Shadowplay: A Memoir From Behind the Lines and Under Fire: The Inside Story of Europe's Last War

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It is Oct-1998 and the Kosovo War is in full swing. I was really looking forward to the boots on the ground war reporting, but that was not really the case, and this was not really that kind of war. It was not like he could embed himself in a platoon of British soldiers on the ground as there were none. This book is a memoir of the author’s experience as a journalist in the Kosovo war, but it also tries to be a lot more and fails pretty badly.

Shadowplay: The Inside Story of the Overthrow of Slobodan Shadowplay: The Inside Story of the Overthrow of Slobodan

He is esteemed for his unique capacity to contextualise current affairs. He has extensively analysed, for instance, how geography influences the ways states behave and interact with one another. In his writing on Russian foreign policy, for example, he discusses how the flatland between the Baltic Sea and Carpathian Mountains – modern-day Poland – has for centuries made Russia vulnerable to invasion from Western armies. This has fuelled a historical view amongst Russian leaders of Belarus and Ukraine as buffer zones between Western forces and Moscow, and we can see this view rearing its head in the recent invasion of Ukraine. It feels like you have been dropped into the middle of the book rather than at the beginning. A lot of information and names are thrown at you without any context or summation of what is going on and why we are where we are. From the British strategy to NATO to the Serbs to the KLA it all feels a bit of complex mess. Hang in there. I made a list of names and positions as I went. Essentially the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) ‘intend to liberate Kosovo from Serbian rule’. They want independence. They see the Serbs as the oppressor. Nicholas Lezard (13 August 2015). "Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall - review". Evening Standard.

Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags" listed at Elliott & Thompson Accessed 15 April 2017

Shadowplay: A Memoir From Behind the Lines and Under Fire Shadowplay: A Memoir From Behind the Lines and Under Fire

The cover, showing all Yugoslavia, suggests that the book will examine a lot more than just Kosovo- in practice it’s focused on the author’s experience in Kosovo, though he was also present in the Bosnian war. Even still, it’s focus is narrow; Marshall was based in Serbia proper for most of this time and so the book covers only this perspective, focusing more on NATO bombings of Serbia and discussing remarkably little about events in Kosovo. In fact individual Kosovo Albanians are only mentioned four times total in the entire book; if you’re looking to learn anything about Kosovo beyond the very basics you won’t find it here.

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The 10 Maps That Tell you Everything You Need to Know about Global Politics". Newsweek. 1 August 2015. Marshall began his journalistic career reporting for LBC and was their Paris Bureau Correspondent for three years. He has also reported for the BBC and has written for a number of national newspapers. He was also the longstanding Foreign Affairs Editor and then Diplomatic Editor for Sky News. His other books include Worth Dying For – The Power & Politics Of Flags, Divided – Why We Are Living In An Age Of Walls, and The Power of Geography – Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of our World. It also reveals the inconvenient truth of how much the foreign intelligence services had to do with both making the case for bombing (KVM being run by CIA, the Rambouillet ultimatum etc.) as well as organizing the opposition to topple Milošević. Is that democracy? Serbia is in the same situation today with Vučić regarding freedoms and abuse, but no one seems to care, because of one small difference: he suits the West. Tim has been shot with bird pellet in Cairo, bruised by the police in Tehran, arrested by Serbian intelligence, detained in Damascus, declared persona non grata in Croatia, hit over the head with a plank of wood in London, bombed by the RAF in Belgrade, and tear-gassed all over the world.