Daytonia and the UNMIKistas: My Odyssey of Disillusion (Stephen Schwartz alert)

FrontPage magazine.com ^ | September 23, 2002 | Stephen Schwartz

[Jacob Kell]

On November 7, 1987, three years before the outbreak of open combat in Yugoslavia, I wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle:

For the past two years, scholars of East-West politics have noted rising tensions in Yugoslavia, and a crisis now looms with chilling parallels to another conflict that began there, World War I. Yugoslavia is exploding with what was called during the 1930s ‘the dynamite of minority nationalism.’ This is not surprising in a country that was ‘designed’ at the close of the 1914-1918. . . . The cultural gaps separating the Yugoslavian nationalities are wide and the political grudges are bitter. . . . A sinister phrase has already come into play in discussions of the region: ‘Lebanonization.’ What would ‘Lebanonization’ of Yugoslavia mean? Well, it could mean . . . war between the Serbians and Yugoslav-Albanians. The Soviet Union might very well intervene; the conventional wisdom is that NATO and the U.S. would deplore such an action, but not obstruct it — that Moscow can play a stabilizing role in such an outbreak. But what if ‘Lebanonization’ of Yugoslavia should prove, as in Beirut, unamenable to the stabilizing actions of outside powers? Might it not touch off other brushfire conflicts in the region? The possible ramifications are both many and grim. . . World War I began with a Serbian terrorist’s assassination of an Austrian prince as a protest over the failure of Serbia to gain full dominion over Bosnia. Prior to the beginning of that war in 1914, the Balkan Wars in 1912-1913 saw bloody fighting and terrorism. . . . (C)ommunism is rather a secondary issue for the various disgruntled minorities. The belief that the brotherhood of the workers would overcome national feelings and prejudices has proved a cruel hoax, for the Yugoslav nationalities no less than for the Central Asians in the Soviet Union or the Tibetans in China. The political labels grow distorted or fade away; ethnic realities remain.

[Jacob Kell]

For once, I think that ol' Stevie Schwartz may have been right about something. Lack of Free-market reforms in Kosovo is why it's still a mess, at least partly.

[F-117A]

Reading through this article is like picking through a garbage dump!