Comradeship // Freechat

That's the problem, I'm not sure I could do it justice. But Parenti did make claims in the book such as:

What is still not widely understood in the West is that most of the ethnic cleansing throughout the former Yugoslavia was perpetrated not by the Serbs but against them.

Which understandably is not well-received by the other nationalities/ethnicities involved in the war. I don't think even the claim of most holds up.

These types of claim repeat all over in the book, basically presenting a very one-sided view that is pro-Serbia/pro-Bosnian Serbs and the book seems to talk about little else. It's not necessarily bad in a vacuum (provided the info is accurate which was not among the issues brought up to me about the book), but many people use this book as a basis for understanding the Yugoslav/Bosnian wars and on that it can't be a good source due to only talking about Bosnian Serbs and how it presents them in relation to the conflict.

Is it true that:

"the much heavier and "nearly incessant bombardment of Mostar" by Croatian forces, causing "far greater human and physical damage than Sarajevo," according to Susan Woodward, received almost no world attention, and demonstrated how thoroughly the media could be managed"?

And that:

"Bosnian Muslim forces at Sarajevo, UN observers noted, were often the first to begin the daily artillery barrages, firing on Serb targets and Serb neighborhoods in order to provoke a response and trigger Western military intervention"?

Yes, probably. Yet what Parenti has to say about the siege is:

Bosnian Serb forces had offered safe passage to all civilians. With noncombatants out of the way, especially women and children, the Serbs would be able to treat Sarajevo as a purely military target.

And recently we found out about how the Bosnian Serb army organized "human safaris" for foreigners during the siege of Sarajevo. Purely military target indeed.

He probably couldn't have known about that crime back when he wrote the book as the allegations only recently came to light, but you can see how it skews the picture, basically taking the Bosnian Serb claims at face value and not offering the same treatment to the other participants. It's very one-sided and for that reason can't be a history lesson, it should be read very critically, more as an analysis of media manipulation.