Word: serb
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...overlooking the Ibar River, and the young men in black T-shirts are content to smoke their Marlboros and nurse their cokes, eyeing the more prosperous opposite bank of the river. They never cross the bridge, of course, because the Ibar marks the dividing line between Mitrovica's Serb north side, and its ethnic-Albanian south side - enclaves that have, for the past decade, been so separate that they might as well have been different countries. In fact, the reason the "Descendants" are burning Old Glory is ostensibly to protest Washington's support for the "fake state" of Kosovo...
...riverside cafe no longer oozes a sense of imminent danger. It was tense, this past winter, when Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, and La Dolce Vita's regulars gathered in a tense silence, sipping slivovitz plum brandy, smoking, and waiting for the news from Belgrade. As the Serb capital was gripped by violent protests that included an attempt to torch the U.S. embassy, life became in Mitrovica became dangerous for Serbian and foreign journalists covering local demonstrations: Several had their cameras smashed; some were beaten. A Serb reporter who freelances for foreign news agencies had his upper teeth knocked...
...biggest local eruption of violence came when U.N. police and NATO troops tried to evict Serbian judges from a U.N. courthouse. Local Serbs attacked NATO soldiers and U.N. police with grenades and rifles, and several hundred people were injured in the resulting melee - including one Ukrainian policeman in the U.N. force who died from shrapnel wounds. Despite the occasional rumor, still, of ethnic Albanian "terrorists" coming across the bridge to threaten Kosovo's Serb minority, the Serb "bridgewatchers" gathered at La Dolce Vita as an early warning system barely glance at the bridge any more...
...outcome came as a surprise. Most pollsters and political analysts predicted the defeat of the Democrats, who came under heavy fire after the formerly Serb province of Kosovo declared independence on February 17 and was recognized by most E.U. countries. During the campaign, Kostunica and the Radicals portrayed the E.U. as an evil empire bent on stealing a part of Serbia, while Tadic was labeled as traitor who was ready to sacrifice Kosovo for a distant promise of E.U. membership. The Radicals, whose chairman Vojislav Seselj is on trial for war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former...
...Kosovo Albanian?led government in Pristina has refrained from rising to Serbia's bait. Lutfi Haziri, a prominent member of the largest party, the Democratic League of Kosovo, says: "We will work very hard to integrate Serbs as much as we can." But how long their restraint will last depends in part on whether the E.U. mission can marginalize Serb hard-liners like Ivanovic. For that to happen, the U.N. Secretary-General will have to ignore Russia's griping about the illegality of Kosovo's declaration of independence and get on with handing over authority to the Kosovar government...