Category Archives: genocide
Srebrenica After Twenty Years
Twenty years ago I was in northern Italy, enjoying that wonderful country and the hospitality of a good family. On the TV news, we saw pictures from the fall of Srebrenica. I remember being struck by the phrase ‘Musulmani’ during the broadcasts … Continue reading
Fears and Fantasies about the “Flesh of the Nation”
Yesterday Adis Maksic defended his Ph D dissertation “Mobilizing for Ethnic Violence? Ethno-National Political Parties and the Dynamics of Ethno-Politicization.” Adis is a Sarajevo native who was fortunately able to come to the United States with his family after his family suffered a … Continue reading
The Birth of a Nation: Radovan Karadžić and the Ethnopoliticization of Bosnia in 1990
By the time he strode to the podium in Skenderija Hall, Sarajevo, on 12 July 1990 to speak, the journey of Dr Radovan Karadžić from obscure psychiatrist to politician, wartime leader, and later accused war criminal had begun. Karadžić had been working for months … Continue reading
Internal Legitimacy in De Facto States
The question of legitimacy is, of course, a central one in the study of de facto states. Unrecognized states don’t have it from the international community (or from only a few as in the case of Abkhazia and South Ossetia), … Continue reading
My interview with Bosnia’s Dnevni Avaz
Just after my return from Ireland two weeks ago, the largest daily newspaper in Bosnia-Herezegovina, Sarajevo-based Dnevni Avaz, got in contact for a feature interview in their weekend supplement. The resultant feature, entitled “Bosnia is Not a Failed State” was published on … Continue reading
Chemical Warfare and Place: Lessons from Halabja
As the United States and France consider military strikes in retaliation against the Assad regime it is worth recalling the use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein’s regime in Halabja, north east Iraqi Kurdistan on 16 March 1988. It is … Continue reading
Airstrikes and Affect over chemical weapons use in Syria
It looks like the US and some allied countries, possibly France and the UK, are making preparations for limited military strikes against the infrastructure of the regime of Assad in Syria. No doubt this action will spark outrage among some, … Continue reading
Reversing Ethnic Cleansing: Is It Possible Peacefully?
On 10 March I gave the closing keynote at the 6th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (CARFMS). The topic of my talk was Reversing Ethnic Cleansing: Bosnia’s Experience and Protracted Displacement in the … Continue reading
Critical Geopolitics 