First Kosovo, now Afghanistan. In Kosovo, the election victory of moderate ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova shows the bankruptcy of the Western, mainly U.S., policymakers who had tried to impose their own solutions. Expect similar mistakes over Afghanistan.
Kosovo began with an attempt by ethnic Albanian militants, the Kosovo Liberation Army, to drive out a beleaguered Serbian minority. Labeled in the West as an attempt by the Serbs to drive out the ethnic Albanians, the policymakers then decided to give full backing to KLA leader Hashim Thaci despite the KLA's history of gangsterism, gun running and drug dealing.
As I pointed out at the time, if the West was to intervene in Kosovo then the obvious choice for support should have been Rugova, who had over the years built up an alternative ethnic Albanian administration there -- schools, doctors, banks, etc. -- which the Serbian authorities had come grudgingly to tolerate. He had strong local support. With Western support he could have gained even more concessions from Belgrade.
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