How does Zlata's Diary teach the reader about geography?

Zlata Filopovic lived in Sarajevo during the Yugoslavian
civil war.  The city was under siege for four years, starting in 1992 when she wrote her
diary.  Especially at the time it is written, most people in the world would neither
recognize nor be able to locate the new nations that had been formed out of the old
federal state of Yugoslavia. 

Slovenia, Croatia,
Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia all were former provinces
within Yugoslavia, and many had broken away by the time of Zlata's experience, including
the city where she lives, which is the capital of Bosnia then and now.  The war and her
diary forced people in other countries to look again at the geography of the region and
the reasons why the civil war was happening.