Customer Reviews

Homeland Calling: Exile Patriotism and the Balkan Wars

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Beyond being a lively and dramatic account of the variety of expatriot politics within the different Croat, Serb, and Kosovar diasporas -- and between them and their homelands -- "Homeland Calling" explains much of the fractious politics within and between the remnant units of Yugoslavia; and it deftly touches on critical Euro-American policy making as well. Hockenos' concise and well-placed summaries of both remote and recent historical events set the stage for understanding the first-hand accounts of key participants' maneuvers that he so carefully weaves into his text. "Homeland Calling" goes a long way toward clarifying the complexities of a crucial decade of Balkan politics and war.

"Homeland Calling" by Paul Hockenos records the role that the diasporas played in the Balkans wars in the 1990s. Hockenos' enthusiastic and intriguing account of the individuals that he introduces to the reader rapidly struck a chord. His characters often seem larger than life -the man next door turns out to be a character in a Graham Greene novel, organising underground networks and smuggling arms to support an ethno-national ideal. Hockenos provides a peephole into the workings of these intricate networks and provides an insight into the motivations behind these actions. What of the role of these diasporas in the post-conflict Balkans? Hockenos explores the dilemma of the willingness to support the war, but reluctance to help build the democratic institutions which would ensure a lasting peace.

When I bought this book it was not out of an interest in the Balkans. I bought Homeland Calling due to an interest in the role that exiles and diasporas play in today's conflicts and in today's globalised world, particularly relating to the research I am conducting into the conflicts in Africa and the role of diasporas in these conflict. Not only has Hockenos shed some considerable light on the mechanisms of the diaspora machine, but he has also cured an allergy for anything Balkan.

I can highly recommend this book to those interested in diasporas, in the Balkans, in the dynamics of support networks for today's conflicts, or simply as a really good read.

Hockenos does an excellent job investigating the diaspora communities outside of the former Yugoslavia which were so instrumental in affecting the region. The depth of access is impressive. Hockenos makes solid connections between the diaspora communities and the former Yugoslavia, both contemporarily, during the Second World War and inter alia. This subject was just waiting to be written on, other writers of the region have temptingly made passing references but Hockenos packeged it all up. Although Hockenos made a valid disclaimer concerning objectivity and bias he obviously has strong feeling about nationalism and his own views of what happened in the former Yugoslavia are apparent. The intent of the book was as much an indictment of nationalist diaspora communities as it was an analysis. Hockenos is clearly hostile to the Croat nationalists and sympathetic to the Kosovars. However, here he is in multitudinal company and I don't think Hockenos, himself, would shy away from an anti-nationalist moniker. A deeper investigation of the Serb communities in Western Europe and the Croat communites in South America would add much to an already good work.

Berlin-based Paul Hockenos offers an insightful review of the powerful pull of diaspora communities in North America. Loaded with cash from successful "Free World" businesses, anti-Communist nationalists with often-outdated mindsets funneled the long green into post-Tito movements that revived their long-suppressed agendas. As such they came to play - as in much of former Soviet Europe - a role out of all proportion to their numbers. In this follow-up to his excellent "Free to Hate" of a decade ago, Hockenos follows the trail - often slimy - of cash and opportunism across the Balkans.

The Berlin-based Hockenos is however not without an apparent agenda of his own. In line with German journalism as a whole Hockenos is staunchly anti-Serb, taking to task those US politicians who came under the thumb of the Serb lobby, ascribing their nuanced view of Balkan realities to this lobby. Although he is critical of Croat and Kosovar lobbying activities, these swipes are largely absent in his account of their efforts in North America.

After all is said, however, it must be remembered that tails do not wag dogs. Studies of more powerful "national" lobbyists - such as AIPAC or the Cuban-National National Foundation - show that funneling money into the right pockets does work. But at the end of the day none of these lobbies has any more power than Washington wants them to. American "equivocating" in Bosnia is demonstrable proof that Hockenos laments, though it's still hard to see how a NATO ground war in Bosnia could have "done anything" but produce a proto-Iraq.

Because of this I reserve the fifth star in this review; but the other four are well-deserved for an interesting look at the blinkered complacency of emigre communities and their oft-disastrous input into devastating, rather than liberating, their ancestral homelands.