Kosovo: War and Revenge (Yale Nota Bene)

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T Judah

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Pages: 416 (Paperback)

ISBN: 0300097255

Pub: Yale University Press

Pub date: 2002-11-05

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 115261

Editorial Review:

Tim Judah lived in Belgrade from 1990-1995, reporting for the London Times and the New York Review of Books. 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". 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 summarising 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, 1804-1899. But for an acerbic and perceptive personal account, Judah's book is hard to beat. --Christopher Hart

Reader Reviews:

One of the more balanced books on Kosovo (11/12 people found this helpful)

Tim Judah has clearly attempted to write a non-biased book about the complex Kosovo conflict and he has succeeded to a large degree. He tries not to fall into the trap of demonising the Serbs as an ethnic group, which has occurred to many other historians and journalists, unfortunately.

However, there are still issues I would raise. For the recent conflict (1999) he describes the aggressive Albanian ethnic cleansing of minority populations after the arrival of KFOR as "revenge", implying that it was understandable. He also quotes the already discredited figure of 11,000 Albanian civilians killed, when in actual fact, KFOR up until now have found around 4,000 corpses, which include Serbs as well as Albanians and also soldiers, not just civilians.

He also seems to have been in favour of NATO bombing and describes the bombing of civilian targets as all being "accidents", which is impossible to believe, since more civilian targets were hit than military. However, compared to most books on Kosovo, it is well-written and more balanced than most.

The Jejune West (8/19 people found this helpful)

Tim Judah is no scholar. This is not a work of great erudition. But, as an eyewitness account, it ranks close to Rebecca West's classic. It is a heart rending and compelling foray into the real "Apocalypse Now" that the Balkan has become once more. Whenever the Big Powers set out to pacify this region they succeeded only in perpetuating the carnage. The result? Never before has the Balkan been more of a powder keg, ready to detonate thunderously. Never before has it been so fractured among political entities, some viable - many not. Never before has it been dominated by a single superpower, not counter-balanced by its allies nor shackled by its foes. This is a disastrous state of things, about to get worse. Driven by America - this amalgam of violent frontiersmen, semi-literate go getters and malignant optimists ("with some goodwill there is always a solution and a happy ending") - the West has committed the sins of ignorant intervention and colonial perpetuation. Peace among nations is the result of attrition and exhaustion, of mutual terror and actual bloodletting - not of amicable agreement and visionary stratagems. It took two world wars to make peace between France and Germany. By forcing an unwanted peace upon an unwilling populace in the early stages of every skirmish - the West has ascertained the perpetuation of these conflicts. Witness Bosnia and its vociferous nationalist Croats. Witness Macedonia's and Kosovo's Albanians and their chimerical armies of liberation. These are all cinders of hostilities artificially suppressed by Western procurators and Western cluster bombs. The West should have dangled the carrots of NATO and EU memberships in front of the bloodied pugilists - not ram them down their reluctant throats in shows of air superiority. Humanitarian aid should have been provided and grants and credits for development to the deserving. But the succour afforded by the likes of Germany to the likes of Croatia and by the benighted Americans to the most extreme elements in Kosovo - served only to amplify and prolong the suffering and the warfare. The West obstinately refused - and still does - to contemplate the only feasible solution to the spectrum of Balkan questions. Instead of convening a new Berlin Congress and redrawing the borders of the host of entities, quasi-entities and fraction entities that emerged with the disintegration of the Yugoslav Federation - the West foolishly and blindly adheres to unsustainable borders which reflect colonial decision making and ceasefire lines. In the absence of a colonizing power, only ethnically-homogeneous states can survive peacefully in the Balkan. The West should strive to effect ethnic homogenization throughout the region by altering borders, encouraging population swaps and transfers and discouraging ethnic cleansing and forced assimilation ("ethnic denial"). Sam Vaknin, author of "After the Rain - How the West Lost the East".

Content better than good, presentation rather less so. (4/6 people found this helpful)

Judah's Kosovo does not pretend to be more than a journalistic narrative of the conflict in southern Jugoslavia over the last two decades, and a brief review of some of the key features of its history. There could not, therefore, be justice in criticising it for a failure to be something deeper but the extravagant words of some reviewers might lead prospective readers to expect such. As an example of its genre, it can properly be said that the work is better than good - it is well worth the time and its supple style makes for a comparatively effortless read. How much more distressing then that this particular volume has more editing errors within its three and a half hundred pages than all the other Balkan titles with which it shares a long shelf in my bookcase together!

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