Update

Just for the sake of getting a post in before the end of August...

As noted before, between graduate school and family matters, I just have not been giving this blog the attention that I used to. I realize that the sun continues to rise in the east, and that nobody turns to "Americans for Bosnia"* for breaking news on Bosnia or expert analysis, but all the same I do know that a handful of people who do care about the issue would turn here from time to time and for that reason alone I feel obligated to keep this blog going. I would hate to feed into any notion that the world has "moved on."

But over the past couple of days, I've had an exchange on the subject of Syria with an acquaintence, and in the course of the discussion I brought up the parallels with the situation in Bosnia in the 1990s. It was immediately clear that his understanding of what happened in the former Yugoslavia is fundamentally different from mine. Specifically; like many well-meaning progressives, he has accepted the narrative that the war was about "ancient hatreds" and that there were no clear distinctions to be made between the different actors.

And so I was I reminded that the battle over the history of the Bosnian conflict is not yet won. There is still work to be done, and for those of us with any investment in the argument over the meaning of the Bosnian war, we really cannot pretend that it's OK to stop talking, writing, reading, and advocating for a rational and fact-based history of the conflict. Allowing the revisionists, apologists, "anti-imperialists", nationalists, and tribalists to have the last word would be a moral abdication. So I apologize for my relative inactivity, and in spite of my busy personal life and current doctoral studies, I will do my best to reengage with the literature and the dialogue around it.





*Truth be told, I wish I could rename the blog. When I first started, I really didn't have an idea exactly what I'd be doing, but I vaguely intended some sort of advocacy and outreach. Now that the blog has morphed into "book reviews from the perspective of a reasonably informed layman", I realize that the name is not only ridiculously overreaching, but also inaccurate. But hey, legacy and all that.

"Amila Bosnae" - Blog by Bosnian living in Denmark

Thanks to a comment she just left on my post about Adil Kunalic, I have discovered Amila Jašarević's wonderful blog Amila Bosnae. Amila is a Danish citizen and a Bosniak refugee, and while her blog focuses a great deal on Danish political issues, she also inevitably writes a great deal about her native land. I have added her blog to my links on the side, and I look forward to catching up on the backlog of posts I have yet to read.

Thank you, Amila, for taking the time to discover my blog. I hope I am able to direct a few new people towards yours.

[Personal aside: It's a little ironic that she's a Bosnian living in Denmark--Bosnia is the country I most want to visit right now, but Denmark--where my great-grandfather came from, and where my last name ("Janssen" or something similar before it got Anglicized to "Johnson" at Ellis Island) is on my "short-list" of countries I want to visit in the near future as well.]

Mihalis Blog

Another blog I read frequently but have, until now, failed to include in my blogroll in the sidebar:

Mihalis

An infrequently-updated blog from a Marxist perspective, but well worth checking out. The most recent post--from last November--should be required reading for anyone swayed by the "where are all the bodies" arguments the Balkan revisionists frequently resort to.

Srebrenica Genocide Blog

Sometimes you can miss something right in front of your eyes. Today I noticed--a year and a half after starting this blog--that I'd never included a link to one of the blogs I read on a regular basis; namely the Srebrenica Genocide Blog.

This oversight has been corrected. I trust that most readers of this blog are already familiar with Daniel's excellent and impassioned work. I am just happy that I finally noticed this puzzling omission.