TOL STORE BY COUNTRY "Kosovo"

On February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared its independence, becoming the seventh state to emerge from the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. A tiny country of just two million people, 90% of whom are ethnic Albanians, Kosovo is central-geographically, historically, and politically-to the future of the Western Balkans and, in turn, its potential future within the European Union. But the fate of both Kosovo, condemned by Serbian leaders as a "fake state" and the region as a whole, remains uncertain.
In Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know , Tim Judah provides a straight-forward guide to the complicated place that is Kosovo. Judah, who has spent years covering the region, offers succinct, penetrating answers to a wide range of questions: Why is Kosovo important? Who are the Albanians? Who are the Serbs? Why is Kosovo so important to Serbs? What role does Kosovo play in the region and in the world? Judah reveals how things stand now and presents the history and geopolitical dynamics that have led to it. The most important of these is the question of the right to self-determination, invoked by the Kosovo Albanians, as opposed to right of territorial integrity invoked by the Serbs. For many Serbs, Kosovo's declaration of independence and subsequent recognition has been traumatic, a savage blow to national pride. Albanians, on the other hand, believe their independence rights an historical wrong: the Serbian conquest (Serbs say "liberation") of Kosovo in 1912.
For anyone wishing to understand both the history and possible future of Kosovo at this pivotal moment in its history, this book offers a wealth of insight and information in a uniquely accessible format.

Donald arrives in the Ottoman city of Prizren on the first day of NATO's bombing campaign and his mythic adventures begin. Blending history and today's geopolitics, his search for the origin of the Albanian language reveals the misconceptions of small wars in exotic places through his encounters with townspeople and isolated farmers, guerrillas and a Turkish fez-maker, British special forces and Ukrainian mercenaries.

Peace Lost. The Failure of Conflict Prevention in Kosovo

This book traces the failure of international action in Kosovo from the late 1980s until NATO intervention in 1999, and endeavours to explain why, during that time, so many opportunities for making peace were squandered. Applying methodology developed by the EU Conflict Prevention Network, it divides the conflict into four main phases and examines how, at each, chances for settlement were either lost or overlooked. It considers policy alternatives available at the time, and hypothesises reasons why these were ultimately discarded. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including the author's own experience of the negotiations process, this book presents a hitherto unexplored thesis of the Kosovo conflict, that of a 'lag' in international action in relation to the situation on the ground, and seeks to draw from these failures some central lessons for the future of conflict prevention.

Media Discourse and the Yugoslav Conflicts: Representations of Self and Other

In spite of the growing literature on discourse analysis, some of which focuses on representations of self and other, the analysis of the relationship of discourse to violent/non-violent outcomes of conflicts is an under researched area. This book combines theories on ethnic conflict, theories on identity construction and discourse analysis with a comprehensive and inclusive survey of the countries of the former Yugoslavia, embracing film, radio, television and newspapers. As such, it presents an understanding of the interrelationship between 'words' and 'deeds', grounded in close reading and extensive analysis of specific media texts of the period, an understanding which permits broad comparisons with other similar conflicts. Combining ground-breaking applications of theory with detailed empirical case studies, "Media Discourse and the Yugoslav Conflicts" will be of interest not only to those concerned with ethnopolitical conflict, but to scholars across a range of social sciences including sociology, discourse analysis and media, conflict and peace studies.

Neighborhood Challenge: The European Union and Its Neighbors

One of the intriguing questions of the post-Cold War era has been whether the EU will play a major global role in world politics as non-traditional threats and challenges came to the forefront. Launching new policies such as the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the European Security and Defence Policy and the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) have been considered important steps in the EU's evolution as a regional and possibly global actor.
Neighborhood Challenge analyzes critical aspects of the European Union's relations with its neighbours, by extending its analysis beyond the ENP. Unlike existing books on the subject, the volume covers the entire neighborhood from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus to North Africa; from the Western Balkans to the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Such an extensive overview of EU policies toward its neighbors is a timely and valuable contribution to European Studies literature.
This book can be used as a tool for both academicians and practitioners who specialize in European foreign and security policy; as a textbook in European Union foreign policy courses both at the undergraduate and graduate level; and as a comprehensive reference book for postgraduate students writing dissertations on European foreign and security policy in general and European Neighborhood Policy in particular. The contributions analyze challenges and prospects posed by countries neighboring the EU and the effectiveness of EU policy in dealing with these agendas. Region-focused chapters examine the EU's politics toward the Western Balkans, Middle East, CIS, and the Black Sea; country-focused chapters explore aspects of Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Iran, Bosnia, Kosovo; and thematically-focused chapters deal with energy security, organized crime, and other issues.
Neighborhood Challenge is intended to contribute to the existing literature on EU foreign and security policy in two ways: First, its material is not restricted to the ENP. Instead, it addresses all EU neighbors in a large region and their position in European security. The authors argue that not only the countries in the immediate neighborhood of the EU but also those located in relatively far away regions have a role to play in European Union foreign affairs. Secondly, many of the contributions were written by experts living in countries which neighbor the EU. Their contributions lend new ideas and insight to the relevant literature on EU security and foreign policy.