Ironically, most of that "diverted money" went to support Kosovo, the original welfare state. The rest went to supporting bloated bureaucrats in Belgrade -- but that's the rub. Many of those "bloated bureaucrats in Belgrade" were also Croat & Slovene government reps, some of whom still live there. It wasn't like the Serbs were wolfing all the money for themselves.
The Croats & Slovenes had a legitimate gripe, the same legitimate gripe we would have about our taxes being too high. The place they pointed to was Belgrade, the capital of the country, just as we would point to DC. But because Belgrade was also the capital of Serbia, it was all too easy to say "those damn Serbs" and convince themselves and everyone else of it.
People also seem to forget that before the break-up, the largest ethnic group in the whole of Yugoslavia was "the Serbs". Even in a democratic country, they as a single ethnic group, would have the largest say in politics -- much as "White Anglo-Saxon Protestants" do in the US. But now, with the gerrymandered borders, Serbs are "a minority" everywhere except in Serbia & Montenegro. And Serbia keeps getting smaller and smaller.
"Of course my ancestors come from the British Isles, and all of my different ethnic groups fought each other for centuries: England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.."
Britain was lucky that it happened before the UN & EU got involved, or the fighting would still be going on!
There is this bizarre thinking that all you need are lawyers, judges and bureaucrats to end a war. It doesn't work. There must be a will for peace first, and no intervention can create that.
Please don't mistake what I am saying -- if you have something like "a Nazi Germany style, pick innocent civilians off the street who have no political agenda and simply kill them because they are Jews and you want to get rid of all the Jews in your country" kind of event, like even Rwanda was, it is incumbant upon those with a conscience to intervene and save the innocents. But the break-up of Yugoslavia was a civil war -- an "ethnic civil war", which means that people did divide along ethnic lines, but FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES. If any side won, it was likely going to result in a disproportionate loss of life in one of the ethnic groups. Is it "genocide" when one group fights another for political puposes but the political divisions between the groups happen to be along ethnic lines? Every civil war has its civilian casualties, and some of those civilian casualties are war crimes because they are in fact, prosecutable "murders" -- but is that "genocide" in an ethnic civil war? Again, the same question arises in the difference between military "mopping up" and "ethnic cleansing" in an ethnic civil war.
I believe that the break-up of Yugoslavia was made out to be what it was not -- "genocide"-- in order to get outside intervention by the ethnic groups who could not win a military or political victory without outside help. It was orchestrated, because that German and Iranian help was already waiting in the wings. The only real outside "wildcard" was the US, and the American people were duped into intervening where we had no business, against people who were our allies in two World Wars. We were lied to, most of us know it, but President Bush keeps acting like "the Clinton lie was the truth" in order to save face for the US. The problem is that we have already created one base for al Qaeda in the Balkans (Muslim Bosnia), and if we go along with granting Kosovo independence, we will grant al Qaeda another -- and we will sign the death warrants for the last of the remaining Kosovo Christian population in the process. In addition, the Albanians will be emboldened to demand more land completely destablizing the region in their quest for a Greater Albania.
Below is the map that ran on the Albanian American Civic League website for years, until they removed it because political commentators started referring to it. It shows that the Albanians want not only Kosovo, but pieces of Montenegro, Macedonia, Southern Serbia and Greece. Kosovo is only the Albanians "first step" if we give it to them. I say that we don't give it to them! 