Volume 45, Number 14 · September 24, 1998
The Killing Fields of Bosnia
By Mark Danner
BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ARTICLE
To End a War
by Richard Holbrooke
Random House, 408 pp., $27.95
Croatia: A Nation Forged in War
by Marcus Tanner
Yale University Press, 338 pp., $16.00 (paper; to be published in November) (paper)
The Graves: Srebrenica and Vukovar
text by Eric Stover, photographs by Peress Gilles, foreword by Richard Goldstone
Scalo, 334 pp., $24.95
Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime
by Jan Willem Honig, by Norbert Both
Penguin, 204 pp., $11.95 (paper)
Blood and Vengeance: One Family's Story of the War in Bosnia
by Chuck Sudetic
Norton, 393 pp., $26.95
Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica: Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II
by David Rohde
Westview, 480 pp., $15.00 (paper)
Only now, more than three years after he recorded the interview with CNN's World Report, can one see subtle signs of Richard Holbrooke's discomfort and unease. It was July 16, 1995, a Sunday, and even as the bloody catastrophe of Srebrenica was playing itself out four thousand miles to the east, the assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs managed to answer Jeanne Meserve's questions about Bosnia with precision and aplomb. Yet look more closely now at the videotape, study it frame by frame, and you will see that this Sunday afternoon finds Holbrooke pale, unsettled, distracted; for it is five days after Bosnian Serb troops shelled and strafed and finally overwhelmed the 'safe area' of Srebrenica, humiliated its several hundred Dutch peacekeepers, and seized its forty thousand or so underfed, sickly, and bedraggled Muslims; and though CNN's producers had announced for that afternoon a typically self-regarding theme focused on the future—'The Bosnia Quagmire: How close is the United States to being pulled into the mess in Bosnia?'—their guest Richard Holbrooke could not help but be preoccupied with an all-too-painful present.
Review, 12555 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |