The Lessons Of Balkan History
Commentary and analysis by CBS News Chief European Correspondent Tom Fenton
In the Balkans, yesterday's bad guys are today's good guys, and vice versa. And it should not surprise us. It's been that way for centuries.
The Serbs the United States bombed into submission only two years ago are now seen as America's democratic allies. NATO has even asked the Serbian/Yugoslav police and Army to restore peace in the demilitarized zone between Kosovo and Serbia — mainly because the United States and its NATO comrades in arms do not want to do the job themselves. They might get shot at.
By whom? By the same ethnic Albanians of Kosovo that the United States and NATO went to war to save two years ago. The Albanians have not only taken over the demilitarized strip of Serbia along the border with Kosovo, they are also using it to run drugs and other contraband.
And now in Macedonia, the former Yugoslav republic on the southern border of Kosovo, Serbs and Albanians are also switching roles. Ethnic Albanians, who make up only a third of Macedonia's population, are shooting at the Serb majority in an effort to destabilize the country's democratically elected government. NATO peacekeeping troops, caught in the line of fire, are ducking both the bullets and the issue — as they have habitually done, since the West decided to intervene in the Balkans in the 1990's.
The issue is whether NATO will aid the ethnic Albanians in their apparent quest for a greater Albania, which would be carved out of bits of Macedonia and Serbia, as well as Kosovo and Albania itself.
 Reuters |
| A house burns during fighting in Tetovo, Macedonia. |
The lesson has always been there for anyone who takes the time to read the history of that troubled region: There are no permanent good guys or bad guys in the Balkans. Only the current aggressors and current victims.
In 1913, it was Serbian troops who crushed ethnic Albanian resistance in Kosovo. An American commission sent to Kosovo reported that "houses and whole villages are reduced to ashes...Unarmed and innocent populations" were being "massacred e masse."
In 1941, when Kosovo became part of the new Italian colony of Great Albania, an Italian official reported that "the Albanians are out to exterminate the Slavs." In one region there were villages where "not a single house has a roof. Everything has been burned down....There are headless bodies of men and women strewn on the ground."
Not that history would justify a decision by the NATO countries to turn their backs on injustice. But, as we pointed out two years ago, history is very instructive.
By Tom Fenton
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