Here is some information for Barkley Rosser in particular, but since he has been asking this question repeatedly on the list I'm posting the answer.
Barkley Rosser asks yet again:
>the kind of disaster that is currently happening
>in Kosovo-Metohija (where is that Metohija?)
Kosovo-Metohija ("Kosmet") is drained by two river systems.
To the west is the River Drim, which rises in the Mokra Gora or Mokra Planina (Mokra Range) that forms the northern boundary of Kosmet with Crna Gora (Montenegro) and Serbia. The Drim runs south from the Mokra Gora to near the city of Prizren (which, like the city of Pec to the north, lies on a tributary of the Drim) and then turns westerly and runs into Albania (where it's called the Drin) and thence into the Adriatic south of Shkoder (Scutari).
About thirty miles to the east of the Drim in its north to south course in Kosmet lies the River Sitnica (unaccented c pronounced "ts"), which rises in hills just to the north of the eastern end of the Sar Planina (Sar Range) that forms the southern boudary of Kosmet with Macedonia. The Sitnica runs south to north past Pristina (which lies on a tributary of the Sitnica) to the mining town of Kosovska Mitrovica in the confluence with the Ibar River. The Ibar then runs north into the Morava River, which in turn runs into the Danube east of Belgrade.
The watershed between the Adriatic and the Black Sea thus runs smack through Kosmet, dividing it into western and eastern halves.
In the eastern half, the Sitnica runs through a fertile valley ("polje") about 10 miles wide and 50 miles long; the famous Kosovo Polje. Kosovo is a small town in the middle of the Polje on the Sitnica a few miles west of Pristina.
Historically the River Sitnica is of great importance, since at its southern end (where it rises) near the town of Urosevac there is no significant barrier between its course and that of the Nerodimka, a tributary of the Vardar River (on which is Skopje, capital of Macedonia) that flows south into Greece (where it's called the Axios) and thence into the Aegean Sea by Salonika. This has always therefore been the primary north-south route through the Balkans between the Mediterranean and the Danube. This is why the 1389 battle took place at Kosovo Polje.
In the western half, the Drim does not form a relatively narrow fertile valley ("polje") but drains a wider relatively flat plateau from Pec south to Prizren. *This is Metohija*. In this plateau there is a railway junction at a sort of T, with the short line being that between Pec and Pristina and the long line ending at Prizren in the south. The small town at the junction is also called Metohija.
The River Drim historically has been no gateway from anyplace to anyplace, and Metohija is sleepier than the Kosovo Polje & Pristina. When (a kid with hair to my shoulders) I was hiking in the hills around Metohija in the early seventies it was easy to imagine it was still the times before everything solid began to melt into air. Lots of Albanian men wearing the fez. Almost no cars. Plowing with horses or oxen. It was June and little kids would come running to *give* you a metal bowl - which of course you had to return - of strawberries (it happened three, four times).
That NATO is bombing there disgusts and angers me. I have detested Wojtyla most of my adult life for whipping up the hate-filled campaign against abortion, for what he did in Poland and what he did in Latin America, and for the despicable O'Connor in New York and the despicable Ovando y Bravo in Managua, but at this moment - for whatever reason - he is correct. Compared to Clinton, Blair and our pontificating humanitarian bombers here, the Pontiff is - the lesser evil.
John Mage