News reports this week suggest that Kosovar Albanians are now "ethnically cleansing" some Serbs in Kosovo in anticipation of an eventual political carve-up of the province. The unfortunate but all too predictable effects of failed U.S. policies in the Balkans during the Clinton Administration are still being felt.
In order to rid himself of the Bosnia "mess" before running for reelection, Clinton basically swept Bosnia under the carpet by forcing a partition agreement on the parties (well, Milosevic had actually designed the plan and Croatia's then-President Franjo Tudjman made out well, too! So in reality it was forced only on the Bosnians themselves...) and inserting U.S. troops to prevent further fighting and to implement the accord.
Among many others, a major flaw in the Dayton Peace Accords was that they rewarded genocide. Milosevic's allies in Bosnia got half the country - the half they had brutally "cleansed" of non-Serbs during the 3 1/2 year war. Bosnia was, in theory, still a whole country, but in practice the Serb Republic in Bosnia would function as a separate entity on a day-to-day basis. And U.S. troops were tasked with protecting and enforcing the gains of genocide.
Having seen that the U.S. and its European allies would not intervene to stop or punish genocide, he then launched another genocidal attack, this time in Kosovo, a formerly-autonomous province in Serbia. Milosevic's forces - the same ones who had committed the crimes against humnanity in Bosnia and, earlier, in Croatia - began to kill and force from their homes Kosovo's Albanian majority. Eventually, Clinton bowed to public pressure - and the threat of a wider Balkan-wide conflict - and launched a bombing campaign against Serbia. Milosevic capitulated and removed his troops. The disaster in Kosovo eventually contributed to Milosevic's ouster.
Now, the more radical elements of Kosovo's Albanian population are seeking to do what the U.S. allowed, encouraged and facilitated in Bosnia - the partitioning of the area along ethnic and religious lines through the forced removal of populations. Can we honestly be surprised that some in Kosovo would think this a logical and sensible course of action, given the framewrok we established through the Dayton Accords in Bosnia.
Clinton is almost four years removed from office, but his legacy - bloody as it is - endures...
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