Ignatieff - Blood and Belonging

Praise for Blood and Belonging

A concise, intelligent eyewitness critique of a half-dozen of the more virulent postCold War patriotisms extant.

Stan Persky, The Globe and Mail

This is an immensely impressive meditation on nationalism in the postCold War era. In moving prose that is both powerful and subtle, Ignatieff introduces readers to the intellectual origins of modern nationalism as well as the often brutal results A remarkable work.

Library Journal

A compelling mix of interviews, history, vivid impressions and sharp reportage.

Publishers Weekly

A wise and sensitive book Ignatieff has admirably used a cosmopolitan sensibility to find what is recognizable and human in what, to him and to many of us, seems most strange.

New York Newsday

Uncannily contemporary in ambition, the book pre-empts the evening news to establish, and then analyze, a context for events and changes by no means complete. To combine reporting, political philosophy, complex personal sentiment and prophesy is an almost Sisyphean task.

The Gazette (Montreal)

A very anecdotal and essayistic ramble through a landscape of horror, grief and fanaticism vivid and deeply felt absorbing.

Boston Sunday Globe

Michael Ignatieff brings heart and generosity [to] tragedy.

Toronto Star

None of us should ignore this book. Its message is too important, too disturbing.

Times Educational Supplement (London)

Ignatieff takes an intellectuals safari In this beautifully conducted, unsettling tour, Ignatieffs personal recreations teach almost as much about nationalisms roots as the scenes of people and places he paints. The real value of Blood and Belonging to Canadians is not the answers it offers, but rather the questions it makes us ask.

Ottawa Citizen

Anyone who looks with horror and disbelief at the ethnic hatred tearing apart so many countries today will be riveted An extraordinary accomplishment.

The Vancouver Sun

[A] beautifully written elegy for civilization.

The Ottawa Sun

Michael Ignatieff is a richly talented writer and reporter. One of his greatest gifts is an eye for the heartbreaking detail that makes the seeming madness of recent news stories comprehensible in human terms.

Robert McNeil, The McNeil/Lehrer News Hour

Ignatieff is a reporter with a keen eye and a poetic sensibility. His subject matter is grim; his prose, passionate and evocative, bringing alive scenes that readers will be glad not to have witnessed in person Vivid and readable, it provides unforgettable impressions of societies that are going in the wrong direction on the highway to brotherhood and unity.

Washington Post Book World

Explores the heart of the most virulent nationalist conflicts around the world A valuable, thought-provoking book.

Calgary Herald

PENGUIN CANADA

BLOOD AND BELONGING

MICHAEL IGNATIEFF is a distinguished author of both fiction and non-fiction. His novel Scar Tissue was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, while The Russian Album, a family memoir, won the Governor Generals Award and the Heinemann Prize from Britains Royal Society of Literature. His work on ethnic nationalism in the 1990s resulted in a television series and the book Blood and Belonging, which won the Lionel Gelber Prize. Until August 2005, he was Carr Professor of the Practice of Human Rights and director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

ALSO BY MICHAEL IGNATIEFF

NON-FICTION

A Just Measure of Pain:

Penitentiaries in the Industrial Revolution, 17801850

Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (co-edited with Istvan Hont)

The Needs of Strangers

The Russian Album

The Warriors Honour: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience

Isaiah Berlin: A Life

Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond

The Rights Revolution

Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry

Empire Lite:

Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan

The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror

FICTION

Asya

Scar Tissue

Charlie Johnson in the Flames

BLOOD

AND

BELONGING

Journeys into the New Nationalism

Michael Ignatieff

PENGUIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in a Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada),

a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1993

Published in Penguin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada),

a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1994

Published in this edition, 2006

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

Copyright Michael Ignatieff, 1993

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Manufactured in Canada.

ISBN-10: 0-14-305468-6

ISBN-13: 978-0-14-305468-9

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication data available upon request

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INTRODUCTION

THE LAST REFUGE

WARLORDS

The UN checkpoint was a sandbagged Portakabin manned by two Canadian infantrymen guarding a road barrier between the Croat- and Serb-held sections of Pakrac, in central Croatia. The road to the checkpoint wound its way between pulverized bungalows, upended cars in the ditches, waist-high grass in abandoned gardens. Just visible in the grass, as we approached the checkpoint, were two teenage Croatian spotters with their binoculars trained on the Serbian side.

The UN had just waved us through into Serb-held territory when fifteen armed Serbian paramilitaries surrounded our van. They had been drinking at a wedding in their village. The drunkest one, with dead eyes and glassy, sweat-beaded skin, forced the van door open and clambered in. We watching you, he said, making binocular gestures with his hands. You talk to Ustashe, and he pointed back at the Croatians hiding in the grass. Then he took the pistol out of his belt. You fucking spies, he said. He ordered the driver out at gunpoint, took the wheel, and began revving the engine. Why cant I shoot this? groaned the cameraman in the seat behind. Because hell shoot