"Bosnia and Beyond" by Jeanne Haskin [2]

I'm going to preface this post with two short apologies:

1) Sorry it took me over a week from the first post to continue this review; and

2) Sorry I selected this book without knowing more about it. Haskin does not seem to have anything particularly original to add to the debate on Bosnia. This is not necessarily a bad thing--I don't I have much to add to the debate on Bosnia, either, but I'm an amateur blogger. I freely admit to being a non-specialist and a non-speaker/reader of Serbo-Croat who relies entirely on secondary sources in English for his information. As such, I try to focus more on book reviews and historiography rather than any pretense to original research or analysis. Of course, this requires that I exercise some judgement and a willingness to make critical evaluations of the sources I rely on.

I am not convinced that Haskin is sufficiently aware that she works under the same limitations I do. This book is little more than a summary of other works, seemingly shoehorned into an ideologically pre-determined conceptual framework. A quick visit to the website of the publisher, Algora Publishing, reinforces that perception.

I will stick with this review, if only to give Haskin the chance to redeem herself, but so far I am not impressed.

Part 1
Chapter One: The Pre-War Situation

This chapter explicitly rehashes the argument made by Susan Woodward and Michael Chossudovsky--that the breakup of Yugoslavia was a direct result of a Western-imposed financial crisis at the end of the Cold War. The argument here is nuanced to the extent that she doesn't believe that the West intended to destroy Yugoslavia, but rather merely intended to overthrow the Communist government. The theory here is that disparities between the different republics created fault lines that nationalists were able to exploit; Milosevic most adroitly.

Her 'evidence' is slim, and the weakness of her book is evident within the first few pages; she states her positions briefly, includes a handful of footnotes from the same few sources, and considers her case made. If this were merely an aside to the larger issues to come, the reader could forgive her--but the premise of the entire book is that the West, particularly the United States, were primarily responsible for the breakup of the country and therefore bear a great deal of the blame for the violence which followed. Because of that, it is important that the author should establish this crucial point as best she can before moving on. She fails to do so.

Chapter 2

And yet--often is seems that Haskin's heart is in the right place. Although she accepts one of the key premises of Balkan revisionism, she seems not to have followed Woodward and Chossudovsky into the arms of Johnstone, Parenti, and company.

In this chapter, she briefly summarizes some of the context for the rise of nationalism in post-Tito Yugoslavia; specifically among Serbs and Croats. Nothing here will surprise any readers of this blog, but frankly they will surprise a reader who has just finished Chapter 1 and thinks he or she knows where Haskin is going.

Chapter 3

This chapter briefly summarizes the preparation for war among Serb nationalists, within the Milosevic regime and its proxies, to a lesser extent among nationalist Croats and the Tudjman regime, and the lack of preparation by Izetbegovic and the nascent Bosnian state. Again, there is nothing new here.

One interesting note: While Haskin accepts Woodward's thesis that Western-imposed economic hardship was the primary cause of the eventual breakdown of the Yugoslav state, she explicitly rejects Woodward's claim that the RAM--the Serb paramilitary forces created either by Milosevic or his allies--was created to defend against Western aggression. While I suppose it is good that she rejects Woodward's ridiculous claim, it is curious that she doesn't recognize that this is a warning sign that Woodward's thesis is an ideologically driven project to make the facts fit the theory rather than the other way around. Haskin picks and chooses which trees she likes without any awareness that someone is trying to get her lost in a forest.

***********

I will probably continue to review Part 1 in a perfunctory manner; Part 2 might merit slightly more measured consideration and attention.

How to Tell That A Book Has An Ideological Axe to Grind

In the spirit of "I don't need to eat the whole fish to know it's rotten", I will not be launching a comprehensive, chapter-by-chapter review of Shadows on the Mountain: The Allies, the Resistance, and the Rivalries That Doomed WWII Yugoslavia by Marcia Christoff Kurapovna. The book is concerned with the rescue of 500 American airment by Chetnik forces near the end of World War II, but while this incident is often used as propaganday by Serbian nationalists and their allies, Kurapovna has gone one better and written an entire book centered on that rescue. However, she seems to engage in quite a bit of questionable revisionism and out-and-out one-sided propagandizing in her efforts to not only put the rescue in "context" but to give it a significance that it does not warrant.

The subtitle of the book hints at what this context is--she argues that the Allies wrongly betrayed Mihailovic and the Chetniks (who at least once she claims were fighting for "Western values"), were duped into supporting the Partisans, and therefore "doomed" Yugoslavia.

Needless to say, it takes a lot of creative use of selectively chosen facts to make this argument; but while Kurapovna's footnote-laden book certainly manages to avoid the bombast of more obviously biased works, her agenda is clear. One can learn this with a cursory read through, but one can save even more time by restricting oneself to the mercifully brief Preface. There is enough coded language and unexamined inferences in these first four pages to alert the reader.

Echoing Diana Johnstone's disclaimer near the beginning of Fool's Cruade, she immediately begins with the "I'm only pro-Serb in the sense that the big bad Western media is anti-Serb" rhetoric, Kurapovna immediately plays to the nationalist mythological motifs of Serbia's specialness and it's sense of martyrdom. She is not subtle. The third sentence reads:

"Yet anyone writing about Serbia must remain constantly on the defensive--to respond to usually knee-jerk, ill-informed hostility toward the country and to the questionable tallying of its various abuses and atrocities as recorded by less than scrupulous international media."

The contradiction between the book's ostensible concern with the fate of Yugoslavia versus the singular concern with Serbia in the Preface is quite telling. Considering that the book goes on to portray Serbia as surrounded by enemies , one wonders what sort of Yugoslavia would have been possible under the royalist Chetniks and the Nedic government.

To date, this book has received very little traction. Rather than give it any more attention, I am merely greatful that the propagandists for the other side are often so clumsy.

"Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia" by Marko Attila Hoare [8]

CONCLUSION

Dr. Hoare concludes by briefly recounting a central theme of his book; namely, that the war in Bosnia was a war of competing--and fundamentally incompatible--ideologies. The war was, at root, political rather than ethnic--which is not to say that the "national question" wasn't important, or to deny that widespread tribal bigotry was an important factor fueling much of the resulting violence.

"Genocide in Bosnia" makes this argument forcefully and convincingly. In the final page, Dr. Hoare concludes by noting that the Partisans and the postwar Communist never completely succeeded in ridding the country of some of the baser passions and more chauvinistic political impulses. In this light, the Bosnian war of the 1990s was in many ways a continuation of the same political/ideological war that raged in the 1940s.

------------------

I highly recommend this well-documented, assiduously argued, and quite readable book to anyone interested in the development of 20th Century Bosnia as well as anyone looking to broaden their understanding of Yugoslav history. More importantly, this book is an authoritative refutation of the simplistic histories of Yugoslavia's World War II experience wielded by nationalists and their enablers. As such, this isn't just a valuable work of history, but also a substantive piece of academic activism. Dr. Hoare's book stands both as a sober piece of scholarship and a strong rationale for supporting and believing in the integrity of Bosnia-Hercegovina.

"To Kill A Nation" by Michael Parenti [16]

CHAPTER SIX: BOSNIA: NEW COLONIES

[continued]

The Alija Izetbegovic of Parenti's book is a familiar figure to anyone conversant with Balkan revisionism and contemporary Serbian ultra-nationalism--an Islamic fanatic intent on imposing Sharia onto non-Muslims throughout Bosnia. Parenti's version of Izetbegovic is, typically, a Frankenstein's monster made up of quotes from Islam Between East and West and other equally context-free quotes from Western observers and so forth. The only new wrinkle Parenti adds--compared to Johnstone's very similar treatment--is that Parenti dwells for a page or so on Fikret Abdic, described as "one figure who behaved honorably throughout the war." Given Parenti's blind spot when it comes to the kleptocratic nature of Milosevic's and Karadzic's regimes, this soft spot for a Godfather-like opportunist is just about par for the course.

In spite of himself, however, Parenti has brought up some interesting issues. I have not yet found an English-language biography of Izetbegovic, who remains a somewhat difficult figure to understand. It is difficult to guess the man's motivations both before and after the outbreak of the war. More importantly, there is not enough information on the SDA as a whole available in English, but it seems clear that in many ways the party was more avowedly "Islamic" than the ethnic Muslims who voted for it. This is not to validate the ridiculous claims of Parenti, Johnstone, and others; instead, I believe that a more thorough accounting of the ideological debates within the SDA, as well as an objective study of Izetbegovic's policies and strategies during his years in power would not only help to flesh out our understanding of the era, it would also give readers the ammunition needed to deflate the menacing caricature of a cold-blooded Islamist unleashing gangs of mujahideen against the frightened Christians of Bosnia.

After the expected Muslim-bashing, the chapter peters out with more ravings against the privatization of the Muslim-Croat Federations infrastructure and economy. More plotting by those evil global capitalists, you know.

There is a boxed aside near the end of the chapter; this one is entitled "Who Wanted Peace in Bosnia?" The answer, of course, was...Slobodan Milosevic, who is contrasted to Izetbegovic. The setting is Dayton, at which--as is well known--Milosevic was quite willing to negotiate a peace treaty, even to give up the suburbs of Sarajevo to Izetbegovic, who is portrayed as being stubborn and belligerent because he wanted control over his own country. The lack of context (sure, Milosevic wanted peace in 1995--he didn't want to lose any more of what war had gained him) is expected and typical and not worth comment. What is worth comment is his source--Diana Johnstone.

The Balkan revisionists cite each other's works in a closed circle of mutually reinforcing citation. In fact, if one peruses the footnotes it does not take long to see that much of the "source material" for this book are the usual Balkan revisionist writers (Johnstone, Elich, Chossudovsky, Woodward, etc.) as well as some sources so blatantly biased and transparent in their propaganda intent that even Johnstone might have hesitated to rely to much on them--I am thinking especially of the website http://www.jasenovac.org/, an absolute masterpiece of revisionism in that the ostensible cause--commemorating victims of the Usashe genocide of World War II--is a worthy one, therefore putting critics in the position of seeming to argue against sympathy for Serb, Jewish, and Roma victims.

Why this is interesting is that, in the Introduction, he makes a point of claiming that:

"In any case, I want to point out that almost all the information used in this book emanates from well-established Western sources:"

which he goes on to list in rather exhaustive detail. It provokes a rather "methinks he doth protest too much" reaction, a reaction which a subsequent examination of his actual uses of the quotes and information he does actually (selectively) retrieve from such sources thoroughly vindicates. And while he does refer to a couple of "progressive" sources, he makes no mention of the myriad of not-so-mainstream (to put it kindly) sources he utilizes.

There were times when, reading Johnstone, I suspected that she might actually believe much of what she was saying. Parenti, though, is too transparent and thorough a dissembler of truth and information for that. Parenti believes so strongly in his version of the truth that he holds mere facts in contempt, and reassembles them as he sees fit.

"To Kill A Nation" by Michael Parenti [14]

CHAPTER FIVE: CROATIA: NEW REPUBLIC, OLD REACTIONARIES

[continued]

After three pages of "context," Parenti is finally ready to discuss contemporary events. Sort of.

"Between 1991 and 1995, the army of the newly proclaimed Croatian republic conducted its own ethnic cleansing operation, replete with rapes, summary executions, and indiscriminate shelling, driving over half a million Serbs from their ancestral homes in Croatia, including an estimated 225,000 Serbs from Krajina in August 1995 during what was called "Operation Storm." The resistance of the Krajina Serbs was broken with assistance from NATO war planes and missiles. "We have resolved the Serbian question," crowed Tudjman in a speech to his generals."

This paragraph is all the space that Parenti devotes, out of nine pages, to the four years of actual military conflict on Croatian soil during those four years. That's it. No mention of Vukovar, Dubrovnik, or of the actions and policies of the breakaway Knin regime. This paragraph is all we get.

He devotes roughly the same amount of space to the revival of the kuna as the unit of currency (after claiming that the new government was "set up with the help of NATO's guns") and the checkerboard emblem, which he falsely describes as a Ustashe symbol, even though he then acknowledges that the design was a traditional Croat design. The Ustashe, it should be noted, added a large "U" to that design. He is correct that the revival of such symbols, combined with the sinister and vulgar rhetoric coming out of Zagreb, was certain to send ominous signals to non-Croats (primarily Serbs) in Croatia; were his account not so one-sided and myopic he might have created the opportunity for substantive debate rather than hysterical incitement.

And so it goes; a dreary accounting of some of the gruesome and despicable acts of Tudjman's regime and it's heinous appeals to implicitly or even explicitly fascist sentiment. All of which deserve serious attention, but in a measured, balanced fashion. Parenti mixes various ugly details without discrimination or context. He makes claims such as "Serb-hating was abundantly evident during Tudjman's reign," a typical example of Parenti's tendency to wallow in rhetorically heated phraseology.

In the end, Parenti implies that Tudjman was a tool of Western financial powers, who gutted his own economy and poisoned his society with resurgent fascism, leaving his nation an economic and social wreck with nothing to show but the blood on its hands. People who have visited the Croatia of today might have a very hard time recognizing the country they see with the grotesque nation of Parenti's imagination. And concerned observers who would like to focus more attention on the sins of the HDZ during the war most likely will wish Parenti had turned down the intensity of his outrage a few notches, so that the rest of us can hear ourselves think.

"To Kill A Nation" by Michael Parenti [13]

CHAPTER FIVE: CROATIA: NEW REPUBLIC, OLD REACTIONARIES

Having acknowledged some of the troubling issues surrounding Croatia, Tudjman, the HDZ in both Croatia and Bosnia, and the lingering poison of Ustashe nostalgia, let us now consider Parenti's far less balanced and nuanced consideration of Croatia during the 1990s.

----------------

Parenti and Johnstone share many underlying assumptions about events and realities in the Balkans, but they also operate under a similar overriding assumption about their intended readership; they assume--or, more likely, they hope--that the reader is not particularly well-read on the subject. Aside from being able to pass off biased or even incorrect information as fact without fear of challenge, and being able to decontextualize at will, they also rely on a sense of astonishment and outrage at "revelations" which should be common knowledge to anyone with even a modicum of interest in the historical context of the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Which means this--the first three pages of this chapter consists of a brief rehash of Franjo Tudjman's fascist past. This is not news to most people, but that doesn't stop Parenti from presenting this portrait of who he strangely names "the White House's man-of-the-hour" as a devastating expose. His summary of the Usatshe years is predictably gruesome and devoid of nuance. Parenti shares Johnstone's penchant for ethnic collectivism, so any indication that the Ustashe only represented a minority of Croats is missing in his version of history. Indeed, I suspect that Parenti would be incapable of acknowledging the complexities and ambiguities of individual affiliations and actions during such a conflict.

Perhaps I am not expressing myself well; Parenti's disingenuous analysis is so devoid of balance and nuance, not mention factual comprehensiveness, that it becomes nearly impossible to find a coherent position to critique. Parenti is not making an argument or developing a thesis, he is merely waving the bogeyman of resurgent fascism in the reader's face, seeking to incite revulsion and shut down critical faculties.

I will resist the urge to respond in kind. In my previous post, I considered the importance of acknowledging and examining the sins of Tudjman and the HDZ during the Balkan wars. Wallowing in the horrors of World War II is not the path towards unlocking the political motives of cynical autocrats and hate-driven nationalists in the 1980s and 1990s. Let me state--I absolutely agree that Franjo Tudjman was a thug, a Holocaust denier (Parenti's outrage about this point is repulsively ironic, given later chapters of Omarska and Srebrenica), and on the whole a toxic and destructive factor in the Bosnian war.

I will not indulge Parenti's crude rhetoric any further. In the next post, I will continue with the rest of the chapter, where Parenti begins to consider contemporary issues.

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Three [28]

CHAPTER THREE: COMPARATIVE NATIONALISMS

TUDJMAN'S HISTORIC COMPROMISE

The previous section concluded by noting that the Ustashe went into exile after World War II ended. Johnstone picks up the story of the right-wing Croatian emigre network of well-funded extremists, terrorists, and activists from there. It's hardly an uplifting story, but neither is it as completely obscure as Johnstone makes it out to be.

Which is typical of her approach throughout the book--the audience Johnstone is writing for is certainly not comprised of specialists or even people with a prior interest in the region. Her entire strategy boils down to this--she assumes (hopefully, I would think) that she knows more about the region than her region. Much, much more. This might explain some of her unwarranted arrogance and self-proclaimed grasp of nuance and context which most of us ignorant Westerners presumably lack. If one were a young, idealistic leftist of a certain type, predisposed to think the worst of Western actions and rhetoric, this book might very well seem impressive, with a broad scope of knowledge and a detailed analysis of issues. If some ideal reader like that wanted to know more about the wars in Yugoslavia, something beyond the coverage done by major Western broadcasters and publications, this book might very well appear to be authoritative, or at least worthy of respect.

Alas, Ms. Johnstone. Most anyone reading this blog knows a little more about the region than would be ideal for your purposes.

-------

Which is my way of saying I'm really tempted to skip this part. It's yet more 'Ustashe-as-epitome-of-Croatian-nationalism' history by selective anecdote; a strategy she seems to have settled quite comfortably into. If you don't know about Tudjman's Ustashe leanings, his connections to the nationalist emigre communities which nurtured dreams of resurgent Croat nationalism, his background as a nationalist agitator in the 1970s, or of the distasteful--when not downright despicable--rhetoric of his government once he came into power in Croatia...well, if you don't know that, I'd be very surprised that you're reading this blog.

It's not that she gets the facts wrong in this section, even though there are the usual distortions and disproportional presentations of isolated incidents. Nor do I believe that it is not important to understand the role played by extreme Croat nationalism in Bosnia, especially in Hercegovina.

Diana Johnstone is in no way interested in putting the war in Bosnia in context; this section was not written to enlighten or instruct, but rather to distract and shift blame. And once again, she ignores chronology completely--the ideal naive reader she hopes for knows all about the resurgence of nationalism in Croatia, but has no idea about the rise of Serbian nationalism coming from Belgrade, and infecting the ethnic Serb communities in Croatian and Bosnia.

I trust that any reasonably informed reader already knows all this. If so, you're overqualified to read this book.

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Three [27]

CHAPTER THREE: COMPARATIVE NATIONALISMS

WHY SUCH HATRED?

A short section, worthy of little if any commentary. Beginning with the true-enough observation that people often don't hate the other who are different but rather the other who, in many ways, are very similar (putting aside the issue of causation), she proceeds to extrapolate one more criticism of Croatian nationalism from this unexamined bit of insight.

Essentially, her point is that Croatian nationalism was not a "broad liberation movement" like that of their poor, pig-farming cousins the Serbs, but rather a "fairly narrow effort to gain prestige within a hierarchical order." Remember, the Croats developed their national identity in the context of being a subject people of the Catholic Hapsburg Empire. Johnstone believes that there is a hierarchical order of nationalisms as well, and the Serbs are much higher up the chain the snobbish, elitist Croats, who upon independence were, in her telling, dismayed to find themselves lumped in with all those dirty, Orthodox Slavs to the south.

Of course, it is easy to find bigoted, racist, and elitist statements by leading Croats, including Ante Staveric, the founder of the Croatian Party of Rights. Establish a direct line between the chauvinism of Staveric to the outright insane bigotry of Pavelic, demonstrate that many hard-line Ustashe went into exile after World War II, and you've got yourself one sinister-looking piece of damning evidence.

That's about it for this section, which is only two pages long. Again, I have no love for the Ustashe or its ideology. I shouldn't have to make that disclaimer, but in Johnstone's version of history I must--all Croatian nationalism, in her version of history, revolves around the Ustashe. Croatian nationalism, in her telling, was a direct line leading the Pavelic's regime. All Croatian history after the War was simply a long period of waiting before Croatia's true nature would again reveal itself.

One last note--it's very distressing how lively and focused Johnstone's prose is in this section; her writing is much more direct and less cluttered with unrelated trivia. I fear she is enjoying this dragging through the muck just as much as I find it depressing.

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Three [26]

CHAPTER THREE: COMPARATIVE NATIONALISMS

THE SPIRIT OF THE CRUSADES

In this section, Johnstone addresses the role the Catholic Church played in the Ustashe regime. This is, no doubt, not a pretty story. The Ustashe regime was nauseatingly pious, and the Vatican certainly did not seem overly concerned about the atrocities being committed at least partially in the name of Catholicism.

Where Johnstone goes overboard is not in her condemnation of the Vatican's complicity in Ustashe crimes--this may be the first time, after 148 pages, where Johnstone and I actually agree on something--but in her typical failure to examine the wider context.

The Catholic Church was, as any reader of her book should know, rather chummy with fascist and far-right authoritarian regimes in places other than Croatia. While it's true that Pavelic and his government called forth the spirit of earlier Crusades against heretics, such rhetorical flourishes should not distract us from the wider issues at hand.

Her claims that the Ustashe regime was a direct rebirth of Franciscan persecution of Christians in the Middle Ages is strained, to put it mildly. Her assertion that the Bosnian Church were Bogomil heretics is mistaken, although this misconception is rather widespread and she really cannot be faulted for it. However, she also claims that the Orthodox Christians of Bosnia were Serbs, a very debatable point at best. It is doubtful that the Orthodox Christians of medieval Bosnia thought of themselves as Serbs; not all of them at least. Once again, she makes a direct connection between modern nationalism and pre-modern ethnic/religious identity.

The paragraph I have been discussing closes with this curious quote:

"Elsewhere esteemed for their unworldly pacifism, the Franciscans of Bosnia-Herzegovina (whose stronghold is in the district of the recent "miracles" of Medjugorje in western Herzegovina) acted as a virtual military order to propagate the official doctrine of the Church against both the heretics (Bogomils) and the "schismatics" (Greek Orthodox, that is, Serbs). In those border territories of the faith, along the East-West border with Orthodoxy, the Catholic Church sponsored a militant aggression in total contrast to the meek, ecumenical attitudes displayed in other times and places."

So you have Johnstone making the implicit claim that all Orthodox Slavs in the western Balkans were Serbs, centuries before the onset modern nationalism and the development of modern national identities. But what is more striking about that passage is the final sentence--Johnstone might be the only person in the world who thinks of the medieval Catholic Church as having been meek and ecumenical. This is the same church she was damning for Crusades against multiple heresies, after all.

The rest of this short section continues in the same vein, going over the details of the Ustashe campaign of forced conversions and fanatically relgious rhetoric. Not much to say--it's a horrible chapter in history, and most anyone interested enough in the region to bother with my blog most likely knows about the hell on earth that was Jasenovac. As I said in my previous post--I hesitate to dwell too long on the distortions and selectivity of Johnstone's version of events in Ustashe Croatia because I do not want to counter her callousness to the victims of the Bosnian war with an implied indifference to the victims of Ante Pavelic's insane campaign against Serbs and others. Suffice it to say--Johnstone does nothing to illuminate or understand the horror of that time. Instead, she feeds the fires of resentment by wallowing in exaggerated notions of a quasi-myth papist plot.