Customer Reviews

Balkan Odyssey (Harvest Book)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Lord Owen's recounting of his efforts to help resolve the Bosnian war is really little more than a list of meetings and conferences. To this dry unending litany he adds a few cursory and, in some cases, inaccurate descriptions of players associated with the conflict. If you are hoping to get insight from a seemingly well placed person who spent hours and days locked in discussion with some of the 20th Century's most reviled figures you will not find it here. His descriptions are little more than ambiguous diplomatic niceties. During the course of this confusing peace process, Owen only occasionally pens restrained displeasure about the continued obstructionism of American administrations and the blatant deception of Balkan leaders. Just as the international community feared backlash against any form of decisive action, it seems Lord Owen had similar reservations about libel - neither approach is conducive to establishing lasting peace nor fruitful discourse. Owen's isolation in conference rooms and hotels quickly becomes apparent as his detached, incomplete descriptions of realities on the ground appear more like secondhand gossip than any useful form of analysis.

In this book, Lord Owen missed a glorious opportunity to expose the countess agendas and duplicities he faced from all sides. He could have spoken his mind but instead chose to remain a politician. In the end, this book is really just another apology for the shameful failure of Western collective security.

David Owen gives a very personal account of his experiences as a mediator, including his frustrations with the attitude of the international community (in particular the US). His views are very useful to understand the mechanisms of international diplomacy in a highly mediatised conflict. It is rather simplistic, in my view, to depict Owen as someone who tried to favorise one one the parties in the conflict.

This book should possibly be given 3.5 stars. I will put it closer to 3, because sincerely, I think it is written in a way, that at times is not conducive to reading, especially with the excellent books on the region by many different authors, it seems to be a chore at times.

To avoid sounding editorial, I won't even mention those others at this point. However, if anyone can point out any errors in my analysis, it is welcome. I don't mean to slight Lord Owen in any way. His view, may be a more "Tory" view of the conflict. That is why, reading all sides is important. If it can be compared to anything else written about the region, maybe it is another diplomats book Holbrooke's To end a war. In fact, those who read books on the region, might see some flaws in parts of both books, however, I wonder if the "arrogant" description, some assign to Holbrooke is more apt to Lord Owen? Still, Lord Owen does at times, gives interesting information for the reader. It is though, information, that one has to take into account with other sources of information. This might include such incidences as what he says about the Markale market incident. One should compare that to, say, what the United Nations officially says and other sources of information, such as what author David Rohde says in his book, Endgame.

At times, Lord Owen's book may be pro-Serb, as far as a description of the conflict. With many books seeming to be derogattory towards that side of the conflict, it is important to read all sides, to determine what the truth would seem to be, and then can one be sure?

This is by far one of the worst books about war in Bosnia.
It's a complete waste of time.

Lord Owen is clearly getting brickbats for being "pro Serb" (he has said as a witness to Milosevic's "trial" that he was the only leader who consistently supported peace & that any form of racism was "anathema" to him). On the other hand nobody points out any factual errors. One reviewer refers to Fikret Abdic as a smuggler when, as a matter of fact, he was the most popular moslem politician & Bosnia who had clearly beaten Izetbegovic in a straight election.

If the facts prove that the Croatian & Moslem Nazis were genocidal nazis, as they do, it would be wrong to say otherwise. On the other hand Lord Owen would hardly have been criticised had he lied to uphold the cover story of the genocidal western leaders who supported them.

Horrible book from the person who has no right to even talk about the war in Bosnia, since he himself was indirectly responsible for prolonging it. I would strongly recommend a book by Brendan Simms "Unfinest Hour - Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia" that clarifies Owen's role during the war in Bosnia.

I picked up this book hoping (but not really expecting) to understand more about the Yugoslavian conflicts. Over the past years, I have truely tired of the media 'soundbites' that seem so incomplete and confusing.

As soon as I started reading David Owen's book, I was struck by his arrogant attitude, complete with international 'name-dropping' and high-brow dinner parties. Although it was an interesting glimpse into international power circles, I wish that Lord Owens would have spent more separating his opinions from the facts.

I suppose this book is somewhat unavoidable for the serious student of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, since David Owen was deeply involved in "peace" diplomacy in the Balkans from late 1992 to mid-1995. However, after reading his memoir, one comes out with little in the way of new insights or even interesting details. Most of the time Owen simply tries to white-wash his own role in the Bosnian war; I'm not saying he should be completely blamed for certain events which occured during his tenure as international peace mediator, but he certainly bears some of the culpability. One example is the Vance-Owen Peace Plan, which, by drawing little serpentine lines over the map of Bosnia and designating ethnically-based territories, gave the Croatian militia and Croatian nationalist leaders something of an international mandate to make territorial claims and expel Bosnian Muslims and others from these territories. It's a common cop-out of Croatian nationalists to blame the Vance-Owen plan for the Muslim-Croat conflict, which is wrong, but Owen did nothing to hinder this conflict and his actions in fact fanned the fire--something he glosses over in this book. There's also the case of Owen bringing smuggler-extraordinaire Fikret Abdic into the peace talks as a counterweight to the Sarajevo-based Muslim leadership, who were too obstinate for Owen's tastes. Abdic was popular in his own little pocket of northwestern Bosnia and reviled everywhere else because he was a corrupt businessman and black-marketeer. His introduction to the peace talks by Owen only confused the diplomatic negotiations and led to one of the most bizarre episodes in the Bosnian war: the inter-Muslim confict in the Bihac pocket (Abdic's power base). Yet Owen describes his political rehabilitation of Abdic as a diplomatic triumph. I suppose it's too much to expect him to be overly self-critical, but his self-serving apologetics in this book are almost repugnant. In addition, his writing style leaves something to be desired. Despite the dramatic events which were the subject of this book, "Balkan Odyssey" is about as exciting as a lawnmower owner's manual. All in all, a disappointing book.