[In the following review, Phillips discusses Elegy for Kosovo in relation to several other narratives concerning the political situation in Kosovo during the late 1990s.]

At the heart of his masterful Elegy for Kosovo, the Albanian fabulist Ismail Kadare places the poignant tale of two fourteenth-century minstrels joined in flight. Their epic journey follows the defeat of the massed Christian armies of southeastern Europe by the Ottoman forces at the legendary Battle of Kosovo. As Gjorg, an Albanian, and Vladan, a Serb, wander out of the Balkans into French and German lands in search of safety and purpose, their attempts at broader European integration and a postwar professional comeback seem doomed.

Performing at the castle of a northern nobleman, Gjorg and Vladan infuriate their hosts when it becomes clear that the redundant minstrels have no repertoire beyond the old songs of mutual hatred and martial exploits. Their recital appears even more absurd as this centuries-old enmity has now been rendered irrelevant in the wake of the Turkish conquest. As one exasperated listener puts it, “It is true that there is dissension everywhere, but dissension like yours is really unique in the world!” More helpfully, one gentlewoman seeks to spur Gjorg and Vladan on to a new and more inclusive cultural vision, telling them bluntly, “You must sing of other things.”

Just over one year after the end of the NATO intervention of 1999, what, if any, evidence do we have that the peoples of Kosovo have begun to “sing of other things”? Were the brutal events of last year the catalyst for a decisive break with history in the region, or have we succeeded only in adding new verses to the familiar, deadly ballads of ethnic and religious division? Recurrent violent attacks and campaigns of intimidation against minority populations designed to create an exclusively Albanian Kosovo—as well as continued Serbian intransigence in a town like Mitrovica—would seem to confirm the pessimism of Gjorg and Vladan's critics. However, a crop of new books considering the historical background of the 1998-99 war in Kosovo and sifting the political fallout from the NATO action also leaves one wondering whether the international community's catalogue of best-loved tunes is not in similar need of refreshment.

The most useful of these latest analyses of the Kosovo conflict comes from Tim Judah, a journalist and essayist whose incisive coverage of the wars in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s has rightly earned him a place in the front rank of Balkan commentators. Judah's Kosovo: War and Revenge provides an accessible overview of the political struggles that culminated in the outbreak of armed conflict early in 1998. While his digest of nearly six hundred years of Kosovar history cannot compare with the extended exploration of Serb and Albanian fact and fiction in Noel Malcolm's Kosovo: A Short History, the strength of Judah's book lies in his expert grasp of developments during the period following Milosevic's swift ascent to power during the late 1980s.

Judah recounts how the Kosovar Albanian population rallied ‘round the rather curious figure of Ibrahim Rugova and organized itself into a passive resistance movement after the suspension of Kosovo's autonomous status within Yugoslavia in rich and illuminating detail. Judah is especially good on the gradual disillusion with Rugova's strategy: the growth of a sense among Kosovar Albanians that “his idea that they would be rewarded for their ‘good behavior’ by Western countries had been just plain wrong.” The author's account of the unlikely emergence of the Kosovo Liberation Army and its rupture of the long, uneasy standoff between Serbs and Albanians makes for gripping reading.

Judah's treatment of the daily reality of repression and systematic human-rights violations experienced by Kosovar Albanians throughout this period is notably evenhanded. He is careful to point out, for example, that while, the Serbian response to an increasing pattern of attacks on police and other agents of the regime was indefensibly excessive, those targeted by the Serb authorities during these years were frequently engaged in a campaign of violence. His discussion of the politicization of the discourse of human rights in Kosovo (and the impact of this phenomenon on the international community) as the stakes grew higher throughout the past decade is one of his most significant contributions to contemporary debate.

Judah's portrait of the ill-fated Rambouillet negotiations immediately prior to the start of the air strikes against the Milosevic regime is especially sobering. The tensions within and among the various delegations, the high comedy of the living and dining arrangements in the chateau near Paris, and the drama of possibilities glimpsed and shattered are all retold with considerable skill. About the war itself, Judah's judgment is commendable. While rightly giving ample space to the appalling crimes committed by Milosevic's forces and their local allies, he chooses to view the events of March-June 1999 as a series of sometimes quite extraordinary miscalculations and misperceptions on all sides, rather than as a narrative of unqualified success and unambiguous moral victory on the part of the international community.

Michael Ignatieff, arguably the most visible “public intellectual” writing and broadcasting in Britain today, is also much preoccupied with the political and moral consequences of the NATO intervention. Ignatieff's Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond cannot match the narrative sweep of Judah's chronological study, but his questioning of the implications for Western democracies of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention and the new clinical warfare, where victors can emerge without having sustained a single casualty, is no less fervent and necessary.

As an ardent supporter of the NATO intervention, Ignatieff conducts a lively self-interrogation on issues around the notion of wars for human rights and their democratic control. He sounds some necessary warning bells about the risks inherent in the West's capacity to wage a kind of remote-control warfare where the consent and engagement of its citizens become at best marginal considerations for those in command. As he argues, “those who supported the war in Kosovo must face up to the unintended effects of moralizing the use of violence. For high-flown abstractions carry an inherent justification of everything done in their name. What is to prevent moral abstractions like human rights from inducing an absolutist frame of mind which, in defining all human-rights violators as barbarians, legitimizes barbarism?”

One of Kadare's three enigmatic fictions ends with the death of the visionary old lady who had urged Gjorg and Vladan to learn to sing bold new songs. As she expires, she repeats the word “Europe” to herself, “as if she were trying to seize this word transformed by ridicule and neglect.” If we are to reclaim that debased word in the new century—if we are to discover a fresh vocabulary in international politics—we shall need to display more imagination and resolve than we have done since the agreement ending the conflict in Kosovo a year ago June. Kadare's transcendent vision is mirrored in scores of civil and community initiatives in the region—among them the remarkable Zemlja Djece (Land of Children) in Bosnia, Otpor (Resistance), and Women in Black in Serbia, and the network of local youth centers in Kosovo set up by the International Rescue Committee—which are too often overlooked. These could be the music of the future, if only we are prepared to listen more closely and add our own supporting voices to the chorus.