The wars in the Balkans when the former Yugoslavia disintegrated in the 1990s were a particularly nasty time for those living in the areas affected and while things have quieted, all is still not well in all regions.

The first volume looked at the splitting of Slovenia and Croatia. Slovenia then went on to isolate itself from further bloodshed, though the same cannot be said for Croatia as they took part in the Bosnian conflict.

The second part covers Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia. While Macedonia managed to break away without resorting to major conflict, the same cannot be said for Bosnia or Kosovo, where genocide was the rule as Serbian and Croatian ethnic forces began killing or displacing those whom they'd lived peacefully with for many decades. Naturally, the feelings were returned as Moslems in Bosnia and Albanians in Kosovo fought back. It was a very sad state of affairs and from the Bosnian portion of the conflict we got the phrase 'ethnic cleansing'; which is just another way of saying 'genocide'. Even today, there are still NATO or European Union forces in Bosnia and Kosovo to act as a buffer against renewed violence.

This book tries to make some sense of the whole situation and actually does so in a way that most of us will be able to understand. It is also done in a dispassionate way, stating only what has happened and the results of these events. As you might expect, there are some tongue-tying names involved and lots of abbreviations. Makes for some rough going in places, but one soon gets to where things start to make sense.

Since this is part of the Elite series, the concentration is as much on the uniforms and some of the equipment of the forces involved. Here the authors have done a superlative job and with the outstanding illustrations of D. Pavlovic, we are able to see how these folks looked then and now.

Overall, it is a very welcome book, not only for the unit and uniform portion, but also to help those of us who have been befuddled by the whole situation to make some sense of what went on. A book that I highly recommend.

November 2006

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