Land of Slaughter

Serbia's dream of dominance has soaked in blood the republics of what was once Yugoslavia. The U.S. and Europe can no longer look away.

When war first broke out in Croatia a year ago, Americans dismissed the senseless violence with a regretful tut-tut, while Europeans clung to the hope that people would soon come to their senses. But as the fighting has spread south and east, igniting Bosnia-Herzegovina and threatening to engulf other independence-minded regions of the former Yugoslavia, hope has evaporated that sanity will prevail. The toll is terrible: more than 12,000 people dead, tens of thousands missing and wounded, 1.5 million men, women and children forced to flee their homes. Those numbers only begin to hint at the horror, which U.S. Secretary of...

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