Everyone involved in the strange Kosovo conflict is claiming victory-except its chief victims, the Albanians.
GENEVA-Everyone involved in the strange Kosovo conflict is claiming victory-except its chief victims, the Albanians.
The muddled accord almost certainly assures continued violence in Kosovo and a legion of future troubles for the Balkans. Many of the one million Albanian refugees are afraid to return to Kosovo, whose borders will remain under Serb military and police control, thus cementing Milosevic's terrorism. Albanians know once NATO loses interest, the Serbs will be back.
Milosevic, who keeps power by creating trouble, will now turn his perpetual-motion crisis machine on neighboring Montenegro, unstable Macedonia, Bosnia and Serbia's forgotten Muslim region of Sanjak. He will emerge from the war a hero and inspiration to the growing force of racism among Balkan Slavs and the Greeks.
Russia and, to a lesser degree, China are the big winners of this botched war, and at no cost to themselves. NATO and Serbia have achieved merely Pyrrhic victories. They have made a desert, and call it peace. The Kosovar Albanians have lost everything (Eric Margolis, June 13, 1999).
