Kosovo: War and Revenge

by Tim Judah

This is a revealing account of how Kosovo became the crucible of one of the twentieth century's most poisonous ethnic conflicts. Written by a seasoned journalist who witnessed the Balkan conflagration and its aftermath, the book presents a gripping analysis of the origins of the Serb-Albanian conflict, the course of the battle, the issues and personalities, and options for the future. In this second edition Tim Judah updates the story to, and beyond, the fall of Milosevic.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, European History, Political Science, Politics, Military History, War

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Tim Judah is a reporter and political analyst for The Economist, and has written several books, mainly focussing on Serbia and Kosovo. A graduate of the London School of Economics and of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University he worked for the BBC[1] before becoming the Balkans correspondent for The Times and The Economist. During the Kosovo war he broadcast widely and wrote for the New York Review of Books,[2] The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph and The Guardian Weekend magazine. Judah is also the author of the prizewinning The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, published in 1997 by Yale University Press. Judah has reported from numerous places, for a wide variety of newspapers, and other outlets. Apart from the Balkans, Judah has reported from countries including El Salvador, Iraq, Afghanistan and Uganda. In 2009, Judah was a Senior Visiting Fellow at the European Institute of the London School of Economics. Recently, Judah has also written highly praised articles relating to the War in Donbass. He is now based in West London and is married to writer and publisher Rosie Whitehouse and has five children.

Reviews

[Spicy T AKA Mr. Tea · Rating 2 out of 5]

So my partner and I were heading to Croatia to visit an old friend and I decided to try to get a better handle on my Balkan history. I read a few works about the Balkans and Tim's piece was first.

"Kosovo: War and Revenge" is a long, sometimes tedious, sometimes hard to understand account of the autonomous (now independent) area called Kosovo and the war that occurred in the mid to late 1990s.

It feels epic when he starts--talking about the ancient history of Kosovo, its relation to Serbia and further Albania. Judah doesn't waste any time though embroiling the reader with the seemingly month to month accounts of the major factions vying for control over the region.

I never got a sense of Judah's politics until maybe the end of the book where he deferred what to do to the "international community" and The Hague and spoke of the Balkans as transitioning into a Western-style, capitalist, neoliberal center with lots of little countries. Up to the end of the book he holds his own views pretty close to his vest.

Of course I got leery (and tired) of his writing somewhere midway through when I realized all he was doing was recounting the statements and actions of each substantial faction attempting to take control. In addition to this, he was replaying the actions of NATO and it's build-up to the bombings of civilians (a war crime) of the territories involved. It seemed to me that he was simply attaching himself to the powerful and recounting their story with little interest in the plight of the people who were the beneficiaries of all the fucked up policies, racism, and illegal use of NATO air strikes on civilians. It felt like a second thought.

I was pretty disappointed by the end. It reminded of some of the reading I did on the Somali pirate situation in the Gulf of Aden. Lots of interesting stories and analysis of the situation and then the authors would run home to the "international community" to whom they posited would solve the crisis. Garbage. Unless I read otherwise, I won't be reading another one of Judah's books.

[Gözde · Rating 3 out of 5]

Striking account of events, sincere, vivid and nicely detailed.

[Laila Collman · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Judah's presentation of the facts could have used a bit more polishing in terms of style, he was very thorough in detailing the events that escalated the ethnic conflict between Serbians and Albanians, leading to NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia. He paid special attention to the narratives which fueled violence on both sides, as noted in the following passage: “Serbian and Albanian propagandists now went to war armed with statistics, lies and half-truths, which far from helping either side in the long-run, were to embitter communal relations, pave the way for the rise of Milosevic, the destruction of Yugoslavia and the deaths of tens of thousands."

As I'm not an expert on Kosovo, I can't say whether this is the best book to read on the topic, but it did deepen my understanding of the historical context. The final paragraph also left me with an eerie feeling: "While Albanians take their revenge today, the time may yet come when Serbs can take theirs. The way the Serbs have lost Kosovo means that, for the foreseeable future, they will have no chance to get it back. How could they while it is occupied by NATO troops? But what will happen in ten or twenty years? A decade ago, no one could have predicted the shape of the world today. What if, in twenty or thirty years, America is locked in isolationism, Russia rearmed and strong and Europe weak and divided? Aleksa Djilas, (a Serbian historian), says that the spirit of revanchism may grow. 'Of course,' he adds, 'I would not support such a thing, but the Serbs are not exactly a 'forgive and forget' nation. If they have remembered the 1389 defeat for 610 years, why not this one?'"

[Andrew Clement · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book as research for a novella that I am plotting out, which is set during the Kosovo war. While I have some knowledge of the other wars that took place in the former Yugoslavia, I was relatively least knowledgeable about the conflict in Kosovo. Though I found parts of the beginning to simply repeat what I already knew, it did a good job of getting me up to speed of the specific origins of the conflict between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. While I realize that the 1999 NATO bombings were controversial, it delves a bit much into the procedural chapter and verse of the workings of NATO command during the bombings. Although some accounts are given of the fighting on the ground in Kosovo, I would have appreciated more of a focus on the concrete cause-and-effect consequences of the ground war between the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Serbian forces. As far as I know, the latest version of this book was published in 2000. I would have liked if it could have been updated to reflect how Serbia and Kosovo have come to their more current situation, especially so as more concrete information about the fighting on the ground might have come to light since.

[Meral Ma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic account of events leading up to and right after the Kosovo war.
While the war pales in comparison to the wars in Croatia and Bosnia,it was actually in Kosovo that the
the seeds for the destruction of Yugoslavia,as Milosevics rise could not have been impossible without
turning the grievances of kosovo Serbs into a deadly weapon.
One thing that strikes me is the many miscalculations Milosevic made during the final days before the bombing.He never fully grasped the extend Bosnia changed western opinion and overconfident
in his own abilites.Rugova comes across as good if naive man who really tried the best he could in leading in people.Also fascinating is the development of the KLA into a fringe movement into one of most successful guerrilla armies in modern history without ever winning a single battle.
Judah documents the crimes and suffering of both sides while analyzing the conflict as best he can.
A must read for anyone interested in Kosovo,as are his other books on the subject.

[Virx · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it's a pretty decent retelling of the history and sources of conflict in Kosovo that ultimately culminate in the NATO bombing. That said this book is a product of it's time and I wish more of the book had been spent on the days following the peace agreement and the political implications on the Serbian government. As it stands, the return of the Albanian Konovars after the peace agreement and the population changes to Kosovo feel somewhat glossed over.

I understand the desire to write and finish a book, but I wish this had been delayed several years. I recognize we as current readers have the advantage of modern context and knowledge of what is to come that the author did not have, but it still feels like the book came out prematurely.

It's clear that everything could change in a moment and that there is no status quo or direction for how relations between Kosovo and Serbia will be conducted. Given how much has changed since, it feels premature to end the book quite literally weeks after the war has ended.

[David Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

As far as historical nonfiction goes, not the worst. It was well written and flowed well, but a little too much bouncing between simultaneously occurring events without strings connecting them. I also felt the intro about the conquests of Serbia and Kosovo from the 14th century dragged on too long; that time would’ve been better suited talking about the reprisal during the Great War. The detailing of Milosevic vs the KLA was good. I also liked that the book was written shortly after the war, so that it’s not written with modern tendencies.

[Klesta · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is difficult to find texts on this conflict that try to involve both the geopolitical and ‘on-the-ground’ perspectives, and I thought this made a good attempt. I enjoyed reading this thanks to its style and structure.

[Soren · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book was ok. it was very informative, my only complaint being how scattered and confusing it was. I did not feel that there was a strong foundation for the story.

[Marjorie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought this was our Jan nonfiction read but reading shorter version this was enlightening

[Sergio Ibarra Bolaños · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was deployed to Kosovo with the US Army. This book helped a lot to understand the history and current tensions. A must read for any incoming KFOR soldiers.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s dry, but we’ll written and a fantastic primer for those interested in Kosovo/KFOR

[Chris Lira · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF about 150 pages in. There is just no flow and it’s hard to get into. I read another of his books, and a number of books on the Balkans in general, but I just could not keep going on this one.

[John Farebrother · Rating 5 out of 5]

Useful chronology of the second half of the Yugoslav Wars. Like many books by foreign journalists, it is heavy on political insight and analysis, but less so on what actually happened on the ground. Nevertheless, it is a good introduction to the war for anyone who wasn't there, and nicely complements books such as Legija's memoirs, which give the blow-by-blow account of the actual campaigns, an aspect of the war left (deliberately?) vague by most authors.

[Sam Dembling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Judah's account of the events, both long-term and short-term, that led to the Kosovo conflict is good. But his rendering of the 1998-1999 events (the NATO politics and bombing) is excellent and very in-depth.

The major problem with the book (my copy at least) is that it's littered with typos. Some of them are really obvious, such as using the word "whatever" instead of "whether" at the beginning of a paragraph. He also will use a word like "prophetically" six or so times in the course of maybe 30 pages. The book was published in 2000, shortly after the conflict ended, so I suspect it may have been a rush job.

Nonetheless, the content is high quality. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in learning about the causes of the Kosovo conflict and the conflict itself. As for the aftermath, that's another book altogether.

[Ole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this book a while ago, just after having worked in the region. It is a very good piece of writing for anyone interested in the history of the region but in particular if you want to try to understand what caused the tragedy in Kosovo and ultimately led to the final breakup of Yugoslavia. It can be recommended for anyone going to the region to work or study, it should read along with other great accounts of most recent history of the Balkans, e.g. Misha Glenny's "The Balkans".

[Jon Levinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A straightforward narrative of the period between the rise of Milosevic and the end of NATO airstrikes. By now it can seem slightly dated, but nevertheless Judah's writing style managed to keep me entertained. Following events chronologically, he provided enough historical and geopolitical context for me to understand the broader implications of the conflict without getting bogged down or digressing top far from his narrative.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliantly written book covering the history of Kosovo both political and military right up to and including the KFOR intervention. Easy to read and follow and paints the untold picture of the brutal conflict which saw the largest European deployment of force since WW2! A great read for anyone interested in European conflicts or who was part of the war or peace keeping forces deployed there!

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is extremely dense, but so interesting (for someone who is interested in this sort of stuff). i especially liked chapter 2, "the phantom state," which talks about the underground government, schools, and health care systems that were set up.

[Kirk Borger · Rating 3 out of 5]

More fun in the Balkans.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the better, more detailed books I read on the subject.

[Dylan]

it was really interesting but kinda complicated