Abstract
The thesis examines the final years of the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia. The author, a senior United Nations official in Sarajevo during the conflict, examines "the false application to the war of the concept of impartiality by the international community". "Impartiality" should have meant the impartial application of international law and human rights, rather than the seeking of a "middle-point", between barbarity and civility. The thesis examines the failure of the international community to understand the conflict - wrongly seen as a struggle between "warring fractions" rather than an aggression - against a UN member - by foreign forces using terror as a method. Failures of analysis and understanding led, among other things, to the Srebrenica massacre