Despite promises to protect the Serb minority, KFOR has failed to stop a campaign of low-key harassment by Kosovar Albanian radicals that has forced tens of thousands of Serbs to flee. This ethnic cleansing, in addition to an earlier exodus during the NATO campaign, is the reason only 10 percent of the prewar Serb population remains in Kosovo. The debate over partition was reopened Wednesday when local Serb leaders serving on the U.N. administrations Transitional Council proposed the creation of five self-governing Serb cantons in Kosovo. Although the proposal was quickly rejected by both Western officials and ethnic Albanian leaders, the deteriorating security situation is threatening to turn Kosovo into a foreign policy debacle for the Western alliance. As noble as NATO's original aims may be, Kosovos Serbs and Albanians plainly arent planning to "all just get along" any time soon. And NATO doesnt have enough troops to guard every Serb household.
Kosovo's Tragic Irony: Multiethnic Segregation
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Its time to get real in Kosovo. Washington announced Wednesday that it would do its utmost to stop the creation of separate Serb enclaves in the territory, insisting that the measure would undermine the stated objective of a multiethnic Kosovo for which NATO went to war. But partition may be the only means left of achieving that end. "Neither the KFOR peacekeepers and the U.N. nor the Kosovar Albanian leadership have been able to provide basic security for Serbs and other non-Albanians in Kosovo," says TIME Central Europe bureau reporter Dejan Anastasijevic. "Because of that failure, creating secure enclaves for Serbs and others may be the only way of keeping Kosovo multiethnic. Without such partition, Albanian radicals will drive out the remaining Serbs and leave Kosovo 100 percent Albanian."