The story of the Balkans comes back the same way pretty much from all sides. People from the surrounding countries were going insane on usenet during the runup to Kosovo, basically asking what the **** did we (Americans) think we were doing, that, basically, there were something like 26 ethnic groups in the Yugo confederation and only two or three, Bosnians, Croats, and albunnies who ever had any sort of a problem dealing with Serbs and those were the three who sided with Hitler during WW-II.
The recent problems in Kosovo started when Milosevic rescinded the autonomy of the region in 89. Basically, he HAD to; every other ethnic group in the province was being brutalized by the Albanians.
The stories on that page are from the NY Times before there was any sort of a NATO or KKKlinton axe to grind on the topic. The stories describe AK behavior:
...Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have exchanged vicious insults. Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls....
...The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula, told the army's party organization in September of efforts by ethnic Albanians to subvert the armed forces. ''Between 1981 and 1987 a total of 216 illegal organizations with 1,435 members of Albanian nationality were discovered in the Yugoslav People's Army,'' he said. Admiral Mamula said ethnic Albanian subversives had been preparing for ''killing officers and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons arsenals and stealing arms and ammunition, desertion and causing flagrant nationalist incidents in army units....
I mean, the behavior of these people hasn't changed, they were a gigantic problem in Yugoslavia and Kosovo is a gigantic problem now, basically the crime capital of Europe responsible for or involved in more than half of all of numerous major categories of crime including narcotics trafficking, trafficking in women, trafficking in stolen vehicles, and pretty much any sort of thing you could name.
wendy, I know you didn't do it on purpose but misleading people is not cool. David Binder is a known Serbian apologist. He either pulled a Jayson Blair and reported what she saw on Belgrade TV or deliberately lied. What he wrote was being reported 24-7 on Serbian media to justify revocation of Kosovo's autonomy. Michael Sells and many others have shown that these are lies.
"These new allegations against NATO are ominously similar to Serb nationalists' charges in 1986 that Kosovar Albanians were destroying the monasteries. This charge was combined with other inflammatory allegations that Kosovar Albanians were illegal immigrants who should be expelled; that Albanians were using their high birth rate as a tool to commit" demographic genocide" against Kosova's Serb minority; and that they were carrying out widespread rapes of Serb women.
In 1986, Serbian Orthodox bishops repeated these allegations and charged that genocide was being carried out against Serbs in Kosova. The same charges were repeated in the famous "Memorandum" written by Serbian intellectuals attacking the Yugoslav constitution and the autonomy of Kosova. In this inflamed environment, Slobodan Milosevic made his leap to power by promising he would protect the Serb people and their shrines against their enemies.
What was the truth of these frightening allegations? There were genuine grievances by both Serbs and Albanians in Kosova, and both groups felt threatened.
But Serb independent journalists and human rights workers found the more inflammatory charges to be total fabrications. A study of police records in Kosova showed only one rape of an ethnic Serb by an Albanian in an entire year. Similarly, the alleged destruction of Serb shrines turned out to involve isolated cases of vandalism, graffiti, and cutting of trees on church property -- hate crimes, perhaps, but surely not the organized, genocidal annihilation that was claimed."
You can search for yourself
right here from several different scholars.
Regarding crime: Kosovo was no where near catching Serbia in crime; their entire Milosevic era was one big mafia state. They even had their PM killed in 2003. Now? Kosovo now has 3 murders per 100,000 people, safer than a lot of countries in Europe. www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/10585/ So let's debate, but not mislead by repeating allegations that have been proven false. Also Kosovo was the poorest part, so 7000 Serbs a year leaving (20k in 3 years) isn't that much, more leave NJ each month probably and many more Albanians emigrated to Europe.