Endgame: The Betrayal And Fall Of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II - Softcover

Rohde, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813335337 ISBN 13: 9780813335339

Publisher: Basic Books, 1998

Synopsis

In 1993, the UN Security Council officially made Srebrenica the world's first UN-protected civilian safe area and stripped the town's Muslim defenders of their tanks and artillery. Two years later, Srebrenica fell after UN commanders turned down repeated requests for NATO air strikes to halt attacking Bosnian Serbs. As many as 7,000 Muslim men perished in mass executions or ambushes along a harrowing forty-mile flight one survivor called The Marathon of Death.”In Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II, Pulitzer Prize winning author David Rohde follows the experiences of seven central characters three Muslims in Srebrenica, two Dutch peacekeepers charged with defending the surrounded town, and two Serb Army soldiers attacking it through the ten-day period that changed the course of the war in Bosnia and was arguably the darkest hour in United Nations history.Rohde exposes how the United States, France, Great Britain, the United Nations and the Bosnian government out of incompetence or cynicism allowed 40,000 Muslims to fall into the hands of their potential executioners. Part of an apparent Serb endgame to win the war, Srebrenica's fall ended up playing a crucial role in the Clinton administration's endgame strategy” that halted the conflict. A new afterword by the author updates recent efforts to find the missing victims of Srebrenica and to apprehend and prosecute the executioners.The most comprehensive book to date on the subject, Endgame is a tale of cynical power politics in the post Cold War era, a case study in genocide, and a disturbing testament to the power of propaganda and self-delusion.

About this title

Review:

Journalist David Rohde was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for his reporting on the Bosnian city of Srebrenica. After the United Nations' "safe haven" fell, Rohde investigated reports of massacres, and was arrested by Bosnian Serbs while investigating mass graves near the town.

In End Game, Rohde tells the entire story of the fall of Srebrenica, in which 7,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed, making it the worst massacre in Europe since World War II. Rohde's reporting is prodigious, and as the narrative progresses the book picks up power as a series of events, presented in a matter-of-fact manner, come together and the reader sees how a village was obliterated, with many of its inhabitants killed and hidden in mass graves.

The book is disturbing, particularly because Rohde calmly shows how the horrors of Srebrenica could have been avoided. The conflict in Bosnia has perhaps been a puzzle to many, and this book will do much to give the horrors a human face.

About the Author:

While covering the war in Bosnia for The Christian Science Monitor,David Rohde was the first reporter to find mass graves near Srebrenica. Rohde received a Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for his stories on Srebrenica, and he is also the recipient of the George Polk Award, an Overseas Press Club prize, the Investigative Reporters and Editors award, and the Livingston Award. Rohde is currently a reporter for The New York Times.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0813335337
• ISBN 13: 9780813335339
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480