[.uk] Blood And Honey A Balkan War Journal (ISBN 1575001357)

Great photos. Poor text.:
I have always enjoyed Haviv's beautiful photographs. He has an incredible eye. But the text in this book is very poor. Sudetic comes across as a Yugo-nostalgic fool. Once again the writer uses myths from World War Two as justification for the present day conflict. If we are going to bring up WW2 then lets also bring up Serb duplicity and collaboration with the Nazis. (See the Nedic regime). As well as the whole slaughter of non-Serbs, primarily Muslims and Croats by the Chetnik forces of Serb General Mihajlovic, prior to 1941. The writer does not take into account Communist Tito's massacres at Bleiburg, and the death camps such as Goli Otok and Gradiska. (For comparisons see Pinochet). Yugoslavia was not a utopian dream. It was a vicious state ruled with an iron fist and it was bound to fall apart. It was a regime ruled by one ethnic group, the Serbs, and several non-Serb cronies who were die-hard Communists. War was tragically inevitable. How could it not be, when the Serb leader Milosevic and other Serb intellectuals, wanted to carve out a Greater Serbia. (See Memorandum from the Serb Academy of Arts and Sciences). And almost succeeded. What was unforseen was the West's desperate attempt to keep Yugoslavia whole. This goes back to interest and types like former Sec. of State Lawrence Eagleburger having money/investments in the region. What gives larger nations the right to 'allow' smaller nations autonomy? Thank God these countries are now independent. We can only hope the illegally annexed provinces of Vojvodina and Kosova can finally break free from Serb repression in the coming years. Haviv, next time get a better writer who knows more than the usual regurgitated Communist rhetoric. I mean would you write a book on the Ukraine with a Soviet?

A photographer's search for the limelight:
What can be said of a person who hangs around a gang of killers for years? Ron Haviv has done just this. Fear and death become trivialized when expensive and stylized books become available for the commercial market. There are photographs that exist from the past that document murder. These photographs were made by the murderers themselves in order to celebrate their deeds or by the victims in an attempt to warn the world of the horrors that had taken place. Haviv was neither a victim nor a spy taking photographs on the sly from the distance. Haviv was in the middle of this carnage. He was the court photographer for a twisted band of murderers, winning their confidence over a period of years. He did not attempt to stop the crimes, he photographed them instead. He did not run from this vicious mob but instead he chose to remain with them. In the book he is referred to as having been brave. I choose to think of him as an opportunist of the highest degree. Shame!!

Scary but important:
This book is not for the coffee table; this book serves as a horrifying pictoral record of the death and misery of the wars in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. This is neither for voyeurs looking for war pornography, nor for the faint of heart. Many of the images are greatly disturbing. Rather, it is for those of us who want to understand the depths of evil that these wars represent, and for those of us who know people whose lives were shattered by them.

Haviv hanging with tough guys:
Blood and Honey presents pictures from the Balkan wars of the 1990s--Croatia to Kosovo. They are not organized in any particular manner, and the subjects range from wounded soldiers to refugees to atrocities. The text is spare and not particularly illuminating; this volume is not a good source for real information about the wars, as it only mentions fleeting facts. The pictures depict all sides in these wars--Serb, Bosnian, Croat, Muslim, Kosovar--as victims and as fighters with portraits of refugees, paramilitaries, soldiers, and the dead and wounded. There isn't a whole lot of spin, which is good. All told, the pictures are big, colorful, and powerful most of the way through, from the famous shots of one of Arkan's Tigers kicking a dead woman in the head, to the makeshift morgues in Kosovo during the Kosovo war of 1999. Those early shots from the beginning of the Bosnian war in April, 1992, including the Muslim man begging for his life, were barely saved--Haviv apparently hid one role when Arkan's Tigers demanded he surrender his film. The statistics at the end are interesting, but not yet complete as some numbers have since been updated. This is mainly just photos, and is recommended to complement any of the better books on the Balkan wars, one or all.

Bias:
Author is absolutely ignorant of historical events and facts. Yugoslavia was never pro-Serbian. Never. The best example is partitioning of its post-balkan war boundaries into three parts: Kosovo, Vojvodina and Serbia proper. Permalink is absolutely biased towards Serbs and Serbian history. Secondly, Draza Mihajlovic was fighting against Nazis. Another false statment and propaganda roused by Yugoslav Communist forces (croats, muslims & serbs) is that Draza Mihalovic was a colaborator. The only military element within serbia in the WWII that was directly linked to the Nazi Germany is Milan Nedich. However, he was only a pollice commisioner not a publicly elected offical. This is comparable to Guiliani siding with Taliban in an event Talibans take over the New York City. Lastly, Germans killed enrmous amount of Serbs in Serbia proper (besides Serbian jewry, Gypsies) not in terriories where Croatian Nazi government operated or annexed such as today's Bosnia. Serbs through demonstations, (March 1941) unlike Croatians who even elected pro-Nazi governemnt, opposed Germany in the WWII. New Yugoslavia was truly built around 'ethnicity-free' state as the Yugoslav communists had zero tolerance for nationalism. However, it was also regime of repression: freedome of speach, free enterprise, private property, justice or different opinions. This is was the main cause of dissolution as the conflict unrevealed along centuries old fault lines. The conflict was exploited by all sides including the western media to the benefit of few immoral leaders and public figures.