""Ethnic cleansing" has become one of the key terms of the fin-de-siecle. In the former territory of Yugoslavia, along the fringes of the old Soviet Empire, and in Africa whole populations are being murdered or forced from lands they have lived on for centuries. Andrew Bell-Fialkoff explains the history of this obscene practice, tracing it from antiquity to the present and showing how, in different times and places, the most varied criteria have been used to isolate and destroy previously accepted or even completely unnoticed groups. "Cleansing" has been based on race, gender, class, sexual preference, and religion and has been a constant evil in world history. The need to understand its reemergence in the wake of communism's collapse is at the center of this important book. Bell-Fialkoff also uses his analysis of this seemingly intransigent problem to offer a reasoned account of the practice of population transfer and how it could ease ethnic strife in certain situations."--Jacket.