Radovan Karadži?
Architect of the Bosnian Genocide

This book traces Radovan Karadži?'s personal transformation from an unremarkable family man to the powerful leader of the Bosnian Serb nationalists.

Robert J. Donia (Author)

9781107423084, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 22 September 2014

351 pages, 8 b/w illus. 6 maps 2 tables
22.9 x 15.1 x 2 cm, 0.52 kg

'Robert Donia's biography traces the life of Radovan Karadži?, leader of the Bosnian Serb nationalists during the Bosnian War (1992–95), from peasant origins to one of the 20th century's most wanted war criminals. Eschewing simple categorization of Karadži? as either evil madman or rational mastermind, Donia draws upon newly-available primary source materials, including transcripts of the Bosnian Serb Assembly and intercepted telephone conversations, to produce a page-turning study of the genocide's chief architect. He shows how Karadži? seized opportunities, honed his strategies and sparred with opponents on both the domestic and international stage. This book will soon become a classic work on the Bosnian war that claimed more than 100,000 lives and joins the best scholarship on history's most notorious leaders.' Lara J. Nettelfield, Royal Holloway, University of London, coauthor of Srebrenica in the Aftermath of Genocide and author of Courting Democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Hague Tribunal's Impact in a Postwar State

Radovan Karadži?, leader of the Bosnian Serb nationalists during the Bosnian War (1992–5), stands accused of genocide and other crimes of war before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. This book traces the origins of the extreme violence of the war to the utopian national aspirations of the Serb Democratic Party and Karadži?'s personal transformation from an unremarkable family man to the powerful leader of the Bosnian Serb nationalists. Based on previously unused documents from the tribunal's archives and many hours of Karadži?'s cross-examination at his trial, the author shows why and how the Bosnian Serb leader planned and directed the worst atrocities in Europe since the Second World War. This book provocatively argues that postcommunist democracy was a primary enabler of mass atrocities because it provided the means to mobilize large numbers of Bosnian Serbs for the campaign to eliminate non-Serbs from conquered land.

1. Youth of hardship, lands of lore
2. Sacrificial founder
3. Naïve nationalist
4. Miloševi?'s willing disciple
5. The autumn of Radovan's rage
6. Visionary planner
7. Euroskeptic
8. Imperious Serb unifier
9. Triumphant conspirator
10. Strategic multitasker
11. Callous perpetrator
12. Duplicitous diplomat
13. Host in solitude
14. Architect of genocide
15. Falling star
16. Resourceful fugitive
17. Radovan Karadži? and the Bosnian War.

Subject Areas: International human rights law [LBBR], Law [L], Human rights [JPVH], Politics & government [JP], Military history [HBW], Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3]