Word: balkanizing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...inching toward the West and moving away from its historical ally, Russia. Then, on Tuesday, it turned a corner on its path to international respectability by formally entering a bid to join the European Union, a club that includes many of the countries that once tried to pulverize the Balkan nation...
...comes days after citizens of Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia won the right to travel without visas to E.U. countries for the first time since the bloody Balkan wars of the early 1990s - a move that some low-cost airlines had already anticipated by adding Belgrade and other airports to their routes. It also follows the E.U.'s decision earlier this month to unfreeze an interim trade and cooperation pact with Serbia - seen as a precursor to eventual E.U. membership...
...biggest obstacle to Serbia's membership is the past -specifically Belgrade's inability to face up to the baleful legacy of the Balkan wars. The E.U. has made the capture of war fugitives Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic a precondition to even starting membership negotiations. The two men are believed to be hiding in the Serbian mountains under the tacit protection of key politicians. The Netherlands is particularly keen to see the arrest of Mladic, a Bosnian Serb general indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on genocide charges for his alleged role in the slaughter...
...parade, scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 20, was abruptly cancelled at the last minute after police said they would not be able to protect participants from attacks by ultranationalist thugs. In addition to promoting gay rights, the parade was supposed to show that a decade after the end of the Balkan wars, Serbia is a functional democracy, ready to join the European Union. Instead, the cancellation of the event raised a stark question: Can Serbia continue its march toward the West if it can't put an end to the intimidation tactics of militant ultranationalist groups? (See pictures...
...emerging from the Taliban's medieval totalitarianism. You could find booze in shops. On weekends, you could go picnicking and horseback riding in the country. Many embassies moved into gaudy narco-mansions rented out by warlords loyal to President Hamid Karzai. For dining, you had a choice of Mexican, Balkan, Lebanese, Indian, Thai, American and Chinese restaurants. The Chinese places were often fronts for brothels, and off-limits to Afghans, but any Kabuli male would tell you feverishly which of these establishments were selling girls along with the noodles. (Will the U.S. settle for Karzai...