Thomas de Waal

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Thomas de Waal is a British journalist, writer and an expert on the Caucasus. He has reported for, amongst others, the BBC World Service, the Moscow Times, and The Times. [1] He is currently a Caucasus editor at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) in London.

Thomas de Waal is co-author of Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus (New York, 1998) and author of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War (New York, 2003).[2]

In 2006 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia denied an entry visa to de Waal, who was due to attend in Moscow the presentation of a Russian version of his book on the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, citing a law that says a visa can be refused "in the aims of ensuring state security".[3] Thomas de Waal believes that his visa denial was retaliation for his critical reporting about Chechnya.[4][5]

Contents

[edit] Reviews

According to Foreign Affairs journal review of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through peace and war, de Waal "offers a deeper and more compelling account of the conflict than anyone before.... one likely to exercise give-no-quarters partisans on both sides".[6]

Transitions online analyst Richard Allen Greene writes about the same book: "This book will undoubtedly infuriate partisans on both sides of the conflict. But for anyone who wants a thorough, sympathetic, readable, and fair account, it provides an essential introduction to a war that has left two countries in what De Waal aptly calls "a kind of slow suicide pact." [7]

Time magazine reviewer Paul Quinn-Judge states that Black Garden is a "brilliant book". He further writes: "De Waal's book will infuriate blind partisans on both sides, but for anyone who truly wants to understand what happened in this part of the Caucasus, it will not be surpassed for many years. He is cautious, meticulous and even-handed, and the breadth of his research is remarkable".[8]

Parameters journal review states: "Thomas de Waal, noted British journalist and specialist on the Caucasus, has ...[produced] a book that is both a poignant chronicle and a lucid, evenhanded analysis of the intricacies of this conflict".[9]

Neal Ascherson in his review of Black Garden in The New York Review of Books refers to de Waal as "a wise and patient reporter", and the book as "admirable and rigorous".[10]

[edit] Critics

President of Armenian Academy of Political Research, Prof. Alexander Manasyan in a review on Thomas de Waal's "Black Garden" book write that de Waal "supports the point of view which is steered by the propaganda" of Baku[11].

Thomas de Waal's "Black Garden" was criticized by Karen Vrtanesyan, an Armenian Ararat Center for Strategic Research expert, as "a banal propagand but not an objective research on Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict" [12]. Vrtanesyan concludes that "the "Black Garden" is not an unbiased work, neither can its author be considered a neutral observer" [13].

[edit] References

  1. ^ Russia bars UK reporter on security grounds by Oliver Bullough
  2. ^ Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Caucasus programme staff bios.
  3. ^ British journalist denied entry visa, CJES/IFEX, July 2006
  4. ^ The St. Petersburg Times. Activists, Reporters Also Called a Threat
  5. ^ Prospect Magazine, July 2006, issue 124. Opinions: "Barred by Moscow" by Thomas de Waal
  6. ^ Foreign Affairs. Review by Robert Legvold
  7. ^ Transitions Online. Garden of Discord.
  8. ^ Time. Two Peoples, One Nightmare
  9. ^ Parameters, US Army War College Quarterly - Spring 2005
  10. ^ The New York Review of Books. In the Black Garden by Neal Ascherson. November 20, 2003, full text at the website of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Republic of Armenia
  11. ^ Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: on the Frontlines of the Information War, or the Last “Accord” of the Year, by Alexander Manasyan, 2007
  12. ^ "Studies on Strategy and Security", compiled and edited, with an introduction and commentary by Dr Armen Ayvazyan, Yerevan, Lusakn, 2007, 684 pp. , p. 657
  13. ^ Thomas de Waal, “The Black Garden”: In Search of Imagined Balance/Abstract by Karen Vrtanesyan.

[edit] External links

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