Within three and a half years of its inception, the Bosnian Army succeeded in fighting the Serbian army to a standstill - Serbia was forced to recognise Bosnia's independence. Yet the victory was ambiguous, leaving two thirds of the country under the control of Serb and Croat extremists while the remainder had become a predominantly Muslim Bosniak-inhabited area. Challenging the opposing stereotypes of 'Islamic fundamentalism' and 'multi-ethnic Bosnia' the author seeks to establish what really happened in Bosnian internal politics during the war. He shows that Bosnia-Herzegovina's war of independence was genuinely multi-national and pluralistic at its inception, but under the impact of external aggression, internal treason and international betrayal it changed into an essentially Bosnian Muslim struggle for survival.

Author Biography

Marko Attila Hoare is a British Academy Research Fellow and member of the Cambridge University Department of History. He received his PhD from Yale University in 2000 and is currently completing a book on the partisan movement in Bosnia during World War II.