The NATO attack on Yugoslavia in 1993, was presented by the West as the consequence of Yugoslavia’s stubborn refusal to settle for any reasonable peace plan - in particular its rejection of plans for an international security force to implement a peace plan in Kosovo. Intervention by the West and then the eventual bombing campaign by NATO is continually held as evidence that the current ‘war on terror’ is not a war on Islam and that the West will intervene across the world for ‘humanitarian’ purposes, even helping Muslims as they apparently did in 1993. James Rubin former assistant to President Bill Clinton and state department spokesman advocated such a view in 2003.

He said: ‘By invading Iraq, America has squandered the moral authority built up over years of promoting human rights, saving Muslims from slaughter in Kosovo, and belatedly in Bosnia.

In reality however the geopolitical aims were very different. The political instability in the Balkans during the 1990’s was exacerbated by American determination to reduce Russia’s influence in the region, increase Europe’s dependency upon her and confer new legitimacy to NATO when it appeared increasingly redundant after the Cold War.

The Western powers and specifically both the US and Britain worked for the fragmentation of Yugoslavia as was revealed by the then US Ambassador to Yugoslavia Warren Zimmerman in January 1992 before the outbreak of hostilities: ‘we are aiming for a dissolution of Yugoslavia into independent states.’8 On the 18th March 1992 the EU brokered a deal in Lisbon among Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serb communities partitioning the Serb republic into three ethnically based cantons which would act as a confederation functioning as an independent state. This agreement was sabotaged by the US which urged the Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic to renege the deal by declaring statehood saying ‘this was justified by the referendum on March 1st.’. Jose Cutileiro, secretary general of the Western European union confirmed ‘to be fair President Alija Izethbegovic and his aids were encouraged to scupper the deal and to fight for a unitary Bosnian state by Western mediators.’ This is what caused the Bosnian civil war.