"It Began in April" [forward by Joschka Fischer]
Fischer is a German leftist who recognized that the Left in general often failed to recognize the situation in Bosnia for what it was. As a man of the Left, he very clearly feels a responsibility to remind his readers of the need to take a stand against fascism, no matter how petty and sordid its manifestation, no matter how pro-Western its victims. He points the the example of Peter Handke, who somehow twisted the language of the Left to defend overt nationalist expansion.
Fischer also explicitly draws a comparison between Vuksanovic's wartime diary and that of Viktor Klemperer, which was just published as the nightmare in Bosnia was coming to an end in 1995. While Fischer states that the experience of the Holocaust and Nazism were unique, he still notes commonalities between the experience of Klemperer, a German Jew living in Dresden and writing about the madness around him, and of Vuksanovic in Pale. Fischer does not say so, but the then-new eyewitness look at the rise of Nazism was surely a record of a moral burden that could not be shrugged off, even so many decades removed. Surely he understand that Europeans like Handke have no right to deny the Klemperers and Vuksanovics the right to be clearly heard.
Author's Preface
This brief Preface simply gives the context--Vuksanovic explains that he had worked for Sarajevo Television but refused to work for the Bosnian Serb station in Pale once it was established; and due to the fact that his mother had been a Croat he was doubly suspected of not being a loyal Serb. As a result, he lived under de facto house arrest for 110 days, until he was able to make his out--smuggling this diary with him.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Peter Lippman's latest Travel Journal
I've been so remiss in keeping this blog up (I'm an avid soccer fan, but haven't even posted about Bosnia's first-ever trip to the World Cup next summer!) that I haven't been posting Peter Lippman's travel journal entries as he sends them out. His latest series, recounting his most recent trip to the region, is up to entry #8. Given that he started sending these out in September, rather than reposting all eight of them now I'm just going to share the link for them at the great Balkan Witness blog:
Peter Lippman: Reports from Kosovo and Bosnia
Thanks as alwasy to Peter for sharing these; I strongly encourage anyone reading this to go to the link above and read all of Peter's excellent reports.
Peter Lippman: Reports from Kosovo and Bosnia
Thanks as alwasy to Peter for sharing these; I strongly encourage anyone reading this to go to the link above and read all of Peter's excellent reports.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
"From Enemy Territory" by Mladen Vuksanovic [1]
For a few months in 1992, author Mladen Vuksanovic was trapped in the Bosnian Serb "capital" of Pale, a victim of his refusal to be a "good Serb" and go along with the implementation of ethnic cleansing and the establishment of a fascist mini-state within Bosnia. During those harrowing weeks, he kept a diary of what he saw, heard, thought, and felt as he watched his fellow Bosnian Serbs dedicate themselves to a project of hatred and madness, and as news of the war that project created trickled in. The diary was published in Zagreb in 1997, and an English translation was published in 2004.
From Enemy Territory: Pale Diary offers an eyewitness account of how society became warped in the process of carrying out a genocidal war, of how fascism is implemented at ground level, and how that subsequently warps social relations and personal psyches. I will begin my review in the next post.
From Enemy Territory: Pale Diary offers an eyewitness account of how society became warped in the process of carrying out a genocidal war, of how fascism is implemented at ground level, and how that subsequently warps social relations and personal psyches. I will begin my review in the next post.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Friday, September 27, 2013
Two Decades On, the Lessons of the Bosnian War Remain Unlearned
When I started this blog several years ago, I had two goals in mind. The first was simply to apply myself to developing a better understanding of the conflict. I had followed the news at the time and had relatively strong opinions on the matter, but I had not made the effort to deepen my understanding. I regretted that, and finally after finishing my first Master's degree in 2005 I had the time to read more widely, and this blog was the tool I used to document that process and provide a framework for systemic reading. Although I am not as involved in that project as I was, I did succeed in making myself more deeply informed about the issues at stake.
The other reason was that I believed then--and now--that the tentative and too-long delayed Western intervention in the conflict was a warning to the West of how not to handle international crises in the post-Cold War world. The Bosnian War was allowed to go on too long because of misguided anti-interventionist beliefs as well as realpolitik concerns that there was nothing at stake. I believed that one way to redeem the suffering of Bosnia would be for the United States and its allies to learn from our mistakes in Bosnia.
I was under no illusions that I had any significant role to play in this process, but I imagined that I would be participating in a broader conversation, and hopefully a productive one. I hoped that as policy makers, scholars, journalists, and the general public studied the sequence of events in the former Yugoslavia, a new consensus about the limits of state sovereignty and a new understanding of the role of international justice would begin to take shape.
Unfortunately, I have concluded that there has been little, if any, progress in that regard. And today, I read this story:
Deal Represents Turn for Syria; Rebels Deflated
The Obama Administration has truly failed the people of Syria, and the cause of international justice in general. But this failure did not occur in a vacuum--the American media have been typically glib, shallow, and reactive in their reporting, giving the already intervention-averse public precious little appetite for even modest intervention in Syria. With the exception of a handful of leaders such as John McCain and Lindsey Graham, the Republicans were largely content to score political points by playing to the anti-interventionist, Islamophobic, xenophobic, and libertarian wings of their party. But ultimately, this is still Obama's failure. He clearly has no appetite for confronting genuine evil, and the way in which he has thrown the opposition under the bus while allowing Putin to score a significant foreign policy victory on behalf of Assad's regime will likely haunt policymakers for years to come.
I will probably continue with this blog, particularly in between semesters, but the optimisim and zest I brought to this project back in 2006 are largely gone.
The other reason was that I believed then--and now--that the tentative and too-long delayed Western intervention in the conflict was a warning to the West of how not to handle international crises in the post-Cold War world. The Bosnian War was allowed to go on too long because of misguided anti-interventionist beliefs as well as realpolitik concerns that there was nothing at stake. I believed that one way to redeem the suffering of Bosnia would be for the United States and its allies to learn from our mistakes in Bosnia.
I was under no illusions that I had any significant role to play in this process, but I imagined that I would be participating in a broader conversation, and hopefully a productive one. I hoped that as policy makers, scholars, journalists, and the general public studied the sequence of events in the former Yugoslavia, a new consensus about the limits of state sovereignty and a new understanding of the role of international justice would begin to take shape.
Unfortunately, I have concluded that there has been little, if any, progress in that regard. And today, I read this story:
Deal Represents Turn for Syria; Rebels Deflated
The Obama Administration has truly failed the people of Syria, and the cause of international justice in general. But this failure did not occur in a vacuum--the American media have been typically glib, shallow, and reactive in their reporting, giving the already intervention-averse public precious little appetite for even modest intervention in Syria. With the exception of a handful of leaders such as John McCain and Lindsey Graham, the Republicans were largely content to score political points by playing to the anti-interventionist, Islamophobic, xenophobic, and libertarian wings of their party. But ultimately, this is still Obama's failure. He clearly has no appetite for confronting genuine evil, and the way in which he has thrown the opposition under the bus while allowing Putin to score a significant foreign policy victory on behalf of Assad's regime will likely haunt policymakers for years to come.
I will probably continue with this blog, particularly in between semesters, but the optimisim and zest I brought to this project back in 2006 are largely gone.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
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.
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.
Saturday, June 22, 2013
"Sarajevo Daily" by Tom Gjelten [12]
Chapter 10: A Loser's Peace
With the international reaction to two well-publicized incidents where large numbers of civilians were killed by mortar fire came the beginning of the end of the war in Sarajevo. Under extreme pressure, even from their Russian allies, the Serb nationalist army finally agreed to pull back their heavy weapons and essentially end the siege in exchange for promises that the Bosnian army would not counter-attack.
But while the shooting, shelling, and killing were over, it would be very wrong to say that life was "returning to normal." What had been normal in prewar Sarajevo was gone. The city, like Oslobodjenje, had survived, but the cost had been high. Many residents had trouble adjusting to postwar life, including the radical reworking of social relations. The rise of the military as an important institution, the replacement of many former residents by conservative rural refugees, and the increasing power of Muslim nationalism and the SDA all contributed to a new social order in which angry teenage gangs roamed the streets and Serbs who had remained loyal to the Bosnian state found themselves being ostracized simply for not being Muslim.
Oslobodjenje continued publication, now increasingly as an opponent of the government rather than a supporter. Ethnic cleansing continued in Serb-held parts of Bosnia. Ethnic separation would not go away once the war ended. Sarajevo, and Oslobodjenje, survived, but the values both had embodied were not so certain to return.
*************
This is the end of the book. There is no epilogue or conclusion, and since the book was published in 1995 it ends before the war--and the final orgy of genocide in eastern Bosnia--did. I regret that this review took so long--the book is actually a brisk and enjoyable read; it's only my own distraction with graduate school and family life which has dragged this out so far. I highly recommend this book to people interested in either life in Sarajevo during the war, or the role of a free press in wartime or when democracy and secular freedom are under attack.
With the international reaction to two well-publicized incidents where large numbers of civilians were killed by mortar fire came the beginning of the end of the war in Sarajevo. Under extreme pressure, even from their Russian allies, the Serb nationalist army finally agreed to pull back their heavy weapons and essentially end the siege in exchange for promises that the Bosnian army would not counter-attack.
But while the shooting, shelling, and killing were over, it would be very wrong to say that life was "returning to normal." What had been normal in prewar Sarajevo was gone. The city, like Oslobodjenje, had survived, but the cost had been high. Many residents had trouble adjusting to postwar life, including the radical reworking of social relations. The rise of the military as an important institution, the replacement of many former residents by conservative rural refugees, and the increasing power of Muslim nationalism and the SDA all contributed to a new social order in which angry teenage gangs roamed the streets and Serbs who had remained loyal to the Bosnian state found themselves being ostracized simply for not being Muslim.
Oslobodjenje continued publication, now increasingly as an opponent of the government rather than a supporter. Ethnic cleansing continued in Serb-held parts of Bosnia. Ethnic separation would not go away once the war ended. Sarajevo, and Oslobodjenje, survived, but the values both had embodied were not so certain to return.
*************
This is the end of the book. There is no epilogue or conclusion, and since the book was published in 1995 it ends before the war--and the final orgy of genocide in eastern Bosnia--did. I regret that this review took so long--the book is actually a brisk and enjoyable read; it's only my own distraction with graduate school and family life which has dragged this out so far. I highly recommend this book to people interested in either life in Sarajevo during the war, or the role of a free press in wartime or when democracy and secular freedom are under attack.
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