Word: balkans
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...Whatever else evil might be, it is most reliably a fractal, one of those naturally recurring patterns - like the day-to-day and year-to-year fluctuations of the stock market - that repeat themselves at all scales. The Halloween vandal who trashes a house and the Balkan despot who trashes a nation are both cut from the same black cloth. Their sense of impunity, of adolescent entitlement, of imagined roguish grandeur are identical - even if the size of their respective stages are different. For that reason, they should be treated the same. Slap them down, lock them up, expose them...
...version of recent Balkan history is sharply at odds with that of his accusers. Prosecutors say Milosevic ruthlessly deported 800,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo; Milosevic says they left because of NATO's bombs and Kosovo Albanian terrorists. Prosecutors say the former President was attempting to form a "Greater Serbia," or at least a Serb-dominated state; Milosevic says the West broke up Yugoslavia to create a "Greater Albania." Prosecutors say Milosevic's troops committed unspeakable massacres; Milosevic says his troops did not massacre anyone and he was just defending his country from domestic terrorists...
Milosevic is going to try to push the anti-terrorism button. He'll frame much of his defense around the idea that in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, he was facing the same Islamic terrorism against which the U.S. has since gone to war. In the case of Kosovo, he'll argue that the operations he ordered were legitimate actions by a sovereign state to crack down on Muslim terrorists - meaning the Kosovo Liberation Army. And he'll sound a similar theme on Bosnia, saying that there, too, the local Serbs were fighting a war against foreign Mujahedeen fighters...
...When the Balkan wars started in 1991, Mitrovica, or Kosovska Mitrovica as it is known in Serbia, was just another ethnically mixed city in Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia. But, as the Serb strongman stepped up his campaign against ethnic Albanians and the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army, old neighborly ties began to fray. One night the body of Lindita's father was found in a back street on another side of town. A restaurant owner, he had been accused of giving food to the rebels. The Rexhepi family believe he was murdered by Serbs...
...party of President Milo Djukanovic, the only option is independence from its sister republic Serbia (pop. 8 million) and the final breakup of Yugoslavia. For Djukanovic's political opponents - not to mention nearly half the voting population, the federal authorities in Belgrade and the E.U. itself - another redrawing of Balkan borders is a prescription for unrest. E.U.-sponsored talks to find a compromise are scheduled to wrap up this month, but Djukanovic may force the issue: he has threatened to call a referendum on independence...