Word: kosovo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...uncomfortable flashback to last year's ethnic cleansing. And yet the only way to prevent that may be to move more forcefully against the Albanian separatists who'd fought alongside the West last time around, which could provoke a dangerous showdown between NATO and the former KLA throughout Kosovo. Even if NATO and Belgrade find a way of resolving the latest flare-up, the intractable conflict of which it is a symptom persists. The more things change in the Balkans, perhaps, the more they stay the same...
...Balkans was the work of one man was always a dangerous illusion. Slobodan Milosevic may be nothing but a blowhard Serb opposition leader now, but Albanian refugees are once again leaving their homes and a new round of ethnic Serb-Albanian conflict threatens to break out any moment along Kosovo's northern border. At the weekend, the new reformist government in Belgrade set Monday as a deadline for Albanian separatist guerrillas who infiltrated from Kosovo to withdraw from a string of villages inside Serbia, or face eviction by the Yugoslav army. And though new president Vojislav Kostunica later postponed...
...While the Western alliance blames the latest troubles on an offshoot of the Kosovo Liberation Army, and has stepped up its operations against the group on the Kosovo side of the border, it has also warned Belgrade against sending troops into the buffer zone. But for President Kostunica, the continued presence of hundreds of heavily armed guerrillas from Kosovo on Serbian soil killing Serbian policemen is intolerable - particularly when the Milosevic-led opposition is charging that Serbia's government is now in the hands of its enemies. Kostunica's message to NATO has been, essentially, either the West deals with...
...this time around, NATO may behave quite differently. The Western alliance has repeatedly warned nationalist elements against fomenting trouble along the border, and has conducted a number of raids against suspected guerrilla bases inside Kosovo. While the U.S. may look more sympathetically on demands for Kosovo's independence, most NATO members remain strongly opposed - and the U.N. resolution enabling the peacekeeping mission recognizes that the territory will remain an autonomous part of Yugoslavia...
...moderate leader Ibrahim Rugova. That suggests that the majority of the ethnic-Albanian community are willing to pursue their desire for independence via negotiation with the new regime in Belgrade. But for those KLA hard men who remain determined to use any means necessary to win independence for Kosovo and unite it with Albania, NATO troops may become an obstacle in their path. And that could make the peacekeeping mission more than a little distasteful to some key NATO members...