Word: croatia
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...demanding either greater autonomy within the Russian Federation or full independence. In many areas, though, ethnic groups are so thoroughly mixed that it is impossible to draw neat border lines between their respective turfs. Any attempt to do so only creates new minority problems: a Serb minority in Croatia, for example, instead of a Croat minority in a Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. That leads at best to severe tensions, at worst to savage wars between peoples who once lived in peace...
Yugoslavia, says a U.S. State Department official, is the horrible example of "self-determination gone mad." He and others accuse Serbia of adopting a poisonous nationalism that demands ethnic purity at home, enforced by deporting "foreigners" if necessary, and conquest of any lands -- portions ) of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example -- to which one's brethren have migrated. Once that spirit takes hold, says the official, "anything becomes justifiable in the name of your kind: expulsion, devastation, murder...
...also provides an example of how badly the international community has been fumbling in managing self-determination. The U.S. and the European Community tried to keep the so-called nation together long after that had become impossible. Then they split over whether to recognize the independence of Slovenia and Croatia. The U.N. sent peacekeeping forces far too late and, by making clear that it would not allow its soldiers to become involved in any fighting, effectively signaled Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic that nobody would seriously try to stop his efforts to create a Greater Serbia...
...past 13 months by two events: the dispatch of a U.N. force to northern Iraq to protect Kurds from massacre by Saddam Hussein's forces (the Kurds have since set up what amounts to an autonomous zone there); and the arrival, however tardy, of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Croatia while the Croats were still fighting to break free from Belgrade...
There was more bad news from Europe last week. In what used to be Yugoslavia, the breakaway states of Croatia and Bosnia formed a military alliance against Serbia, a move that is likely to escalate the fighting in the Balkans. The country that used to call itself Czechoslovakia has already split up its name: it's now the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic. That last word will soon be plural, for both Czechs and Slovaks agreed on Saturday to create separate states by the end of September. In what used to be the U.S.S.R., old feuds flared anew...