The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War

Personally, I think that Misha Glenny is one of the best writers on the Balkans. I have spent three years living in the Balkans so I know something about the area. I highly recommend reading his work The Balkans first as it gives great insight into the region. However, if you are only interested in the war than this work can certainly stand alone. The book chronicles events from August 1990 to June 1993. In addition, an epilogue was added in 1996. While it does not cover the most recent aftermath for the time it covers the book is excellent. Glenny obviously understands the Balkan mentality and adroitly discusses many of the errors that the international community made in dealing with the conflict. In addition, he made some accurate predictions and warnings. In particular he discusses his concern about Macedonia in the epilogue written in 1996. Fighting broke out briefly in 2001 and security remains an issue. Glenny's experience as a correspondent for the BBC gave him the opportunity to interview all the most important players and his writing makes his work accessible to the larger populace. This is the best book on the war.

Misha Glenny, a longtime observer of matters Balkan who is blessed with knbowledge of the local languages, has written this impressionistic yet brilliant portrayal of the beginning of the Yugoslav crisis in the early 1990s.Critics of "The Fall of Yugoslavia" shoot at this book due to the fact that it is opinionated, and that it does not focus on the entire period. These criticisms are, however, inapposite. The book focuses on the period that it covers -- the descent into war. It was never intended to focus on the outcome of these wars, and criticising it for that reason is inappropriate. Similarly, the charges of bias are inappopriate as well. Glenny is neither pro-Serb nor anti-Serb, pro-Croat nor anti-Croat. In a complex conflict laced with villains on all sides, Glenny's courageous effort to avoid portraying things in "black and white" is hardly a sign of bias, but rather a refreshing sign of realism in journalism. Rather than succumbing to the tendency in the Western media of demonizing one party to the conflict in toto, Glenny presents a more nuanced picture -- which is admittedly more complex, but certainly closer to the truth.Glenny's work is strengthened by his fluid writing, his lucid skills of description and analysis and his balanced viewpoint. One feels as if one were there with Glenny, which is at times rather frightening. Together with Brian Hall's "The Impossible Country", this book excels in its ability to give one the sense of what it was like to be there as Yugoslavia slid into oblivion.Other good compliments to this book include the chronologically arranged "Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation" (jammed with as many facts as you can bear) and Glenny's recent magnum opus history of the region "The Balkans".

Misha Glenny is an expert on the wars in ex-Jugoslavia. An Englishman, and a speaker of Serbo-croat, Glenny takes his reader through the mess that was the Yugoslav civil war, with eyewitness accounts that display both humanity and at other times extreme brutality. One thing in particular I must commend Glenny on is his refusal to classify the Serbs as the only bad guys, or the only instigators of the war (as much Western media has done). He places blame on various players: Milosevic, Serb paramilitaries, Bosnian politicians, Franjo Tudman and his nationalitic cronies, Germany, etc... This book invokes great sympathy in its readers for all the victims of the war:Muslims, Yugoslavs, Serbs, and Croats. He usually carefully distinguishes between the Serb-dominated Yugoslav Army and the nationalistic Serb new-Chetnik gangs who were the primary brutes involved in civilian atrocities; an important distinction. However, if you do not already have a general knowledge of the region's history, this book may at times be a bit confusing. Although many of his statements on Kosovo are innacurate, I don't find that to be highly relevant to the overall book. Highly recommended!

Having worked in Bosnia in the late '80s, this book has particular relevance for me. I know the place names, the people, the locations and the language. Those 4 characteristics seem essential for gleaning a lot from this book, since the events it describes, as Mr Glenny readily admits, were felt to be so confusing for "Western" television audiences that some events were at times misrepresented altogether. Irrespective of that requirement for basic (historical) knowledge about the conflict, I believe that this is a superlative example not solely of journalism on the go, but of weaving together the actions of the various actors - people, governments, movements, acronyms - into a coherent frame. To say that "sanctions should not be imposed on either Serbia or Croatia" undermines much of the political rhetoric spewed out by Western nations, explicitly recognising the futility of NATO or anyone else do to ANYthing about the multitude of conflcits that took place simultaneously: we can't do anything about it, so lets impose some sanctions. This is not a book for the novice, however, since novices cannot be expected to understand the wealth of detail at any more than the most superficial level. Unfortunately, such is the nature of popular journalism, TV viewers will never be anything but novices - shocked by images for a few seconds, but not really understanding WHY anything happens. Unfortunately, it seems that politicians didn't understand why either, and many of the problems resulted from inappropriate actions taken in consequence.

Mr. Glenny aptly details the collapse and destruction of Yugoslavia as he colors his analysis with important and relevant historical points, giving at least some background and reason for the appallingly fierce ethnic hatreds which have bled white the Balkan Peninsula this decade. The book also does a good job of laying the blame at the feet of the appropriate players, particularly Slobodan Milosevic, the opportunist Serb leader who came to power through the old communist apparatus, stayed in power by exploiting democratic loopholes, sacrificed even his own countrymen to further his own Stalinist tendencies, and cynically used Serb minorities in the Krajina region of Croatia and elsewhere to do both his dirty work and absorb blame and bullets. The book also lays blame at the feet of the ultra-nationalist Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman, who arrogantly dismissed from Zaghreb the fears of the Serb populace of the Krajina as hapless peasants, and later led a brutal crackdown on Croatian Serbs in 1995. The Serbs' paranoia of seemingly everything, both real and imagined (particuarly Croatian nationalism and "fascism") is also discussed, as are the various Serbian opposition movements which nearly sent Milosevic packing out of Belgrade in 1991. Mr. Glenny clearly points out that there are no "good guys," that no one group is anywhere near being lilly-white. The sometimes obtuse, pompous or evil actions of politicians and the reactionary, deadly tendencies of easily-excitable ethnic groups are but the tip of the iceberg of the extraordinary web of butchery that has destroyed the Yugoslav state and sent the Balkans once again spiraling into a holocasut of blooshed and reprisal that continues to this day in the "backwater" of Kosovo, ominously referred to as a matter on the regional backburner amidst the conflict of 1991-1995. An excellent, sobering read.