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This volume contains the annotated leading cases of the International Criminal Tribunal set up for the former Yugoslavia between 1997 and 1999. ... Read more

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The International Conference on the former Yugoslaviaconstituted a unique approach to peace-keeping and peace-making. Itsstructure, activities and relations with the personalities andentities within the former Yugoslavia are a fascinating complex,worthy of study and appraisal both now and in the future. Much hasbeen written on the events which preceded, accompanied and followedthe break-up of Yugoslavia, and much is still to be written, but onlyin this volume can the Papers of the ICFY be found in a well-edited,logical and accessible form. The Editor has provided a reference workof the highest quality, and one which is destined to remain the keyresource for all those interested in this phase of European history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Challenging mainstream misconceptions
Editors Akhavan and Howse have compiled a collection of diverse essays that dispel myths and misconceptions about the conflict in the former Yugoslavia and shed new light on largely ignored or misinterpreted information about Yugoslavia's disintegration.

Each essay deals with aspecific element of disintegration, and while all of the elements aretelling, the chapter by Dragomir Vojnic on economic disparity as a key tothe demise of Yugoslavia is most compelling. Vojnic illustrates withpopulation and demographic data the regional disparities that existed amongYugoslavia's different republics. It is easy to see how certain groups grewto be malcontent.

Slovenia and Croatia, historically more prosperous andtied more to Western Europe, enjoyed a higher standard of living, access tothe West, and superior infrastructure, and despite massive redistributiveefforts on the part of the federal Yugoslav government, attempts to improvequality of life in the more southern regions of Yugoslavia were never quitesuccessful. Indeed, equality was never achieved; Slovenia and Croatia grewtired of bankrolling failing redistribution schemes that had no results.The federal government did not implement infrastructural improvements inregions like Macedonia, Bosnia and Kosovo in order to make redistributiveefforts productive, so the efforts were doomed to failure.

This createda great deal of tension, which of course exacerbated the nationalistquestion about which Western nations hear and see so much. In fact theproblem has been universally diagnosed as being a nationalist one, whenfundamentally, the problem is more complex and is rooted in economicinequality.

This book does an excellent job in proving this. ... Read more

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The Children of Atlantis is a collection of statements by a hundred young people who have fled various parts of the former Yugoslavia in the face of war and destruction, nationalism, hatred and ethnic cleansing, the pressure to take sides, and the draft. As refugees, they are seeking to continue or complete their education at universities around the world, all the while confronting the task of making something of their lives amid the catastrophe that has overwhelmed them, their families, and their homeland. Gathered here are extracts from essays written by the students describing the circumstances that drove them to leave their homes, and the different ways (both optimistic and bleak) they envision their futures. It offers a snapshot of virtually a whole generation of young people on the threshold of their working lives, uprooted from the world they grew up in. Their voices are varied, expressing pain, anger, uncertainty, hope, and the positive energy of youth. What they have in common is a sense of disbelief and bewilderment at the forces unleashed in what was their country.
In a way this is a war-report, though not prepared by foreign war-reporters or covered from the frontlines. Rather, it is a diverse chronicle revealing the unseen psychological aspects of war, written by the victims from the depths of their souls. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

a part of my story...
As a Bosnian refugee from a mixed marriage I feltvery deeply the pain and the experiences told in this book. It is one of the very few that let you know how many former Yugoslavs feel and think about the loss of theircountry. ... Read more

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The demise of Yugoslavia resulted in a savage internal conflict that confounded European efforts to prevent it. Intense and often instantaneous media coverage tended to produce a confusing maze of images and impressions. This timely, easy to use reference work surveys the origins, development, people, places, events, concepts, treaties, and agreements pertaining to the conflict in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Customer Reviews (2)

Book written full of wrong data
First of all Lukavica isnt in the center of Sarajevo as this book says.Secondly, the procenteges used to describe population are reverted and incorrect.

Very purly and badly written book. It will just confuseyou.

I was born in Sarajevo, and lived there until 1995 so i was 'living'situation this book tries to portrait and fails at evry aspect of it.

Full of errors, misinterpreted facts, and false information
The idea behind writing this horribly amateuristicwork was noble: to gather a large number of encyclopedic facts about the wars of Yugoslavian succession--something that would be useful to historians, journalists,politicians, and ordinary people.

Examples of gross errors andmisrepresentations:

In one part of the book the main war protagonists arelisted in the alphabetical order. Since one of the main characteristics ofthese wars has been their inhumanity, it is hard to believe that most ofthose currently or previously imprisoned at the Scheveningen prison(awaiting the trial at the Hague war crimes tribunal) are not listed. Butthose who are listed are sometimes listed on the wrong side, as is the casewith Rasim Delic (Bosnian army), who is listed as "a veteran of theJNA Vukovar campaign." Vukovar was, of course, besieged by theSerbians, but the authors missed that one.

One of the most infamousSerbian warlords, Seselj, is listed as having been born in 1941 (false).The birth year is sometimes not even presented, as in the case of BlagojeAdzic, who was not even a teenager in 1941, so it's hard to believe that hewas in the Partisans, as the authors claim.

The authors glorify MuhamedFilipovic, the former ambassador to London, to the point of making thereader think that Filipovic himself was the source of those entries.However, since there too are numerous errors present, it's probably thecase that the authors themselves decided that "during 1992 MBO[Filipovic's Muslim Bosniak Organization] joined a small liberal party[headed by Kadic] and formed LBO, which to this day remains a true voice ofnon-secular Bosniaks." Considering that Kadic's liberals are stillwell and alive on the political spectrum of Bosnia, while LBO didn't evenmanage to gather sufficient votes to enter the Parliament the last timearound, I wonder where and how the authors gathered their"encyclopedic" info.

The authors showcase their ignorance whenthey say that ex-Yugoslavian nations were shunned at the 1992 BarcelonaOlympics, where "Yugoslavian nations were suspended and barred fromparticipating." So who was the audience at the opening ceremony sowarmly greeting? Some impersonators posing for the Bosnian OlympicCommittee and delegation? Also, the very real successes of the 1992Croatian Olympic basketball team is also in the virtual realm. Hmmm...

Theconnection between Thessaloniki in Greece and the Serbian desire for accessto the Adriatic is lost on all but the authors. If the Serbians wantedaccess to the sea through this Greek port, they would have surely notattacked Dubrovnik, and would have directed their mortars to Greece.

Evenmaps are sometimes inaccurate. On one of the maps Mostar is entirely withinthe Croatian territory and it doesn't even border the Bosnian territory,while it's totally emerged in the Bosnia entity on the next map.

It is ashame that this horrific book got a favorable review, if only because thosereviewing it lack the background to verify the claims presented by theauthors.If your interest is the break-up of Yugoslavia, there are muchfiner works out there. ... Read more

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Drawings and writings by children in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia reflect their feelings about the war. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Dreams of Peace Amid the Nightmares of War and Genocide
In 1991, the airwaves were ringing with President George H. W. Bush's call to arms to stop an act of war... in Kuwait.At the time, we heard hardly a word of the genocide in the former Yugoslavia.Would the president only have had the opportunity to have heard the poignant voices in "I Dream of Peace."The title of this touching book comes from Aleksandar, a boy in Sarajevo, who was severely burned in an explosion.The saddest fact of twentieth-century warfare is the trend of taking the fighting from the battlefield to civilian areas, where children become the targets of the attrocities committed.A trend, yes; the adults who the children count on as our role models had evidently not learned the lesson from another famous testament of children's cries, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, a collection of poetry and artwork by children at Terezin.The only thing that had changed in a half century is that "The Holocaust" became "Ethnic Cleansing."

These pictures and poems are cries of pain; yet, like so much of the spontaneity of children's creativity, they ring with hope.This book is divided into four chapters.The first three, Cruel War, The Day They Killed My House, and My Nightmare show the war from the eyes of its most innocent and vulnerable victims.With brutal honesty, the children paint burning villages, planes dropping bombs, and soldiers and tanks shooting every which way."You flee the misery, but misery follows," says Zana.Dunja wonders why, after living in a community that celebrated its diversity, "it's so important, everyone asking who you are, what you do, where you come from."In a scene that could have come from the pages of Anne Frank or Zlata Filipovic, she remarks, "The weather is growing very cold now.No longer can you hear the singing of the birds, only the sound of the children crying for a lost mother or father, a brother or a sister."Betraying here mere 12 years of age, Maida, from Skopje, remarks, "War is the saddest word that flows from my quivering lips.... It is a dealdy bird that destroys our home, and deprives us of our childhood.War is the evilest of birds, turning the streets, and the world into an inferno."

The final chapter, "When I Close My Eyes I Dream of Peace," portrays the hope for peace.In stark contrast to the dark images of the first three chapters, these pictures are rendered in bright colors.Students from a fifth-grade class in Zenica mention Anne Frank's diary, which they read."Like Anne Frank fifty years ago, we wait for peace.She didn't live to see it.Will we?" they ask.The book ends with a plea from Edina, a 12-year-old girl from Sarajevo, to all the children throughout the world, that they keep the children of Bosnia in their thoughts and hearts and to never allow what happened to them to happen again.Are the adults listening?

Images & Dreams of Peace
UNICEF volunteers offered displaced children in the former Yugoslavia workshops in art and writing. These children's voices are here, sharing their experiences with the world. A valuable classroom teaching aid. Third & Fourth graders especially seem to connect with their international counterparts. Colorful drawings, clear poems (trans. to English). I often use this book as an introductionto "write and draw your images of peace". Or, for those classrooms that are in a battle zone, this book would allow children to explore and to express their complicated reactions and visions. Also useful in lower grades as the drawings are very accessible. The vision is: out of war, peace is possible.

War self-evidently assaults early childhood development.
To read "Jim" Grant, former Executive Director ofUNICEF, is to read Cole P. Dodge--who survives Grant and remainssingularly dedicated to bettering the healthcare delivery systems to both women and children the world over. ... Read more

Product Description
Can we achieve justice during war? Should law substitute for realpolitik? Can an international court act against the global community that created it?

Justice in a Time of War is a translation from the French of the first complete, behind-the-scenes story of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, from its proposal by Balkan journalist Mirko Klarin through recent developments in the trial of Slobodan Miloševic. It is also a meditation on the conflicting intersection of law and politics in achieving justice and peace.

Le Monde's review (November 3, 2000) of the original edition recommended Hazan's book as a nuanced account of the Tribunal that should be a must-read for the new leaders of Yugoslavia. "The story Pierre Hazan tells is that of an institution which, over the course of the years, has managed to escape in large measure from the initial hidden motives and manipulations of those who created it (and not only the Americans)."

With insider interviews filling out every scene, Hazan tells a chaotic story of war that raged while the Western powers cobbled together a tribunal in order to avoid actual intervention. The international lawyers and judges for this rump world court started with nothing--but they ultimately established the tribunal as an unavoidable actor in the Balkans. The West had created the Tribunal in 1993, hoping to threaten international criminals with indictment and thereby force an untenable peace. In 1999, the Tribunal suddenly became useful to NATO countries as a means by which to criminalize Miloševic's regime and to justify military intervention in Kosovo and in Serbia. Ultimately, this hastened the end of Miloševic's rule and led the way to history's first war crimes trial of a former president by an international tribunal.

Hazan's account of the Tribunal's formation and evolution questions the contradictory policies of the Western powers and illuminates a cautionary tale for the reader: realizing ideals in a world enamored of realpolitik is a difficult and often haphazard activity. ... Read more

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The chief European Community negotiator provides a close-up look at events in the Balkans since the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, examining failed international peace efforts, condemning U.S. Balkan policies, and offering a personal chronicle of efforts to end the civil war. 50,000 first printing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Personal and highly interesting account
David Owen gives a very personal account of his experiences as a mediator, including his frustrations with the attitude of the international community (in particular the US). His views are very useful to understand the mechanisms of international diplomacy in a highly mediatised conflict. It is rather simplistic, in my view, to depict Owen as someone who tried to favorise one one the parties in the conflict.

Poor Leadership by Mr. Owen
This is by far one of the worst books about war in Bosnia.
It's a complete waste of time.

Balkan Murder
Lord Owen is clearly getting brickbats for being "pro Serb" (he has said as a witness to Milosevic's "trial" that he was the only leader who consistently supported peace & that any form of racism was "anathema" to him). On the other hand nobody points out any factual errors. One reviewer refers to Fikret Abdic as a smuggler when, as a matter of fact, he was the most popular moslem politician & Bosnia who had clearly beaten Izetbegovic in a straight election.

If the facts prove that the Croatian & Moslem Nazis were genocidal nazis, as they do, it would be wrong to say otherwise. On the other hand Lord Owen would hardly have been criticised had he lied to uphold the cover story of the genocidal western leaders who supported them.

Horrible
Horrible book from the person who has no right to even talk about the war in Bosnia, since he himself was indirectly responsible for prolonging it.I would strongly recommend a book by Brendan Simms "Unfinest Hour - Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia" that clarifies Owen's role during the war in Bosnia.

Long, dry apology mirrors western approach to Bosnian peace
Lord Owen's recounting of his efforts to help resolve the Bosnian war is really little more than a list of meetings and conferences. To this dry unending litany he adds a few cursory and, in some cases, inaccurate descriptions of players associated with the conflict. If you are hoping to get insight from a seemingly well placed person who spent hours and days locked in discussion with some of the 20th Century's most reviled figures you will not find it here. His descriptions are little more than ambiguous diplomatic niceties. During the course of this confusing peace process, Owen only occasionally pens restrained displeasure about the continued obstructionism of American administrations and the blatant deception of Balkan leaders. Just as the international community feared backlash against any form of decisive action, it seems Lord Owen had similar reservations about libel - neither approach is conducive to establishing lasting peace nor fruitful discourse. Owen's isolation in conference rooms and hotels quickly becomes apparent as his detached, incomplete descriptions of realities on the ground appear more like secondhand gossip than any useful form of analysis.

In this book, Lord Owen missed a glorious opportunity to expose the countess agendas and duplicities he faced from all sides. He could have spoken his mind but instead chose to remain a politician. In the end, this book is really just another apology for the shameful failure of Western collective security. ... Read more

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Offers a synthesis of the evolution of the people of southeastern Europe up to their national independence. ... Read more

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An account of Balkan history (modern Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania), this text covers the period from the first major nationalist rising against the Ottoman rulers in 1804 to the aftermath of World War II. ... Read more

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The study of international relations revolves around the question, "why war?" The Social Construction of Man, State, and War seek to answer this question by examining the practice of warfare and its dehumanizing effects in the context of the former Yugoslavia. However, Franke Wilmer also dares to pose more difficult questions beyond those normally asked.Why war now? And why here? Why so much brutality? Conventional arguments provide little or no answers.
Ethnic conflict is the phrase most often invoked, but with little regard to how identity is constructed or deployed.To answer these questions, Wilmer combines effective theoretical analysis with her powerful interviews with the local war-weary population.By adding this psychoanalytic element, Wilmer assembles an explanation that could not be built with normal international relations tools alone.Studies of war with this critical force, combined with this deep sense of humanity, are rare, making The Social Construction of Man, State, and War a fundamental addition to our understanding of man's inhumanity to man. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Expectation gap
I bought this book by Franke Wilmer for the following reasons:

1. The title refers directly to Kenneth Waltz' Man, the state and War, which means the author is not hiding her ambitions with this book. That's the same thing Alex Wendt did with his Social Theory of International Politics whichcountered Waltz' book Theory of International Politics.

2. I'm extremely symphatetic to social construcitivism - I think it's the right way to think about International Relations.

3. I wanted to know more about the Balkans.

To me, the book was a big disappointment. While Wilmer and Wendt both are constructivists, Wendt is a realist while Wilmer seems to be an interpretivist in epistemological terms. The book has no clear problem or research question, but rather presents a minimum of ten questions for each chapter that are never properly answered. Clearly, Wilmer is a critical theorist who seeks to deconstruct some common perceptions about the Yugoslavia conflict.

The book's structure is a big mess. Theory mixed with empirical evidence (based on interviews with former citizens) in every chapter is a great strategy for confusing the reader. Worse is it that the same quotes from other theorists appear multiple times, making some of the theoretical parts sound like a broken record.

Relying extensively on interviews with former Yugoslavia citizens she tries to show that we cannot think of war only as a product of structural/materialistic factors. For that I agree, and the book may be fairly successful if the aim is to convince the reader that there is more to conflict than the international environment/internal economic problems. I just wish this was written in a more elegant way, maybe employing a realist epistemology to show how identities were constructed/changed before/during the conflict. She certainlytouches upon these questions, but tries to deconstruct so many other things at the same time that it is impossible to get hold of what happened.

I wish this great title had been reserved for a more moderate constructivist project. ... Read more

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"Resolving the Yugoslav conflict was the last great foreign policy challenge of the twentieth century. Never before in history was so much emphasis placed on the need to employ the concept of justice in the peace process or was so much energy devoted to creating and utilizing international justice-based institutions. In this provocative and insightful book, two former State Department lawyers, Paul R. Williams and Michael P.Scharf, undertake to tell the true story, warts and all," of the role of justice in building peace in the former Yugoslavia. During the Yugoslav conflict, Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic was transformed from a key partner in peace to an indicted war criminal, who now sits in a 10 x 17 foot cell at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. But the road from accommodation to accountability in the Balkans was anything but smooth. Based on their personal experience, extensive research, and interviews with key players in the Yugoslav peace-building process, Williams and Scharf provide a gripping account of how and why justice was misapplied and mishandled throughout the peace-builders' efforts to settle the Yugoslav conflict.All too often human rights and peace advocates treat justice as a panacea for conflict and atrocities, while self-proclaimed realists and professional diplomats dismiss justice as an impediment to peace. Williams and Scharf demonstrate that the truth lies in between. Their definitive study provides a novel framework for understanding the utility of justice as well as its practical limits as a diplomatic tool so that it can be more effectively applied in resolving future conflicts around the globe." ... Read more

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The year 1992, scheduled to be a milestone on the road to European unity, saw Sarajevo and other European cities bombarded slowly to pieces and their inhabitants starved before the TV eyes of the world. It saw two million Bosnian Moslems threatened with Europe's first genocide since World War II; most of them already driven from their homes by massacre, rape and terror. It saw Bosnia's legal, multi-ethnic government treated as a mere 'warring party' and pressed to surrender by Western governments eager for peace at any price. And it also saw a liberal and left opinion in the West unable to offer any explanation for the continuing war beyond variations on the racist notion of an innate propensity of violence among the peoples of Yugoslavia, or indiscriminate lamentations about the evils of nationalism. Combining political analysis, reportage, polemic and personal reflection, this book provides the first inside account and analysis of the tragic path leading to Yugoslavia's break-up.Against the background of events as they occurred since Tito's death in 1980, it tracks the process whereby an equitable settlement between the country's constituent was destroyed by an increasingly virulent Great-Serb nationalism, bent on recentralising the country under its own hegemony. The book is written not by a passive spectator but by a participant with a firm grasp of Yugoslavia's history, which accounts for the breadth of its content. As the decade it covers draws to a close, Branka Magas's initial cautious optimism changes to a growing intimation of impending tragedy, and finally to outrage at the slaughter visited on upon Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina by the Serbian army, with the tolerance or complicity of Western chancelleries. The Destruction of Yugoslavia represents a unique documentary testimony to Yugoslavia's regression towards disintegration, war, and the horrors of 'ethnic cleansing'; a testimony which is frighteningly accurate. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A well-ordered summary of Balcanian break-up
The author has an objective glance to the disorderand causes of disorder occured in Yugoslavia.Hesuccessfully combines the causes to the uncomfor- table history of Yugoslavia.One thus can get idea of history of Yugoslavia either.Reading the book gives an idea of the total annihilation of many innocence in "old" Yugoslavia... ... Read more

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