Tim Judah (born 31 March 1962) is a British writer, reporter and political analyst for The Economist . Judah has written several books on the geopolitics of the Balkans, mainly focusing on Serbia and Kosovo.
Tim Judah (born 31 March 1962) is a British writer, reporter and political analyst for The Economist . Judah has written several books on the geopolitics of the Balkans, mainly focusing on Serbia and Kosovo.
Tim Judah was born in London in 1962 and was raised in a family of Baghdadi Jewish descent whose tradition maintains they first came to Iraq from the ancient Kingdom of Judah at the time of the Babylonian Exile. [1] His ancestors include Solomon Ma’tuk. [2]
The Judah family was later established in Calcutta as part of the Baghdadi Jewish community before migrating to Britain. [3] [4] [5] [6]
Judah attended Charterhouse school followed by the London School of Economics. [7] He also studied at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. [8]
Based abroad as a foreign correspondent, Judah lived in Bucharest from 1990 to 1991 where he covered the fall of communism for The Times and The Economist . [9] He was based in Belgrade to cover the conflicts surrounding the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. [10] He returned to London in 1995 but continues to travel frequently to the Balkans. [11]
Judah is married to writer and publisher Rosie Whitehouse and has five children, one of whom is the journalist Ben Judah. [12]
Tim Judah began his career at the African service of the BBC World Service. [13]
He has reported from many flashpoints around the world, including the states of the former Yugoslavia, El Salvador, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Niger, Darfur, Uganda, North Korea, Georgia, Armenia, Haiti and Ukraine. [14] [15] [16]
In 1997, based on his reporting of the Yugoslav Wars Judah criticized "academics imbued with a two dimensional view of the world" such as Francis Fukuyama for discussing the revolutions of 1989 as heralding the end of history. [17]
Judah has been described by The Guardian newspaper as "a distinguished foreign correspondent." [18] [19] As a writer his style combines reportage, interviews and history and his main focus, as a journalist, has been on conflict in Africa and Eastern Europe, in particular the Balkans. [20] [21] [22]
He has written three books on the Balkans region, including The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia published by Yale University Press in 1997 and Kosovo: War And Revenge with the same publisher in 2002. [23] Regarding the Kosovo-Serbia question, Judah writes in his The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia in the section '"Kosovo: Land of Revenge" that the reincorporation of Kosovo to Serbia in 1944 was "the equivalent of reincorporating a cancer into the Serbian body politic". [24]
He was an eyewitness to many of the battles of the Yugoslav Wars including the siege of Dubrovnik and the battle of Vukovar. [25]
Judah is considered an authority on Balkan politics. [26] As a senior visiting fellow at the European Institute of the London School of Economics in 2009, he developed the concept of the Yugosphere. [27] [28] He has described the Yugosphere as "a way of describing the renewal of thousands of broken bonds across the former state," a social and political phenomenon with a certain political application. [29]
In the Balkans itself, he is president of the board of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network and a member of the board of the Kosovar Stability Initiative. [30]
Elsewhere in Eastern Europe, Judah has reported on the Euromaidan Revolution and the War in Donbass. His most recent book In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine was published in December 2015. [31]
Judah's work on Africa has included a BBC Radio 4 documentary on Mouridism. [32] His work has also touched on African sporting achievements with his 2008 book Bikila: Ethiopia’s Barefoot Runner shortlisted for the best new sportswriter category in the 2009 British Sports Book Awards. [33] [34]
Judah has also worked in 2013 as a regular columnist for Bloomberg. [35]
He has celebrated the Jewish festival of Passover in both Baghdad during the American invasion of 2003 and Donetsk during the Russian invasion of 2014. [36] [37]
The Kosovo War, was an armed conflict in Kosovo that lasted from 28 February 1998 until 11 June 1999. It was fought between the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian separatist militia known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The conflict ended when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened by beginning air strikes in March 1999 which resulted in Yugoslav forces withdrawing from Kosovo.
The Kosovo Liberation Army was an ethnic Albanian separatist militia that sought the separation of Kosovo, the vast majority of which is inhabited by Albanians, from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and Serbia during the 1990s. Albanian nationalism was a central tenet of the KLA and many in its ranks supported the creation of a Greater Albania, which would encompass all Albanians in the Balkans, stressing Albanian culture, ethnicity and nation.
The Rambouillet Agreement, formally the Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-Government in Kosovo, was a proposed peace agreement between the delegation of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Republic of Serbia on the one hand and the delegation of political representatives of the ethnic Albanian majority population of Kosovo on the other. It was drafted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and named for the Château de Rambouillet, where it was initially proposed in early 1999. Among other things, the accords called for 30,000 NATO peacekeeping troops in Kosovo; an unhindered right of passage for NATO troops on Yugoslav territory; and immunity for NATO and its agents to Yugoslav law. Yugoslavia's refusal to sign the accords was used by NATO to justify the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia.
Skull Tower is a stone structure embedded with human skulls located in Niš, Serbia. It was constructed by the Ottoman Empire following the Battle of Čegar of May 1809, during the First Serbian Uprising. During the battle, Serbian rebels under the command of Stevan Sinđelić were surrounded by the Ottomans on Čegar Hill, near Niš. Knowing that he and his fighters would be impaled if captured, Sinđelić detonated a powder magazine within the rebel entrenchment, killing himself, his subordinates and the encroaching Ottoman soldiers. The governor of the Rumelia Eyalet, Hurshid Pasha, ordered that a tower be made from the skulls of the fallen rebels. The tower is 4.5 metres (15 ft) high, and originally contained 952 skulls embedded on four sides in 14 rows.
Operation Horseshoe was a 1999 alleged plan to ethnically cleanse Albanians in Kosovo. The plan was to be carried out by Serbian police and the Yugoslav army.
Sir Noel Robert Malcolm, is an English political journalist, historian and academic, currently a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. A King's Scholar at Eton College, Malcolm read history at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and received his doctorate in history from Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a Fellow and College Lecturer of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, before becoming a political and foreign affairs journalist for The Spectator and the Daily Telegraph.
The Visoki Dečani Monastery is a medieval Serbian Orthodox Christian monastery located near Dečani, Kosovo. It was founded in the first half of the 14th century by Stefan Dečanski, King of Serbia. It is often considered to be one of the most endangered European cultural heritage sites and with a designation of Cultural Monument of Exceptional Importance.
Adem Jashari was one of the founders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a Kosovo Albanian separatist militia which fought for the secession of Kosovo from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the 1990s.
The Battle of Ivankovac was the first full-scale confrontation between Serbian revolutionaries and the regular forces of the Ottoman Empire during the First Serbian Uprising.
Rosie Whitehouse is a British historical researcher, journalist and author.
The Battle of Junik was a battle fought during the Kosovo War between the ethnic Albanian paramilitary organization known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the security forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia over the town of Junik in western Kosovo.
The Medal for Bravery "Miloš Obilić", commonly known as the Medal of Miloš Obilić, is a state decoration awarded by the Republic of Serbia, and before that by the Kingdom of Serbia and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, for heroic acts.
The Holocaust in Albania consisted of crimes committed against Jews in Albania while Albania was under Italian and German occupation during World War II. Throughout the war, nearly 2,000 Jews sought refuge in Albania-proper. Most of these Jewish refugees were treated well by the local population, despite the fact that Albania-proper was occupied first by Fascist Italy, and then by Nazi Germany. Albanians often sheltered Jewish refugees in mountain villages and transported them to Adriatic ports from where they fled to Italy. Other Jews joined resistance movements throughout the country.
The Kosovo Myth, also known as the Kosovo Cult and the Kosovo Legend, is a Serbian national myth based on legends about events related to the Battle of Kosovo (1389). It has been a subject in Serbian folklore and literary tradition and has been cultivated oral epic poetry and guslar poems. The final form of the legend was not created immediately after the battle but evolved from different originators into various versions. In its modern form it emerged in 19th-century Serbia and served as an important constitutive element of the national identity of modern Serbia and its politics.
The Insurgency in Kosovo began in 1995, following the Dayton Agreement that ended the Bosnian War. In 1996, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) began attacking Serbian governmental buildings and police stations. This insurgency would lead to the more intense Kosovo War in February 1998.
On July 18, 1998 a Yugoslav Army (VJ) border patrol ambushed a column of Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) insurgents and foreign mujahideen just west of Dečani, on the frontier between Albania and Yugoslavia. The ambush resulted in the deaths of four KLA fighters and 18 mujahideen, most of whom were citizens of Saudi Arabia. Twelve militants were wounded, and a further six were arrested by the Yugoslav authorities and charged with illegal entry and gunrunning. The VJ reported seizing a significant amount of arms and ammunition that the militants had been smuggling. One Yugoslav border guard was seriously wounded in the clash.
Serbian historiography refers to the historiography of the Serb people since the founding of Serbian statehood. The development can be divided into four main stages: traditional historiography, Ruvarac's critical school, Communist–Marxist legacy, and the renewed Serbian national movement.
The public image of Slobodan Milošević, concerns the image of Slobodan Milošević, the former president of Serbia and FR Yugoslavia among the residents of former Yugoslavia and worldwide. Before the Yugoslav Wars the public image of Slobodan Milošević oscillated from faceless bureaucrat to defender of Serbs. During the Yugoslav Wars his image again oscillated from Balkan Butcher to Guarantor of Peace and back.
The Yugosphere is a concept created in 2009 by British writer Tim Judah during his time as a senior visiting fellow at the European Institute of the London School of Economics. The Yugosphere refers to the social, linguistic, economic and cultural ties between the successor nations of the former Yugoslavia and how following the breakup of Yugoslavia these ties and bonds are being reforged to the benefit of the whole region. Judah has described the Yugosphere as "a way of describing the renewal of thousands of broken bonds across the former state," a social and political phenomenon with a certain political application. The concept also calls for a Benelux or Nordic Council style organisation in the former Yugoslavia to promote cooperation and integration as well as unified policy stances and foreign policy in order to benefit all nations as well as speed up European Union integration.
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