Amazon.com
Tim Judah lived in Belgrade from 1990 to 1995, reporting for the London Times and the New York Review of Books; and when the "ethnic cleansing" started in Kosovo, he was there. So his Kosovo: War and Revenge is well placed to offer some insights, variously scathing and compassionate, on the whole, sorry mess. It doesn't matter how many Serbian tanks you (allegedly) knock out with your high-tech bombing raids, "since the most potent weapon in ethnic cleansing is the cigarette lighter needed to set houses on fire." And Judah can evoke the madness of Kosovo in a single, startling set piece: vengeful Albanians rampaging through a Serbian Orthodox priest's house, smashing icons, stealing candles; French soldiers from KFOR "looking on amiably"; a nearby Gypsy house also on fire; and a passing French commander explaining to an open-mouthed Judah that the official NATO policy at this moment is "to let them pillage." Paraphrasing a Belgrade journalist, he notes sadly that Serbia has still not found its Adenauer, nor Kosovo its Mandela, which is what both so desperately need. The introductory chapter, summarizing Kosovo's tortured and tortuous history, is better rendered in Noel Malcolm's Kosovo: A Short History, and for a wider overview of the Balkans themselves, one would certainly prefer Misha Glenny's The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers 1809-1999. For an acerbic and perceptive personal account, however, Judah's book is hard to beat. --Christopher Hart, Amazon.co.uk
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Relié
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From Publishers Weekly
The war in Kosovo, Judah points out in his latest account of Balkan politics, didn't begin in 1999. A journalist covering the region for an array of Western publications (the Times of London, the New York Review of Books) throughout the 1990s, Judah (The Serbs) could see that Kosovo was on the brink of explosion--but until something tangible did erupt, his editors wouldn't print anything about it. In 1999, gruesome violence did erupt, culminating in NATO's 78-day bombing campaign. Now, having reported that conflict from the ground, Judah takes a step back to explore its roots in the events of the early 1980s and 1990s. Although not as strong as Noel Malcolm's 1998 book Kosovo: A Short History, Judah's work is an excellent addition to the literature about the Balkans. Drawing on both his firsthand experiences in the region and on secondary literature--and interspersing narrative history with journalistic accounts of warfare and fleeing refugees--he reflects on the longstanding local political struggles and the West's miscalculations. Along the way, he critically profiles Milosevic, NATO leaders (who thought this little war would last only a few days) and the Kosovo Liberation Army (whose own violent revenge began to sweep over Kosovo after the bombing ended). Well researched and melancholy, the book suggests that the bombing campaign was "a war of human error," in which "all the actors, in Serbia and in the West, just made mistake after mistake." This is an excellent introduction to the latest phase of Balkan warfare. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
