Kosovo is a name that came to define our concept of "ethnic cleansing." It was where the Serbs drew the line during the dismantling of Tito's Yugoslavia.
Christian Serbs had it in for Kosovo's Albanian majority and wreaked awful suffering on them in an effort to expel them from their homes. When the U.N. failed to act, NATO intervened with an air campaign that forced Serbia to back off . Kosovo has been under U.N. protection since 1999.
Serbia never abandoned its claim to the state and last week a narrow majority of Serbs voted to keep Kosovo part of their country. At the same time, Kosovo's ethnic-Albanian majority has been pressing for outright independence.
During the conflict, we came to think of the Serbians as a gang of vicious thugs. Once the Serbs withdrew it became apparent the Albanian Kosovors were pretty much cut from the same cloth. Canada's last ambassador to the former Yugoslavia, James Bisset, claims the Kosovor's outrages are enough to deny them independence:
"If there's any group of people in the world less deserving of independence, it's the Albanians in Kosovo, who have proven by their terror and their barbaric treatment of non-Albanians in the last seven years that they are not meeting any standards that would qualify them for joining the democratic nations of the United Nations," said Mr. Bissett.
The U.N. is expected to decide the future of Kosovo later this year.
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