PEACEKEEPER - the Road to Sarajevo

by Lewis MacKenzie and Major General Louis MacKenzie

Book Overview

In this memoir, MacKenzie describes how he created "Sector Sarajevo", and with a multi-national UN force set out to liberate Sarajevo airport to receive desperately needed food and medical supplies. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0006380492
• ISBN13: 9780006380498
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: HARPER COLLINS
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Great book for everybody who would like to know more about War in former Yugoslavia

Gen. McKenzie wrote a great book about peacekeeping in Bosnia. He is very honest man with a lot of experience in peacekeeping. He had hard time in Bosnia because beside war on the field there was a very strong media and political war. He did his best. Read it! More things you can find if you read some reports of French Gen. Morion (reading his reports to UN). Useful link: http://www.srebrenica-report.com/

Road to Sarajevo

Excelent book. Very revealing. Good stories, funny at times and serious at times. Great read.

First hand experience from top UN man in Balkans

I would warmly encourage anybody interested in Balkans to read this book. Author was commander of UN forces, first in Croatia and than in Bosnia. Like me, he came with an anti-Serb, propaganda influenced, opinion to serve in Yugoslavia, only to discover situation to be completely opposite from what media reported in the West. He writes objectively at all times, but many muslims from Bosnia (who were the most brainwashed of all sides, by their government) will not agree with him. Fact is that great majority of people who were fighting or who lived under muslim Bosnian government believed that they are fighting for multiethnic Bosnia...However, their government consisted from mostly only muslims, led by a TRUE FUNDAMENTALIST Alija Izetbegovic and their real aim was an independent muslim state in Balkans. Izetbegovic has since 1970's preached fundamentalism, what is easy to check from his books. And generous support that he enjoyed from his friends in Iran, made him feel strong enough to start the war and later break many cease-fires (Lord Owen, Lord Carrington, Cyrus Vence, general Lewis Mackenzie and many more leading westerners in Balkan are witnesses and living proof to this).He joined forces with his traditional friends, CROATS (Izetbegovic himself was a Nazi soldier in Bosnia in W.W.II) who were together fighting for Hitler against Serbs. Add to them another Hitler's ally, Albanians and you slowly getting the picture.....

General MacKenzie is a hero

I found the two previous reviews, one by Michael Smith and the other by an unidentified reader, both mean-spirited and uninformed. The latter reader I will disregard because his anonymity makes him unworthy of comment.First, I wonder why it took Smith 6 years to get around to reading MacKenzie's book? That's 6 years of hindsight that the author never had, so any abberations could be seen as dated.Next, was Smith there in Sarajevo when the Serb artillery was reducing the beautiful Olympic city to ruins? Did he know how it felt to try and communicate with the UN in New York only to have a recording because the staff was home for the weekend?Canadians have always been rated highly as peacekeepers because they come from a society that is judged as fair and tolerant of all peoples. The accusations of religious and ethnic intolerance are surprising - but maybe because of having to duck bullets and shells one sometimes loses this trait.I think Smith and his ilk would be happy if Canadians stayed home when the next trouble spot happens in Europe. Then Smith can watch from his Paris address while his EU compatriots try and solve the problem. Because, after two world wars and dozens of peacekeeping campaigns where thousands of Canadians have died, it's time for Europe to handle its own problems. General MacKenzie probably made a lot of enemies during his command. But outside of ethnic communities, one would be hardpressed to find a person who doesn't think highly of this man.And next time, Smith, read the book when it comes out.

This is THE book on modern United Nations Peacekeeping.

Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie takes you through the Hell that was the United Nations Protection Force in the former Yugoslavia. MacKenzie presents a candid look at the problems of modern Peacekeeping and offers solutions for them. He is highly critical of the United Nations's policies regarding Peacekeeping and explains there impact on the mission in depth. The book is also a summary of MacKenzie's experiences in the field during his deployment. It also toches on the role the media plays in Peacekeeping. For an exciting look at Peacekeeping from the trenches this is _the_ book. It is no wonder Gen. MacKenzie has become the 'Peacekeeper.