For many centuries, the mountainous Caucasus region was a strategic backwater, inhabited by insular peoples and tribes, where the raw edges of Christian and Muslim empires rubbed abrasively together. Most of the Caucasus was absorbed into the Russian empire in the 10th century; its 112 recognized nationalities were thus all eventually smothered by the Soviet Union, only to reemerge with a vengeance when the Soviet empire collapsed. In the 1990's, the saga of the Caucasus republics has been one of clashing war-lord militias, coups and international attention of now increasingly focused on the tension, particularly since the discovery of the vast Caspian-Azerbaijan oil fields, reputed to exceed those of Kuwait. A pithy, accessible account of recent developments in Chechnya and Georgia and of the ongoing Armenian-Azerbaujan ethnic conflict, Edgar O'Ballance's latest book is the perfect primer for those hoping to gain a basic understanding of this hot spot region.

This is an account of the turbulent saga of the only Arab state that has a nominal Christian majority. Packed with rival religious sects, feudal chieftains, war lords, squabbling political leaders, and in-house and foreign militias, Lebanon has suffered not only periods of civil war and internal infighting, but also invasions by Palestinians, Syrians and Israelis. It has survived as a republican entity, although shattered, exhausted and bankrupt. The 16-year long civil war in which Christian militias fought to eject Palestinian armed forces began in 1975. Western intervention was repelled by suicide-bombing attacks, and Lebanese Christians and Muslims sub-divided to fight each other. This book tells the story of a civil war was notable for massacres, treachery, atrocities, kidnapping, assassination, changing alliances of convenience, and invasions.

The Muslim President of Bosnia battled for almost two years in a 'war the West could not stop', against Serb and Croat separatism, to preserve its entity, saving its sovereignty, but losing half his territory. Western rivalries and changes of policy, endless negotiations, broken promises and cease-fires, and ethnic cleansing on a barbaric scale, with the appearance of concentration camps and atrocities, were the hallmarks of the conflict, of seige, bombardment and starvation, with semi-independent war-loards confiscating a proportion of UN and other food aid for themselves. Rival American and Russian initiatives in March 1994, brought about a cease-fire in Sarajevo, which had been constantly under the television spotlight while being bombarded for almost two years, which it was hoped would spread to other parts of Bosnia in media darkness. Ethnic forward battle lines may become new frontiers.

A fascinating account of the Intifada (struggle) by Palestinians in the Occupied Territories against Israeli governments, the first part of which was a mass civil disobedience movement of 'stone against bullets', which Israeli security forces contained only with great difficulty, resorting to doubtful methods that included detention without trial, kidnapping and assassinations. Criticized by human rights organisations and the United Nations, Palestinians and the Iranian-supported Hezbollah operated suicide-bombers, and some Palestinians resumed terrorist activity. America intervened sponsoring a comprehensive Middle East peace process in which Israelis dragged their feet, at the same time expanding Jewish settlements on illegal territory. Eventually Arafat became President of the self-ruled Palestine National Authority.

As Soviet Communism dissolved it was replaced in the Caucasus by nationalism enabling the Republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia to obtain independence: Chechenya is still fighting on. War between Armenia and Azerbaijan started immediately over the Azeri administered Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhicheven enclaves within Armenia, which has already cost over 30,000 lives, and displaced a million people. Warlord-ridden Georgia erupted into civil war for central power, while the countryside lay in the grip of ethnic groups and bandit gangs, its Muslim Abkhazia province, aided by Russians, fought a three-year separatist war that remains a stalemate.