Be Not Afraid, for You Have Sons in America: How a Brooklyn Roofer Helped Lure the U.S. into the Kosovo War (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "It was just before midnight on an unusually warm Southern California Christmas Eve, 1988, when Florin Krasniqi, a twenty-four-year-old ethnic Albanian from Yugoslavia, crawled out..." (more)
Key Phrases: desperate generation, pacifist resistance, caliber sniper rifles, Kosovo Albanians, New York, Atlantic Brigade (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Kosovo Liberation Army was sparked and sustained by a roof contractor in Brooklyn who personally bought and shipped arms, massively fund-raised and provided ideological and tactical support to the fledgling guerrilla force. Sullivan, who covered the Balkans in the '90s for Newsweek, mixes reportage (sometimes reconstructed) of the insurgent group's battles with Milosevic's Serb forces after Yugoslavia's disintegration with the KLA's improbable U.S.-based, backstory, gleaned after the conflict was messily resolved by a U.N.-led coalition (commanded by Wesley Clark). She is terrific in detailing the life of Florin Krasniqi, a Kosovar Albanian who emigrated illegally to the U.S. via Mexico in 1988, and took it upon himself to get the KLA off the ground once Milosevic's intentions (and the inefficacy of nonviolent resistance) became clear to him. Anecdotes of buying assault weapons at gun shows and taking them to Albania on conventional flights, of shopping for Stinger missiles in Pakistan and of the Muslim Krasniqi getting a great price on uniforms from Brooklyn Hasidim are as funny as they are unsettling. Snappily written with a keen eye for telling personal tics and crushing political ironies, Sullivan's book reveals that this crucial, underreported event of the late '90s was more multilateral than anyone imagined.
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From The Washington Post

Stacy Sullivan, who covered the Balkans for Newsweek, has pulled off an improbable feat. She has written an irresistibly readable book about the grim war in Kosovo, a conflict obscure to many Americans, even during the 78 days in 1999 when the United States was pounding the place with bombs.

Sullivan has found an original way to cut through the Balkan fog -- the murk of Ottoman history, the unfamiliar names and places, the unsympathetic viciousness of all ethnic groups in the many wars that ripped Yugoslavia apart. Her narrative knife is a guy from Brooklyn.

His name is Florin Krasniqi. He's an immigrant from Kosovo and an American success story. Arriving in Brooklyn with nine words of English, he became a roofing contractor and before long was taking home $100,000 a year. In the way of many smart guys from Brooklyn, he was persuasive, creative and, if need be, ruthless. In the way of many ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, he believed that forcing Serbs out of his homeland was an end that justified any means.

From Brooklyn, Krasniqi tapped fellow Albanian immigrants for $30 million to fund the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). He shopped American to outfit the insurgents with everything from satellite telephones to .50 caliber sniper rifles. These weapons, with a range of two miles and enough power to punch through armored vehicles, were available to anyone with $7,000, no questions asked. Krasniqi told Sullivan he couldn't believe how lax American gun laws are. He found much of what he needed for guerrilla war right around the corner in Brooklyn. He bought walkie-talkies from a RadioShack in Kings Plaza mall off Flatbush Avenue.

With this guy from Brooklyn grounding her readers in a known American place, Sullivan is able to tell a war story that never seems remote, even though most Americans would be hard pressed to find Kosovo on a map. The narrative is so strong that you hardly notice that Sullivan's book is deeply serious, historically sophisticated and morally complex.

Her protagonist is not a good guy. She suggests -- without saying so outright -- that Krasniqi murdered an Albanian hoodlum who had killed a key leader of the KLA. She shows again and again how Krasniqi sacrificed his business, his family, his village and thousands of innocent civilians across Kosovo for the sake of defeating Serbs.

A hero framed in black is a good choice, and not just because Krasniqi is such an irresistible character. For as Sullivan well knows, there were few good guys in the Kosovo war, the fourth of four Yugoslav wars that Slobodan Milosevic fomented and lost in his decade of bloody misrule.

Milosevic had risen to power in Serbia -- and escaped the fate of other communist hacks in Eastern Europe -- by fanning ethnic hatred. There was no greater such hatred than that between Serbs and Albanians. History had yoked them together in the Yugoslav federation, with Kosovo a province inside the republic of Serbia. Serbs regarded Kosovo as their historical homeland, but on the ground in the province, Albanians outnumbered them nine to one. Albanians had long taken pride in harassing Serbs, forcing them to sell out and flee next door to Serbia.

Milosevic figured out that avenging Serb resentment over this harassment would cement his power. So he assured Serbs that Albanians would never beat them again. To that end, he created a brutal police state inside Kosovo that bullied and murdered Albanians. That, in turn, set off bullying and murderous retaliation by Albanians who slowly coalesced into the KLA.

Sullivan tells this messy story as clearly and succinctly as it can be told. She also explains -- in a fresh and fascinating way -- how Krasniqi and the KLA sucked the United States and NATO into their nasty war. It was the most cynical and savage of public relations tricks. As Sullivan explains it, the KLA attacked and killed Serbian military and police, knowing full well that Milosevic would retaliate in a way that would nauseate the West.

And sure enough, it worked. Serb forces cut throats, gutted pregnant women, mashed the skulls of old men. The United States and Europe, guilty about their sluggish response to Milosevic's war crimes in Bosnia, could not stomach it and quickly threatened to bomb, just as the KLA had hoped. Milosevic refused to back down, bombs fell, and Serbia lost the war. Before being forced out, Serb forces managed to destroy much of Kosovo and kill an estimated 10,000 people. Albanians then committed numerous revenge killings.

Milosevic is gone, but the status of Kosovo is unresolved. Impoverished, ill-governed and restive, it is still part of Serbia. And it has been all but forgotten by a world obsessed with terrorism and Iraq. The Balkans, though, have an enduringly toxic way of causing trouble that cannot be ignored. With the help of the guy from Brooklyn, Sullivan's engaging book explains why.

Reviewed by Blaine Harden

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (May 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312285582
• ISBN-13: 978-0312285586
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #622,593 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant and absorbing , October 14, 2004

By	Susan E. Eaton (Boston) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Every few years I read a book that makes me wonder most of all -- How come the literary/bookseller world isn't paying more attention to this one? I fell upon this one by accident and it is a gorgeous piece of reportage from a place we isolated Americans know nothing about. Also, it is an amazing, classic kind of American story, too -- beautifully rendered by a skilled reporter and told engagingly -- at times with great humour and always, admirable skill. Don't judge a book by its cover or either, the lack of buzz. This one's a winner.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Riveting story, very accessible, August 10, 2004

By	Spiral Highway (Ithaca, New York, USA) - See all my reviews

"Be Not Afraid" is very hard to put down. It brings to life an important story from a region whose names and rival groups are nearly impossible to keep track of by following the daily news. The Onion's headline summed it up best for many people: "CLINTON DEPLOYS VOWELS TO BOSNIA: Cities of Sjlbvdnzv, Grzny to Be First Recipients".

The book offers a sense of personal understanding of the way that groups like the Kossovo Liberation Army are started and the way that populations, governments and the media are manipulated by the actors involved in a conflict. While from the outside, the actions of these warring tribes appear like inexplicable madness, when reading their story you can almost place yourself in their position. For many readers, Florin Krasniqi's life in Brooklyn will make the story particularly compelling.

My only criticism is that the author does not take seriously some of the stronger arguments against the 1999 US-led NATO bombing of Kosovo and Belgrade. Instead, taking the approach favored by the major media networks like her employer (Newsweek/MSNBC), we hear a lot from US Government and military sources and virtually nothing from their most compelling critics.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A tale of our times.., February 24, 2005

By	James E. Tierney (Lisbon Falls, Me USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Having just finished Stacy Sullivan's "Be Not Afraid, For You Have Sons In America," I can only say that it an extraordinarily undervalued gem. Not unlike Chuck Sudetic's "Blood and Vengeance," Sullivan takes a complex international disaster and makes it intelligible by weaving "big picture" historical, stategic and political facts into the lives of the ordinary people who always make history.

Anyone can find the history of the Balkans in general and Kosovo in particular by perusing the recent texts that focus on the governmental players, but this book sees the tragedy in the lives of those who experienced it and make it ever so real.

The book is also highly relevant to our post-Sept. 11 world. It depicts how Albanian-Americans were able to use the openness of our society and gulibility of our leaders to subvert American foreign policy in ways that were totally legal. Her chilling message for today is clear. If blue collar expats in Brooklyn can fund and arm an insurgency across the world, how much easier it would be for weapons of destruction to be acquired and utilized right here at home? Sullivan's book makes the Oklahoma City bombing - much less the continuing threat of Al Qaeda - very close indeed.

Did Sullivan get every just right? As someone who has travelled to Albania and the rest of the Balkans and read more than a little, there are some facts she missed (such as the role of the Berisha family), but not much. I learned a great deal from this book.

Finally, even if the reader has no interest in the intricacies of the Balkans, this book should be purchased and read. It is one great tale.