Under The Blue Flag: My Mission in Kosovo Book

"The feeling of distance from my old life grew stronger as I met up with friends during my few days at home. They all wanted to know how Kosovo was, but I found it almost impossible to tell them. Even the simplest anecdote required so much background information to make any sense that I preferred not even to begin. I had been living in another universe."

And so, it needed a book-length telling. Here it is. To those who have studied international law and war crimes law, this book will be an anything-but-academic, first-person account of a court sitting at the scene of the crimes, not in The Hague. And it's a very tersely-worded account of the difficulties of investigating and prosecuting such cases in a rough part of the world. And no victors-judging-losers here: Mr. Kearney and a handful of other UN lawyers and staff were bringing charges against Kosovars who, often as not, were running this part of the world, not just the Serbs who ruled the land before 1999.

To those who have studied law in general, it's a compelling, if somewhat disconcerting story. Mr. Kearney was familiar with U.S. methods of procedure and evidence, in a common-law system -- he had been a prosecutor in San Francisco, a city that can be wild enough at times -- and here he is in an unfamiliar civil-law court system, with a different set of laws, and total unfamiliarity with both local laws and local languages.

It's also a story that reflects well on this part of UN operations, albeit in a gritty, understaffed, underfunded unit. A handful of prosecutors had all of Kosovo, with all of the ordinary and extraordinary crimes done by both sides during the Balkan wars in Kosovo, with little cooperation from local police or government, indeed, with considerable opposition. The prosecutors -- and especially witnesses -- were in considerable personal danger. Mr. Kearney tells, in ways that are clear to laypeople, just how difficult it was to get even the barest evidence together to go to court. It's a very noirish but compelling story, and it's told in plain language that the ordinary reader will find gripping.

A you-are-there telling of an important moment in history and law, and a hard-boiled crime story to grip any reader. Mr. Kearney's efforts, and that of his colleagues, were a major effort to establish a rule of law in a place, and a time, that needed it. Highest recommendation.