Word: kosovo
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Dennison Rusinow, an expert on the Balkans at the University of Pittsburgh, believes that had it not been for Milosevic's heavyhandedness in Kosovo five years ago, Yugoslavia might still be intact today. "Kosovo provided the fuse," says Rusinow, "and Milosevic provided the detonator that has now led to explosions across the whole country...
...current troubles, the almost 2 million Kosovo Albanians have so far remained relatively quiet. That is no doubt because the Milosevic regime has installed in their midst an enormous military and police apparatus and imposed a state of emergency. But below the surface, resistance has been building. In defiance of the Serbian government, the underground Albanian leadership plans to hold clandestine parliamentary elections for the phantom republic this week...
...highly incendiary factor is Albania itself. A decade ago, at the time of the last serious uprising in Kosovo, Albania was a Stalinist dictatorship. Whatever their grievances against Belgrade, few Yugoslav Albanians believed they would fare better under Tirana. But now that Albania is beginning to emerge from communism to join the modern world, it will inevitably serve as a stronger magnet for the loyalties of Albanians in Serbia and a stimulus to their militancy...
...Having already ravaged Croatia and Bosnia, the third Balkan War is about to spread into Serbia, setting the scene for a new battle of Kosovo. Like Prince Lazar, Milosevic will have led his people to disaster...
...even that won't be the end of it. If Kosovo blows, so may Macedonia, where there is a large Albanian population. That could trigger an intervention from Greece, which takes a mischievously proprietary interest in the birthplace of Alexander the Great. Greece's involvement could, in turn, provoke its old antagonist Turkey to enter the fray, and history really will have come full circle...