Review: Contested Lands

Abstract

CONTESTED LANDS Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus and Sri Lanka Sumantra Bose Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. 32gpp, US$27-95 cloth (ISBN 978-0674024472)When I visited Bosnia in 1998 it was the first time in a year and a half that I had felt at home anywhere. Amidst the shattered shells of homes, the silence of abandoned villages, and people whose gaze held what the military called the thousand mile stare, I was at last in a place whose physical manifestations mirrored my own emotional state. I was not alone in being touched by Bosnia. If the number and types of publications are anything to go by, for many Bosnia became a pivotal experience. In the aftermath of the Dayton agreement, the steady trickle of analyses and memoirs became an explosion. Journalists (Rhode, Sudetic), negotiators (Owen, Bildt, Holbrooke), and military personnel (Rose, Mackenzie) alike seemed not just determined but driven to write about their experiences. The UN's own institutional report on Srebrenica, written by Kofi Annan, makes for quite personal reading. There are any number of explanations for this. The attempts to deal with the Bosnian conflict came close to destroying both NATO and the United Nations. The events themselves were horrifying, and raised questions about how it was that a conflict of this nature could occur and then be dealt with so ineffectually in Europe, in an era of real-time news coverage, and in the presence of a United Nations free from the strictures of the Cold War. But beyond this is a sense that Bosnia-the people, the place and the events-affected people in ways that they clearly find difficult to shake. General Sir Michael Rose, commander of the UN force in Bosnia, seemed to sum it up for everyone when he left a note for his successor that said, Good luck. Your life will never be the same again. Even for those with long experience with other conflicts Bosnia was somehow different.That is also the case with respect to Sumantra Bose's book, Contested Lands. Of the five case studies he addresses, Bosnia is the one that somehow doesn't quite fit. The other four all have strong links to a British colonial past. Those same four all trace their roots to Cold War times. Unlike the others, the conflict in Bosnia occurred in the context of the dissolution of a state. Three of the five cases spawned significant terrorist movements and activity. These distinctions could be the grounds for an interesting analysis if they were articulated, and if the rationale for choosing the five were made clear at the outset. Bose states that he has chosen these cases as examples of intractable political disputes where rival states or mobilized groups claim sovereignty over the same territory, but it is not clear why these cases are chosen over others. Note that there is not a single African example, nor is it clear on what basis ethnonational is defined. …