Serbia and Montenegro are republics of Yugoslavia. Kosovo (official name 'Kosovo and Metohija') is a southern province of Serbia. Kosovo is to Serbs what Jerusalem is to Jews. Mr. Milosevic is president of Yugoslavia. He is running the country for last 10 years. Under his role Yugoslavia came on the edge of economical collapse. This is the third war he is fighting (Croatia, Bosnia).

After many years of political struggle between separatist Albanian organizations and the government of Serbia, last year violence broke out between Serbian police (MUP) and rebels known as the KLA. After unsuccessful peace talks NATO decided to take military action.

The goal of NATO's attacks on Yugoslavia is to bring down Mr. Milosevic and stop killing in Kosovo. Reports from the region are showing different results... The situation in Kosovo is worse than before NATO initiated action.

The goal of NATO's attacks on Yugoslavia is to bring down Mr. Milosevic and stop killing in Kosovo. Reports from the region are showing different results. Mr. Milosevic is stronger as the president of Yugoslavia than ever before. Opposition and independent radios and newspapers in Serbia have been suppressed. The pro-western President of Montenegro is confronted with greater opposition from pro-Milosevic supporters because of NATO attacks on Montenegro. NATO air strikes are creating many casualties among innocent civilians in Serbia (Kosovo) and Montenegro. War in Kosovo is escalating and all civilians (Albanians and Serbs) are leaving the area. The situation in Kosovo is worse than before NATO initiated action.

We believe ALL sides (NATO, VJ/MUP and 'KLA') should commit to a cease-fire and find a peaceful political solution for the Kosovo problem.

BOOK REVIEW: "Everyone's got a story. A newspaperman explains the Balkans." - by Tom Gallagher for the San Francisco Bay Guardian     Review     Excerpt

THE ROAD TO KOSOVO: A BALKAN DIARY - by Greg Campbell. Westview Press, 229 pages, $25.

SOMETIMES you can judge a book by its cover. This one, for instance, really is more about "the road to Kosovo" than the province itself. We don't actually reach Kosovo until page 147, after reading about the earlier Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin legs of the author's July 1998 Balkan journey. Although obviously a product of the publishing industry's hunger for timely titles, this low-budget production has a better handle on Yugoslavia's twisted ambiguities than the work of many authors with heavier résumés.
 

"...although various Serbs have perpetrated numerous atrocities,  the Serbian people have no monopoly on the hatred overflowing the region.

Campbell, the business editor of the Colorado Longmont Daily Times-Call, had previously traveled to the former Yugoslavia with a "budget of $1,000 for five weeks ... (that) had come mostly from private donations, particularly from others in the editorial department." He arrived in March 1996 -- after the Dayton Accords ended the war. For this trip, he flew to Zagreb and rented a car whose Croatian plates will not be an asset in the Serb areas he traverses. In Kosovo he will have to bum rides from reporters with budgets large enough to secure "hard" -- bulletproof -- cars.

Frustrated by the lack of progress toward peace in Bosnia, the subject of most of the book, he's particularly concerned with war criminals walking free. His report of the occasions on which international peacekeeping troops have avoided making arrests of individuals indicted by the Hague International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is particularly good. But for the most part he remains able to see the international forces' "decision to put the safety of the soldiers first" as "commendable" -- unlike many journalists with the "somebody ought to go in and clean these guys out" approach.

One KLA sympathizer says,  "I can kill Serbs because it's easy to kill animals."  Her friend replies that he  once had a Serb girlfriend,  "But if I saw her today,  I would set her on fire."

And with articles sporting titles like "Milosevic's Willing Executioners" starting to appear in the United States, simple statements like " 'Serb' doesn't necessarily mean 'war criminal' " stand out for their sanity. His discussions with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), then at the apex of its power, controlling perhaps a third of Kosovo, are reminders that although various Serbs have perpetrated numerous atrocities, the Serbian people have no monopoly on the hatred overflowing the region. One KLA sympathizer says, "I can kill Serbs because it's easy to kill animals." Her friend replies that he once had a Serb girlfriend, "But if I saw her today, I would set her on fire."
 

the Tito-era Yugoslav government granted Kosovo autonomous status within the republic of Serbia. Fifteen years later the Milosevic-era Serbian government repealed the status. And while the change in the province's status was not necessarily an outrage, the government actions accompanying it were.

Above all, Campbell does not lose sight of the basic fact that in the Balkans everybody's got a story. Albania's is that when it was finally granted independence from Turkey in 1913, following the second Balkan War, 40 percent of Albanians lived outside its borders, in Montenegro, Macedonia, and the Serbian province of Kosovo. To accommodate its overwhelmingly Albanian population, the Tito-era Yugoslav government granted Kosovo autonomous status within the republic of Serbia. Fifteen years later the Milosevic-era Serbian government repealed the status. And while the change in the province's status was not necessarily an outrage, the government actions accompanying it were.

The book presents the dangers of the KLA's Greater Albania ideology as of a piece with the Greater Serbia ideology that has done so much damage: in each of the "Greater" countries there are going to be some people who are lessers. Why shouldn't part of Macedonia go to Albania? For that matter, Bulgaria says that Macedonians are really Bulgarians, and Greece says that the country's name belongs to it. And shouldn't Vojvodina, Serbia's other largely Hungarian former autonomous province, become part of a Greater Hungary?

Every nation, every people in the Balkans can tell a tale of how it has historically been oppressed. And all of these Balkans stories are true. The region's problems come when the truth of one of the stories is seen to exclude the relevance of the others.
 

Every nation, every people in the Balkans can tell a tale of how it has historically been oppressed.

There once was a place -- imperfect, to be sure -- in which all of these stories were given some measure of mutual respect. It was called Yugoslavia. Obviously men like Serbia's Milosevic and Croatia's Tudjman bear the primary guilt for its demise and the ensuing horrors. But the western politicians and bankers who thought a bunch of bright new nationalist governments would be a refreshing and perhaps profitable change from that tired old Communism also ought to look in the mirror when they're searching for someone to blame.

Tom Gallagher writes about politics for a variety of publications.
 

Excerpt from THE ROAD TO KOSOVO: A BALKAN DIARY - by Greg Campbell. Westview Press, 229 pages, $25.

There are two roads to Kosovo: a meandering one that winds through Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Serbia...and another one that begins all the way back in the time of the Ottoman Turks and makes its way through centuries of war, ending violently and inevitably on March 24, 1999.  I drove the first one. Without really realizing it, the international community, the nation of Yugoslavia, and about 2 million ethnic Albanians were traveling on the other.  The two merged for a brief time in the summer of 1998, and they're both mapped out in The Road To Kosovo: A Balkan Diary, a book written with the philosophy that to understand where we are, sometimes it's critical to look at where we've been.  I had two reasons for making the trip, and they both go back to a previous visit in the spring of 1996, when I reported on the reunification of Sarajevo in the wake of the adoption of the Dayton Peace Accords. I'd volunteered to go for the simple reason that I didn't fully understand what was happening, and I wanted to provide my readers a fuller, visceral picture of the conflict that had consumed Bosnia for three and a half years, displaced 2.5 million, and killed about 250,000. As a media consumer, I understood the blow-by-blow details, but I still didn't know what it was like to be there.  It was a fortunate journey to make: My impressions of Dayton's chances for success in its goals -- the re-creation of a peaceful, democratic, multiethnic nation -- ran counter to the public opinions of the agreement's U.S. and international creators. They prophesied success and envisioned a peaceful Bosnia within years;  I saw failure and confusion and predicted that it wouldn't be too long before I was back again to report on a war. I theorized with other reporters about the likely circumstances that would cause us to return. We all agreed on one factor: Kosovo.	My goal was to take readers with me on the ground in search of answers, clues, and context to what is happening now, searching for them in the faces of those who live there. It was clear from that perspective that the current events unfolding in Yugoslavia were all but inevitable. And it's equally clear that peace measures based on the Bosnian model are inadequate and offer only temporary relief, mainly to foreign politicians who are stymied by how to handle war in the Balkans. It's a reality that could well cause the collapse, once again, of the nations that formerly made up Yugoslavia.  International political leaders, even now that the conflict has spun wildly out of NATO's control, continue to vow success and promise a peaceful Kosovo where all of the roughly 700,000 displaced Albanians can return and live in ethnic harmony with the Serbs who are killing them. The proposals for peace look harrowingly like the failed efforts in Bosnia, the people espousing them steadfastly ignoring the lessons waiting to be learned.  The Road To Kosovo is proving to be circular and never-ending. So when I heard, in February 1998, that combat had broken out between the Kosovo Liberation Army and Serbian state forces, I knew I had to return. The situation in Kosovo was stickier and more difficult than that of Bosnia, and I wanted to assess the earlier peace effort from the ground in an attempt to understand what would happen in Kosovo. And I wanted readers to know what it was like to be there in that strange twilight between uneasy peace and all-out war in the Balkans.  What I found was a Bosnia that was barely holding together and looked nothing like the bucolic picture painted by international diplomats. Instead of a harmonious, unified nation, I drove through a partitioned country where, despite the almost invisible presence of 33,000 international enforcement soldiers, ethnic cleansing continued to occur with alarming regularity.	The mission had indeed stopped the warfare -- but it was obviously powerless, for both political and historical reasons, to impose peace.  So it was alarming indeed to arrive in Kosovo and find the same international cast of characters who created Dayton, and who continued to blindly call it a success, following the same patterns with Kosovo. And partially due to the failure of Dayton, the inevitability of war in southern Serbia hung ominously over everyone I found there. The ethnic Albanians had seen what type of "peace" the international community conjured up for Bosnia; they wanted their own definition, but to get it, they would have to fight.  The Road To Kosovo was released three weeks after NATO began bombing Yugoslavia to try to end the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo and to prevent, in a broader sense, spillover of the conflict into neighboring nations, especially still-unstable Bosnia. International political leaders, even now that the conflict has spun wildly out of NATO's control, continue to vow success and promise a peaceful Kosovo where all of the roughly 700,000 displaced Albanians can return and live in ethnic harmony with the Serbs who are killing them. The proposals for peace look harrowingly like the failed efforts in Bosnia, the people espousing them steadfastly ignoring the lessons waiting to be learned.
The Road To Kosovo is proving to be circular and never-ending.

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