I made a few visits to Serbia in 2001 and 2002, as a kind of followup to the week I spent in postwar Kosovo in 1999.
Unfortunately, it’s not so hard to believe that the Kosovo question is still unresolved. The UN’s ideal of a multi-ethnic Kosovo will be nearly impossible to achieve anytime soon. Around 200,000 ethnic Serbs were forced to flee their Kosovo homes after the war, fearing revenge attacks for Milosevic’s mass explusion of ethnic Albanians. Albanian extremists have no intention of letting their former Serb neighbors come back. When I was last there, only something like 150 Kosovo Serbs had managed to return to reclaim their homes and lives. And they required permanent protection by KFOR troops, otherwise they probably wouldn’t have lasted a week.
One of the most complex aspects of an incredibly complex postwar stew has been the collective Serb process of coming to terms with all that happened during the Balkan war years. Or, more precisely, not coming to terms with it. Many Serbs are still aggrieved, possessed by a certain mythology, and are in staunch denial. Theirs is the particular anger of those who feel not only wronged, but misunderstood. Former Kosovo Serbs feel particularly hopeless, with little chance to either return home or be fully accepted in Serbia proper. It’s a cruel irony, but I’ve always thought of them as Milosevic’s final victims.