia as belonging to his greater Serbian entity.
That dream had inflicted a terrible cost mainly on the Bosnian Moslems. The Serbs had set about reinforcing their territorial claims through "ethnic cleansing" - forcing the non-Serb population to leave these areas and murdering and raping unknown thousands on the way.
This year a resurgent Croatian Army - grown strong after two years of absence from the conflict - in a strategic alliance with the Bosnian Government forces and Bosnian Croats, changed the course of the war. It drove the Serbs from Krajina and# Western Slavonia, and threatened to do the same in Eastern Slavonia.
Suddenly the Serbs, too, had columns of refugees on the roads and were "ethnically cleansed" from parts of Croatian territory.
Enter the Americans. A former US ambassador in Croatia had helped broker the Croat/Bosnian alliance that helped change the course of the war. Now the world community, led by the US, set about lifting the siege of Sarajevo.
The siege had become the symbol and caricature of the war: an impoverished and relatively defenceless citizenry of a once great city was being besieged by Bosnian Serb heavy guns positioned on the mountains all around. Snipers picked off civilians daily as they went about their business; people froze in windowless apartments; Serb shells killed civilians as they queued for bread and water.
At the end of August the US and Nato began showing a resolve and determination that had been absent throughout the conflict. After yet another massacre in which a shell killed 37 people in Sarajevo's covered market, Nato planes carried out a threat to bomb Bosnian Serb positions around the city.
FOR close to a fortnight they carried on, and the happiness and satisfaction about what was happening was obvious on the streets of Sarajevo. People smiled to each other at the sound of bombs landing in the hills. Citizens came out on the streets, once empty shop shelves began to fill up as road routes into Sarajevo were opened.
But still they feared to believe it would last. The Bosnian Serbs remained defiant for several weeks, and ultimately, even though they removed their heaviest weapons from around the city, they were allowed keep many that could still cause serious damage.
But the US-led international mood of engagement remained constant. US assistant secretary of State Mr Richard Holbrooke undertook an exhaustive round of talks in the Balkan capital. The leaders of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia were finally flown to the Dayton US air base in Ohio where, with the help of Nasa equipment. they drew the lines on the map of Bosnia that are supposed to form a stable basis for the future.
There is little justice in the deal. The Bosnian Serb entity gets to keep 49 per cent of Bosnian territory: a fine reward for systematic ethnic cleansing, house-burning, mass rape and murder. The Bosnian/Croat federation gets 51 per cent of what was once, briefly, a Bosnian state.
A Bosnian administration which supposedly has jurisdiction over the country divided into these entities will be based in Sarajevo. Sarajevo stays in Bosnian Government hands, although Serbs in the suburbs are threatening to burn their houses and leave rather than hand their areas over to the enemy.
Now some 20,000 US troops have begun arriving to enforce the peace - the Nato force is expected to number close to 60,000, including Russian involvement. It is intended that the Nato force will be gone in a year, its work done and the peace copperfastened. The Americans aim for the work of the peacekeeping force to be over in a year.
Can it work? The first problem is that the deal is illogical - a colour map of Bosnia shows the country resembling a tortoiseshell cat, with uneven badly shaped patches representing the new political entities.
Bosnia will effectively have three governments (Bosnian, Bosnian Croat and Bosnian Serb), the same number of police forces and four armies, including the Nato force. Mix in the bitterness caused by four years of awful war, as well as the centuries old distrust and conflicts, and you do not see a recipe for stability.
Then there is the durability of the Nato force. If the volatile mixture of armed groups in Bosnia produces dead US servicemen in large numbers, what will the Americans do? Will they stay and try to make it work, thus risking further casualties with no guarantee of success? Or will they leave Bosnia behind to sort itself out again after a period in which the various armies will have had time to regroup and re-equip?