Tim Judah | |
|---|---|
 Tim Judah in 2012 | |
| Born | 31 March 1962 London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, reporter, political analyst |
| Notable work | The Serbs: History, Myth, and the Destruction of Yugoslavia |
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 historical and present relations between Serbia and Kosovo and Serbs and Kosovar Albanians.
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 (FRY), 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.
Operation Horseshoe was a 1999 alleged plan to ethnically cleanse Albanians in Kosovo and to destroy the Kosovo Liberation Army. The plan was to be carried out by Serbian police and the Yugoslav army.
The Visoki Dečani Monastery is a medieval Serbian Orthodox Christian monastery located near Deçan, Kosovo. It was founded in the first half of the 14th century by Stefan Dečanski, King of Serbia.
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.
Kosovo during the 20th century in history has largely been characterised by wars and major population displacements. The region formed a part of numerous entities, some internationally recognised, others not.
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.
Albanian nationalism is a general grouping of nationalist ideas and concepts generated by ethnic Albanians that were first formed in the 19th century during the Albanian National Awakening. Albanian nationalism is also associated with similar concepts, such as Albanianism ("Shqiptaria") and Pan-Albanianism, that includes ideas on the creation of a geographically expanded Albanian state or a Greater Albania encompassing adjacent Balkan lands with substantial Albanian populations.
Azem Bejta, commonly known as Azem Galica, was an Albanian nationalist, resistance fighter and rebel who fought for the unification of Kosovo with Albania. He is known for leading the Kachak Movement against the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
Kosovo–Turkey relations are the historic and current bilateral relations between the Republic of Kosovo and the Republic of Turkey. Kosovo has an embassy in Ankara, whereas Turkey has an embassy in Pristina. Both nations are predominantly Muslim, have close cultural and military ties, and both have sought to join the European Union.
The Battle of Junik was 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.
Christianity in Kosovo has a long-standing tradition dating to the Roman Empire. The entire Balkan region had been Christianized by the Roman, Byzantine, First Bulgarian Empire, Serbian Kingdom, Second Bulgarian Empire, and Serbian Empire till 13th century. After the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 until 1912, Kosovo was part of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, and a high level of Islamization occurred. During the time period after World War II, Kosovo was ruled by secular socialist authorities in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). During that period, Kosovars became increasingly secularized. Today, 87% of Kosovo's population are from Muslim family backgrounds, most of whom are ethnic Albanians, but also including Slavic speakers and Turks.
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 is rooted in Prince Lazar’s apocryphal choice during the battle at the Kosovo Polje, where he is said to have rejected an earthly victory over the Ottoman Sultan Murad I and chose to die as a Christian martyr in favor of a “heavenly kingdom”. This choice, as the narrative suggests, was intended to position Serbs as a chosen people and secure a spiritual covenant with God and a place in the Kingdom of Heaven.
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 December 14, 1998, the Yugoslav Army (VJ) ambushed a group of 140 Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) militants attempting to smuggle weapons and supplies from their base in Albania into the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. A five-hour battle ensued, ending with the deaths of 36 militants and the capture of a further nine. Dozens more fled back to Albania, abandoning large quantities of weapons and supplies, which the Yugoslav authorities subsequently seized. The ambush was the most serious war-related incident in Kosovo since a U.S.-negotiated truce took effect two months before. It came on the heels of increasing tensions in the province, where inter-ethnic violence had been escalating steadily since early 1995.
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 Deçan, 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.
Kosovo is the birthplace of the Albanian nationalist movement which emerged as a response to the Eastern Crisis of 1878. In the immediate aftermath of the Russo-Ottoman war, the Congress of Berlin proposed partitioning Ottoman Albanian inhabited lands in the Balkans among neighbouring countries. The League of Prizren was formed by Albanians to resist those impositions. For Albanians those events have made Kosovo an important place regarding the emergence of Albanian nationalism. During the remainder of the late Ottoman period various disagreements between Albanian nationalists and the Ottoman Empire over socio-cultural rights culminated in two revolts within Kosovo and adjacent areas. The Balkan Wars (1912–13) ending with Ottoman defeat, Serbian and later Yugoslav sovereignty over the area generated an Albanian nationalism that has become distinct to Kosovo stressing Albanian language, culture, and identity within the context of secession from Serbia. Pan-Albanian sentiments are also present and historically have been achieved only once when part of Kosovo was united by Italian Axis forces to their protectorate of Albania during the Second World War.
Operation Fenix was an operation launched by militants of the KLA's "cobra" unit, which conducted two ambushes out of Albanian territory near the border outpost of Koshare on Yugoslav forces. Six Yugoslav Army personnel were killed. The KLA suffered no casualties, and captured Yugoslav ammunition, equipment and looted the dead soldiers.
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.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
