Word: buffer
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...former KLA elements who are bent on destabilizing Serbia and Macedonia. Not only that, NATO has actually enlisted the help of the same Yugoslav army against which it fought in Kosovo. To the consternation of Kosovo's Albanian leaders, NATO this week asked Belgrade to send troops into the buffer zone inside Serbia established as part of the cease-fire agreement that ended the war in Kosovo. The symbolic significance of that decision cannot be understated: It's a clear a message to the region's Albanian nationalists that NATO plans to respond aggressively to any further attempts to redraw...
...further. That, and President George W. Bush's campaign promise to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from the Balkans, may have prompted Albanian nationalists across the region to step up their campaign for a Greater Albania, by launching new insurgencies in Serbia's Presevo Valley (which falls in a demilitarized buffer zone adjacent to Kosovo) and in northern Macedonia. But in the absence of Serb abuse and ethnic cleansing, NATO has shown little tolerance for the new Albanian adventurism...
...sure if the panic will spread beyond Turkey's borders, but within the country the economic situation threatens the political stability of a NATO member that for the U.S. is a valuable buffer against fundamentalist Islamism in the region. Not to mention another black eye for the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund, which bailed out Turkey last year and seems in danger of losing its investment. TIME stringer Andrew Finkel, who works out of Istanbul, comments on the developments...
...KFOR has been working recently to try and stop the flow of men and weapons from Kosovo into the buffer zone in southern Serbia, where the extremists have been conducting an insurgency. And this attack raises a dilemma for the NATO-led forces, because it happened in a region nearby and it's a clear message from the extremists to leave them alone, or else KFOR could be next. I don't know what KFOR is going to do with this message, but I'll be very surprised if they try to clamp down on the extremists. Because...
...been some time since he who ruled the capital also ruled the provinces. That much the Rwandan military discovered in early 1997, when it rolled across the border, hoping to carve out a buffer zone to prevent Hutu militiamen using sanctuaries in the state then known as Zaire for their genocidal campaign against Rwandan Tutsis. As they moved westward, the Rwandans encountered no resistance - the army of the reviled dictator Mobutu Sese Seko had no interest in defending the borders of a state that hadn't paid them for years. Mobutu's kleptocracy had finally reduced Zaire to an empty...