I've seen a few statements around the internet that state that Bosnia was safe and sound by the time Hillary visited - "safer than Seattle" one woman commented. A bit of a reality check. Sarajevo's blockade was declared over on Feb 29, 4 weeks before Hillary visited. IFOR had taken over the previous December and in its first 10 months suffered 50 deaths. There were significant village burnings, protests and unrest during this 10 month period. Sarajevo may have been relatively calm during this time; towns like Brcko less so. There were numerous foreign fighters in Bosnia in March 1996, though that's not to say they were actually fighting - it was a holding breath period waiting for the different factions to disarm and leave, with Al Zarqawi already in Bulgaria. It was more a period of various flareups around the "country" with as much worry about the potential for the daily confrontations to spiral out of control. Considering populations were being resettled, mass graves at Srebrnice being dug up, a whole lot of arson, and just continual face-offs between the different populations and gang activities controlling areas. Oddly enough, it was a week and a half before Hillary showed up that the arms embargo ended, allowing the flow of small arms to return legally. NATO was trying to get commercial flights started again in this period, but didn't succeed until September or so (I flew in on army transport in August; no commercial flights were available).

Another issue is described by one soldier: "His biggest fear was all the indiscriminate gunfire that goes off in
the hills. The locals tend to fire their weapons in the air when they
are drunk and partying. They don't seem to remember that what goes up
must come down. "Whether they're aiming at me or not, in our viewpoint, a gunshot is still a gunshot," he said." Here's an article describing a 10km mined and barbwired perimeter around the Tuzla airport, and then describes a family working in a mined field after cutting the barbed wire: Tuzla airport. Life is strange in Bosnia.

Another issue to remember is that the Khobar Towers bombing took place in June of that year, and a serious attempt to assissinate the Pope took place in April 1997 in Sarajevo with a series of landmines. There is no assured safety.

Daily IFOR briefings
May 10 IFOR report
General descriptiong of combat readiness in Bosnia despite peace agreement
Very good 500-page description of IFOR mission and lessons learned: IFOR - Wentz Bosnia
Sarajevo blockade lifted