Civil War in Bosnia, 1992-94 /

A former officer in the British and Indian armies during World War II, and for many years thereafter a distinguished journalist specializing in international affairs, O'Ballance is well qualified to write about the civil war in Bosnia. He focuses on the period 1992-94, beginning with the establishment of the sovereign independent Balkan Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1992 and its quick, if reluctant, recognition by the European Community. These developments are examined against the backdrop of the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991. Bosnian independence came next, precipitating a fratricidal war of horrific proportions whose outcome and consequences are as yet unknown. O'Ballance examines the military aspects of the Bosnian war with impressive skill. His study would have been strengthened had he paid more attention to the mind-boggling subtleties and ambiguities in the factor of political ethnicity in the Balkans, particularly in socialist and presocialist Yugoslavia. Well written with a useful chronology and maps. Graduate; faculty. A. Magid; SUNY at Albany