HOW BOSNIA ARMED

Marko Attila Hoare

Within three and a half years of its inception, the Bosnian Army had succeeded in fighting the Serbian army to a standstill--Serbia was forced to recognize 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.