"Averting a humanitarian catastrophe was NATO's stated justification for bombing Serbia and its Kosovo province in 1999. But initial successes quickly succumbed to the reverse ethnic cleansing of more than 200,000 Serbs and other minorities by Albanian militants.
Now, despite seven years of U.N. policing and donor largess, Kosovo's remaining minorities still live in fear, and the economy and infrastructure remain in shambles.
Behind their façade of optimism, Western leaders negotiating Kosovo's future status are panicking. Realizing that Albanians will violently contest any continued affiliation with Serbia, they believe independence alone can ensure peace. Yet Kosovo is a classic quagmire, one with ominous repercussions for peace.
Deciding Kosovo's rightful ownership is difficult. It pits two peoples, and two hallowed principles, against each another. Albanians - 90 percent of the population - invoke self-determination to justify independence. Yet Serbian cultural legacy goes back seven centuries in Kosovo, which was only independent when Adolf Hitler's Albanian allies briefly enjoyed their Nazi puppet state. Further, U.N. Resolution 1244 in 1999 affirmed Yugoslav sovereignty. (...)
In early 1999, Kosovo was a brutal but contained local conflict, relegated to villages. Botched Western intervention has made it a potential precedent for multiregional warfare" Botched Kosovo intervention dims hopes for peace By Christopher Deliso
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