In the 1990s something happened in central Bosnia-Herzegovina that inspired people to this day and helps explain why that country now has more men fighting in Syria and Iraq (over 300), as a proportion of its population, than most in Europe. The formation of a ‘Mujahideen Battalion’ in 1992, composed mainly of Arab volunteers in central Bosnia, was a landmark. Today the dynamic of jihad has been reversed and Bosnians travel to Arab lands. ‘There is a war between the West and Islam,’ says Aimen Dean, who, as a young Saudi Arabian volunteer, travelled to fight in central Bosnia in 1994. ‘Bosnia gave the modern jihadist movement that narrative. It is the cradle.’