Word: balkanize
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...Reflecting on Western culpability in the events at Srebrenica is not merely an historical exercise. Peacekeeping troops are still deployed throughout the Balkans, for the most part under the sturdier command of NATO rather than the paralytic U.N. bureaucracy. Even then, their record of standing up to racist thuggery is somewhat mixed. NATO showed great resolve in forcing the Serbs to accept the Dayton accord on Bosnia and later in getting them out of Kosovo, but the alliance has proved rather wimpish when its peacekeeping troops are confronted by continued ethnic cleansing (as in Kosovo) or new separatist insurgencies...
...Macedonian conflict borders on the absurd - at least through the prism of NATO's wishful thinking. The troubled Balkan nation appeared to accelerate down the slide towards full-blown civil war Monday as ethnic-Albanian rebels fought government forces for control over Tetovo, Macedonia's second city which is claimed as an unofficial capital by the rebels. At the same time, Macedonians driven out of their villages by rebel forces in a familiar spectacle of Balkan "ethnic cleansing" vented their rage on Western embassies - and, inevitably, a McDonalds - in the capital overnight. The facts on the ground suggest a rapid...
...escalation of fighting in Macedonia poses an acute dilemma for NATO. After all, in most other Balkan conflict the question has been should the alliance send troops, but in Macedonia there are already considerable numbers of NATO troops - it's the logistical rear area for the entire Kosovo peacekeeping mission. So the question facing Western leaders if full-blown war breaks out will not be whether they should send soldiers, but what orders to give those who are already there...
...brutal reality of the Balkans could be that democracy?s ability to eradicate the region?s tribal hatreds may be overstated. At the very least, it would appear that the existence of democratic institutions does not necessarily signal the dominance of a democratic, multiethnic political culture. And that would mean the nation-building project may be so long-term as to make the Balkan peacekeeping deployments a relatively permanent affair...
...year-old court and its chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, who spent months barnstorming through Western capitals demanding his transfer. The tribunal has gone after Serb, Croat and Muslim suspects and successfully prosecuted 19 defendants, but until now has yet to bring to dock the supreme commanders of the Balkan wars. American officials who pressed the Yugoslav government to give Milosevic up, conditioning aid on his handover to the U.N., also claimed vindication. "Today's unfolding events demonstrate the wisdom of our position," crowed Joseph Biden, the chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. By some measures Belgrade...