Critical Summary Safe Area Gorazde Essay

battles of Sarajevo, Bosnia in the 1990s and Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful focusing on life

In the autumn of 1971, Mr. Pirzada comes to Lilia’s house to dine each night. Mr. Pirzada is from Dacca, then a part of Pakistan. He left behind his wife and seven daughters for a fellowship to study the foliage of New England. Since his fellowship provided for only a meager dorm room, he comes to Lilia’s home to eat with her parents and to watch the news of the Indo-Pakistan War. Dacca had been invaded by the Pakistani army and torched and shelled. Thousands of people were tortured or killed. Although Mr. Pirzada writes a letter to his family each week, he had not heard from them in six months.

In the period preceding the attack of Serbs, Bosnian army used the ‘safe area’ as a base to attack the Serbian population. Since April 1995, the Serbs took

As the days go on and the war deepens the impact it is making on Sarajevo Kenan begins to realize that the horrendous state Sarajevo is in will never change for the better. When Kenan sees people walk in a direction that may be unsafe he considers warning them but decides not to because, “Telling them there might be a sniper watching the bridge is a little like saying the sun has come up this morning” (113). This displays that the war has been going on for so long that it has just become a part of everyone's lifestyle, and the citizens of Sarajevo have adapted to it, therefore making it normal. Moreover, the men on the hills completely decide Sarajevo’s fate. This is shown when Kenan reflects on why they are firing and concludes that “They’re firing at the ambulances to tell him, and everyone else, that help will not arrive if they have anything to say about it” (162).

In times of conflict, the possession of power and control is often heavily influenced by the infliction of fear upon a subordinate group. In Steven Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo, this ideology enters a fictional world, where the Serbs ruthlessly terrorize Sarajevo from the hills in an attempt to capture the city during the Yugoslav war. Through the experiences of the three main characters and other citizens of Sarajevo within the novel, it becomes apparent to the reader that terror and manipulation have become the tools of choice used to gain power and ultimate supremacy. Within Galloway’s work, Arrow, Dragan, and Kenan experience a loss of control through the powerful influence of fear by the invading forces.

In 1994, a conflict the US couldn't understand, between clans and tribes it didn't know, in a country where there were no national interests, occurred. The Rwandan War of 1994 did not deserve US intervention. There are four contentions on why the US should not have gotten involved in this Rwandan war. The Black Hawk Down incident, how the UN was there previously there, there being no Possible Gain, and having nothing to do with us. Through the examination of the novel, An Ordinary Man by Paul Rusesabagina, it is Obvious that these key points are valid.

However, Kenan’s interpretation of the world is truly altered when he witnesses the corruption and violence of the war. He is one of the collective few Sarajevo citizens who were naive to such chaos and bloodshed. Kenan, when he witnesses the corruption in the city, is shocked and disturbed that the wealthy leech on the backs of the poor, “At first he just stands there, shocked./And now he is angry. All he sees is the man/and all he wants to do is put his hands around his throat (206).” Kenan, who was once naive to such explicit violence, has gained a new perspective and this perspective has changed his view of the world. Also, similarly to Dragan, Kenan begins to understand the significance of his life. His new perspective developed from the war, has helped Kenan understand the importance of living and that he will not allow himself to be subjected to such terror. “Kenan will not be a ghost. Enough has been done to the city in the name of ghosts (215),” Kenan realizes that that there is so much more to life and that he will not lose himself to violence nor corruption. This change in perspective changes Kenan’s interpretation of life and the

Twenty years after the largest mass murder on European soil since the Third Reich, one question still remains unanswered. How did this happen when the eyes of the world were watching? Why were death squads able to, unchecked, massacre more than 8,000 men and boys in a UN protected “safe zone”? According to eyewitness accounts of survivors, “They stripped all the male Muslim prisoners, military and civilian, elderly and young, of their personal belongings and identification, and deliberately and methodically killed them solely on the basis of their identity” (International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia). The sole male survivor in his entire family, Mevludin Oric recounted how he lay for hours under the corpse of his nephew pretending to be dead while death squads searched the killing fields. “I closed my eyes...And for a few seconds before the expected shot, I wonder what it is like in heaven, or in hell.”(NBC)

The Bosnian, Srebrenica, and Herzegovina land was involved in an ethical war where ethnic cleansing was seen as a way to solidify the breaks in that region (“Bosnian Genocide”). The trigger of this ethnic war was the break-up of Yugoslavia from one country to three (Bosnia, Srebrenica, and Herzegovina) in 1990 (“Bosnian Genocide”). This rupture of Yugoslavia resulted in the massive dispute between Muslims, Serbs, and Croatians (Bennett). Not long after the war began, the Serbs began executing the Bosnian Muslims through ethnic cleansing, in order to fill the fissure that was created in 1990. The mass execution lasted three years and nine months, and did not end until the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened in 1995 (Bennett); by that time, an unforgettable 70,000 Bosnian citizens were executed by the Serbs (Perl 71). If NATO had intervened sooner, perhaps thousands of lives could have been saved and this haunting genocide may have had less of an impact on the world.

Throughout Bait, Diego makes some choices. Some of the choices are to be desired and some are the complete opposite. Whether it was a good or a bad choice, lots of his decisions have an effect on the setting, whether it makes Diego go somewhere else or it can sometimes change the mood of the setting that the book is in. The setting in the book never lasts very long whether it is home, juvie, court, a probation appointment, the beach, or school. You can never count out a change of setting in Bait by Alex Sanchez.

This paper will discuss the many horrible acts and atrocities of the Bosnian Genocide. It will also go over the reasons, process, as well as the aftermath of fear and hostility caused by the genocide. The victim group involved in the Bosnian Genocide were the Bosnian Muslims that were killed in mass. The perpetrators were a combination of Serbian government officials and the Serbian Army. The hostility was mostly caused by a long time hatred between the Serbs and Bosnians. The long time hatred is caused by a combination of religious differences as well as territorial disputes. The Serbs and Bosnians have been attempting to take land from the each other and use it for its natural resources. These reasons were exacerbated by the Bosnian war that

This could have been one of the reasons why there was a large amount of humanitarian intervention in Bosnia. (Snow, 2008) The United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the United States (US) all made multiple attempts at intervention in Bosnia. A large number of them were not completely successful. The war ended when with a peace agreement mediated by the US.

“Give War a Chance” is an article written by the American economist, historian and military strategist Edward Nicolae Luttwak in 1999, in the American magazine Foreign Affairs. It make an easily understandable “buzz”, since its main assumption is that most kind of peacekeeping or humanitarian operations are, in an objective point of view, a bad thing for the peace, and that it tends, paradoxically, to slower its establishment. We will analyze here the main hypothesis that Luttwak is developing among the article, the first one being the destruction of the legitimacy usually accorded to peacekeeping operations, led by the UN or by other military organizations, and the second one being the obstacle to a durable peace establishment, created

The land of Kosovo has been plagued with tension for hundreds of years being claimed by several surrounding countries. The two biggest contenders, Albanians in Kosovo and Serbia have been fighting for the land, which culminated in a full war from 1998-1999. The war brought international attention to the war crimes committed by both sides, and proved that the two countries had years to go before coming to a solution. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) led by Kosovo Albanians, and the Serbian militia led by President Slobodan Milošević committed heinous crimes against their enemies. Crimes range from ethnic cleansing to rape and destruction of whole villages. The violence created a serious refugee problem that is still relevant today.

The United Nations, with its rigid moral and political limitations against force, has become a benchmark of peace and a social achievement of modern times. From war torn Europe, the United Nations developed from five major powers with an initial goal to prevent the spread of warfare through peaceful means and to establish and maintain fundamental human rights. Through the past fifty years, this organization has broadened its horizons with auxiliary organizations from peace keeping missions to humanitarian aid, to economic development. However, in a modern example of ethnic cleansing, the UN faces new a new role as a bystander as its power is bypassed by NATO forces. The UN, however, promises to be an