Making different choices in the Balkan wars of the 1990s: Bosnia in 1992–95 and Kosovo in 1999

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
The West ◽  
Muslim Population ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Balkan Wars ◽  
Break Up

The historic Russian interest in the Balkans cmpeted with the American-led, changed NATO mission to generate considerable conflict in the immediate aftermath of the 1991 break-up of Yugoslavia. During the ensurng Balkan Wars, American and Russian interests clashed continuously during the Bosnian civil war of 1992-95. Further, the distinctiveness of the Kosovo republic within the shrunken Yugoslavia intensified these American-Russian differences. NATO air strikes took place both under the sponsorship of Operation Allied Force in Bosnia and in response to Serbian military incursions its own republic of Kosovo that included a 90% Muslim population. Conversations continued sporadically after completion of the NATO-Russian Founding Act in 1997, but military initiatives by the West threw them off the tracks.

The Bridge to Eternity

1996 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-148
Author(s):  
Oskar Gruenwald ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Spiritual Renewal ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Cultural Policies ◽  
Mountain Village ◽  
South Slavs

This essay considers Medjugorje, a small mountain village in Bosma-Hercegovina, as an icon or a bridge between God and man. The contemporary quest for national roots in the Balkans has led to cultural policies in the Yugoslav successor states which deny all common bonds among the South Slavs, resulting in a Kafkaesque civil war. Drawing on the crisis of liberal democracy and community in the West, the essay explores the prospects for peace in the former Yugoslavia, as reflected in Our Lady of Medjugorje's call for moral and spiritual renewal. It concludes that the quintessential, universal. Christian, and ecumenical Medjugorje message of peace represents a bridge to eternity, just as the historic Old Bridge in Mostar and the Višegrad Bridge over the Drina River are symbolic of a common South Slav history and destiny.

scholarly journals The Balkans and Syria’s Civil War: Realities and Challenges

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 357
Author(s):  
MA. Perparim Gutaj
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
The West ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Future ◽  
Prime Objective ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Balkan States

The prime objective of this research paper is to look at the realities and challenges confronting the Balkan states and societies in light of Syria’s civil war. By examining the mobilization process of Balkan militants who are joining Syria’s rebel cause, especially the Islamic radical groups linked to al-Qaeda, this paper proposes a model that explains why and how Balkan militants are joining the fight in Syria. Drawing upon reliable media reports, personal observations, academic accounts, and other consistent sources, this paper argues that Balkan militants are joining Syria’s rebel cause because foreign Islamic radical groups (that have been operating in the Balkans since the early 1990s) have successfully indoctrinated them. This paper challenges the argument that Islam in the Balkans is a threat to the region, and the claim that Balkan Islam and Muslims in the region are becoming an increasing threat to the West. The central findings of this paper exemplify that the future of Balkan militants is bleak and that they will be confronted with a massive modern and democratic resistance that offers them nothing but reintegration into Balkan Islam, their natural “religious nest.” Notwithstanding the trends related to Syria’s civil war, Balkan Muslims belong to the West, culturally and mentally. 

At the Edge of Reformation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Linehan
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Black Death ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Portuguese Society ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

This book springs from its author’s continuing interest in the history of Spain and Portugal—on this occasion in the first half of the fourteenth century between the recovery of each kingdom from widespread anarchy and civil war and the onset of the Black Death. Focussing on ecclesiastical aspects of the period in that region (Galicia in particular) and secular attitudes to the privatization of the Church, it raises inter alios the question why developments there did not lead to a permanent sundering of the relationship with Rome (or Avignon) two centuries ahead of that outcome elsewhere in the West. In addressing such issues, as well as of neglected material in Spanish and Portuguese archives, use is made of the also unpublished so-called ‘secret’ registers of the popes of the period. The issues it raises concern not only Spanish and Portuguese society in general but also the developing relationship further afield of the components of the eternal quadrilateral (pope, king, episcopate, and secular nobility) in late medieval Europe, as well as of the activity in that period of those caterpillars of the commonwealth, the secular-minded sapientes. In this context, attention is given to the hitherto neglected attempt of Afonso IV of Portugal to appropriate the privileges of the primatial church of his kingdom and to advance the glorification of his Castilian son-in-law, Alfonso XI, as God’s vicegerent in his.

Naming the West and Making a Name: The Reputations of Bierstadt and Twain

Prospects ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 93-123
Author(s):  
Lee Clark Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Mark Twain ◽  
The West ◽  
The Right ◽  
Canonical Status

In the mid-1860s, with the nation immured in a devastating Civil War, two artists emerged as the premier representatives of America's Far West. Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902) and Mark Twain (1835–1910) captured the nation's imagination with images that challenged ideas about the West as well as about art itself. In little more than a decade, however, Bierstadt's paintings were being ignored while Twain's name began to acquire something of its present canonical status. Unremarkable as this divergence in reputations may seem today (when “fifteen minutes of fame” has been promised to every one of us), a century ago Warhol's prediction would have been inconceivable. That in itself makes the receptions first accorded Bierstadt and Twain as interesting as the dramatic divergence later taken in their careers. What was it, one might well ask, that so appealed to contemporaries, and why should Bierstadt's success so quickly have palled while Twain's only continued to grow?The question encourages us to transgress the boundaries that separate painting from writing, to shift attention from a given medium onto the larger process by which popularity is won. One of the questions that then emerges is whether artists acclaimed in different media make similar demands upon their audience. Do a certain set of common standards, that is, shape an artist's reception, much as they more self-consciously dictate assessments that scholars will make later on? Or is it simply a matter of being in the right artistic place at the right cultural time? Certainly, the receptions accorded Bierstadt and Twain suggest that the former is true -indeed, that in their case a forceful aesthetic logic was at work.

General Alexander P. Stewart and the Civil War in the West (review)

1999 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 362-363
Author(s):  
Richard M. McMurry
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
The West

scholarly journals Made in Yugoslavia: Studies in Popular Music

2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-282
Author(s):  
Laura Emmery
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
New Wave ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
History Of ◽  
Comprehensive Discussion ◽  
Made In

Made in Yugoslavia: Studies in Popular Music (edited by Danijela Špirić Beard and Ljerka Rasmussen) is a fascinating study of how popular music developed in post-World War II Yugoslavia, eventually reaching both unsurpassable popularity in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, and critical acclaim in the West. Through the comprehensive discussion of all popular music trends in Yugoslavia − commercial pop (zabavna-pop), rock, punk, new wave, disco, folk (narodna), and neofolk (novokomponovana) − across all six socialist Yugoslav republics, the reader is given the engrossing socio-cultural and political history of the country, providing the audience with a much-needed and riveting context for understanding the formation and the eventual demise of Tito’s Yugoslavia.

scholarly journals Short Communications Caring for Muslim Patients - Some Religious Issues

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Iftikhar AK ◽  
Parvez IP
Keyword(s):  
Medical Profession ◽  
Health Provider ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Medical Decisions ◽  
The West ◽  
Muslim Population ◽  
Health Team ◽  
Religious Issues ◽  
Muslim Patient

Islam is a universal religion and a comprehensive way of life that cannot be separated from patients. Muslim patients are not just passive recipients of medical decisions, but have their own religious views and beliefs about how they would like to be cared for by the medical profession. With the increasing Muslim population in the west, problems arise when a Muslim patient is admitted to a hospital with non-Muslim health caregiver, particularly related to dietary and nutritional issues. The health team should be aware of the religious prohibitions in Islam such as wine or alcohol, flesh of swine, reptiles, birds with talons, canine animals or scavenging creatures, intoxicants etc. The guidelines presented in this paper would enable the health provider to serve their Muslim patients in the most appropriate manner.

THE HERO OF THE NOVEL BY I. MALYSHEV “NOMAKH” AND THE YEGOR LETOV’S POETICS

2021 ◽  
pp. 92-101
Author(s):  
Denis L. Karpov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Cultural Discourse ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
Difficult Situation ◽  
Literary Life ◽  
Civil War Era

Contemporary literature is being formed in a difficult situation of polyphony of the modern consumer culture. Mainstream discourses are mixed with subcultural ones, the authors are influenced not only by the literary tradition itself, but also, for example, by rock culture. Thus, the countercultural, subcultural experience, which until recently was considered as peripheral, is actively being introduced into the socio-cultural discourse of modern Russia through the assimilation by authors claiming a place in the center of the country’s literary life. The novel by I. Malyshev “Nomakh” may be considered as an example of such influence. It became a finalist of the literary prize contest “Big Book” in 2017. The novel is clearly influenced by countercultural ideology, in particular by E. Letov, one of the most popular and reputable representatives of the West Siberian counterculture. At the same time, there are no direct references or quotations from the poetry of the Omsk musician in the novel. Rather, one can see some stylistic likenesses, similar figurative complexes. The reception of a historical character from the civil war era is based on the learned principles of poetics and Letov’s worldview. In addition, adopting the intellectual experience of the counterculture, I. Malyshev’s novel not only relays a certain ideology, but also, with the help of artistic means, recreates or completes the images of its hero, historical character, and cultural heroes, which he focuses on.

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