Trusted Mole: A Soldier’s Journey into Bosnia’s Heart of Darkness. Martin Bell

Copyright

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      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2000

      Copyright © Milos Stankovic 2000

      Maps by Jillian Luff

      Milos Stankovic, Foreword by Martin Bell, M.P. asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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      Source ISBN: 9780006530909

      Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780007441457 Version: 2015-01-06

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Praise

      Further reviews for Trusted Mole:

      ‘By far the best book to have come out of the Balkan wars, not because it explains the conflict simply, but because Stankovic demonstrates with wit and eloquence that simplicity was never part of the equation … This is not, however, a bleak book. Far from it. There is humour, lots of it, often (inevitably) black, but also reflecting the accidental idiocies and genuinely comic scenes that occurred in the midst of organised chaos.’

      PETER MILLAR, Sunday Times

      ‘Stankovic’s book is far more than the outcry of an innocent man foully accused. He has a wonderful eye for detail and a natural storyteller’s gift, and passion, to get across the bizarre and terrible cruelty of what the people of Bosnia went through. At times, I laughed out loud; at times, horrible moments of my spells there came swimming back, brilliantly evoked in Stankovic’s fresh prose … Trusted Mole is rich in comic scenes … But the comedy switchbacks with the tragedy … this man was a hero, caught in the middle and discarded by a military bureaucracy that should be shot at dawn for its betrayal.’

      JOHN SWEENEY, Observer

      ‘Now exculpated from all charges, Stankovic has written a remarkably frank account of his time in Bosnia … What Trusted Mole makes sickeningly clear is not just the absurdity of sending in peacekeepers with no peace to keep (and neither the weaponry nor the political backing to impose it), but also the corrupting effects of war and humanitarian aid on almost everybody involved.’

      MARK ALMOND, Literary Review

      ‘This is a powerful book … the inside story, not only of the UN’s war in Bosnia … but also, of what happens to someone who spends too long in a place populated by the dead and those whose hope has died.’

      CHARLOTTE EAGER, Sunday Telegraph

      ‘Well-written, gripping and highly informative … It is evident that he was disgracefully let down by a system which he trusted … and he is to be congratulated for writing a fascinating account of an experience that would leave most people shattered.’

      ADRIAN WEALE, Daily Mail

      ‘Fascinating and truly exciting … As a window into that hidden period, his account is a revelation, Uttered with insights into the ordinary human chaos which lay behind the apparently calm and collected statements of the politicians and the military top brass.’

      JAMES RUDDY, Eastern Daily Press

Dedication

      This book is dedicated to the memory of two people. First, it is for my father, who led a full, varied and productive life. Second, it is for Dobrila Kalaba and countless others like her who were denied the realisation of those basic aspirations by the horror that was Bosnia.

       Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Foreword by Martin Bell OBE, MP

‘Mother Bosnia’

PART ONE 1992–1993

       Baby Blue

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

       TEN

       ELEVEN

       TWELVE