>Someone wanna have a go at making sense of it? Or is stuff just falling
>out of even the appearance of control, as the grisly past proceeds apace to
>write a grisly future ...
Okay then, do don't answer ... I'll see what I write and find out what I think ...
The KLA are doing what's worked for them before, only this time they're doing it in Serbia proper. They're forcing Belgrade into counter-insurgency operations in the Presevo-Bujanovac-Mevedja area of southern Serbia. Such actions are almost always ugly, as it invariably takes the form of uniformed baddies beating up on goodies in civvies (which it inevitably often is in substance, of course - but that's the nature of the thing), and it inevitably produces the sort of refugee trains the cameras love. Anyway, Kostunica simply must respond (he's a nationalist, anyway, but his constituency would demand it of him in any event).
The UNHCR/KFOR forces were there, patrolling the exclusion buffer. But that was problematic. The squaddies on the ground either shoot at transgressors or they do not - that is, they either bring about the very circumstance we anti-bombers claimed they were so bloodily making likely in '99 (ie a shoot-out between NATO and the KLA), or they effectively side with the KLA in treaty-defying assaults on Serbian territory - which means they're breaking their own conditions. Either way, Serbia is doing nothing wrong, and either way NATO looks bad - the appearance of it being that they either didn't know what they were doing (coz here they are bombing the people on whose behalf they were doing their bombing only 20 months ago) or did know what they were doing and (and it wasn't what they said they were doing).
How to save face? Well, if the KLA are doing what worked for them last time, why shouldn't NATO? Start a patient anti-Kostunica line in the media and reinforce the 'all-Serbs-are-murderers' PR we were fed in '99. Rejuvenate the ever-handy 'holocaust-denier' schmeer to tarnish all skeptics, and make sure US hegemony in the region remains sufficiently powerful to keep the signatory governments who nearly buckled last time quiet. In other words, do what Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty are in fact doing.
On that account, look for signs that UNHCR/KFOR intends to get rid of the buffer-zone on account of it endangers refugees and puts UNHCR squaddies at risk from Serbian snipers - I see they've already stopped regular patrols.
Then look for some subtle associations between Kostunica and Milosovic ('not handing his old buddy over to the authorities'); some digging into K's words and actions before the wall went down; stuff like 'look how he's embracing those Chechen-killin' Russkis' and 'all that military build-up in the south means he has it in for Macedonia' combined with 'look how he's backing the Euro rapid-response idea, cleverly keeping the only military force capable of stopping his expansionist plans on the sidelines'.
All Kostunica can do is make himself popular with Europeans, pop over to Moscow occasionally, and keep his forces in the south. And hope that if the US does take the route I predict, it'll find itself estranged from its erstwhile European allies. Given that there's no Soviet Union any more, the real chance that America might just lose some of its economic gravitas over the next few months, and the increasing pressure on Blair to make clear his commitment to Europe, well, that may just be enough.
I reckon the Yanks are gonna have to tread carefully on this one - they really do risk being impotently marginalised if they go the anti-Kostunica route - then again, if they go the other, they could find themselves publicly participating in operations against KLA forces within two years of flattening Yugoslavia in their name.
Cheers, Rob.