Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard
[COLOR="Lime"]We tried to avoid it once during the GW1 time-frame when the WEU said they would handle it as we took care of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait - then the UN got involved and together they f***ed it up so bad we had to eventually step in a couple of years later, anyway, and are still there - yet another one of those pol-mil tarbabies we seem to stumble upon with more regularity than I'd like to think is necessary. In spite of the posturing and the press, the USA is considered to be the only 'honest broker' in that hood's realty market - for whatever that may be worth.
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Very true. I happen to be deployed in Kosovo now and dealing with this situation on a daily basis. This could have been handled years ago if NATO had been firmer in their approach from the beginning. I don't want to get into details here, of course. What is sort of funny is that the road blocks make it tougher on the local population, too. We just fly over them.
Most of the people in northern Kosovo aren't interested in playing these games. They want to get on with their lives. The radicals in the area control many of the jobs, so people have to help with the road blocks if they want to keep their jobs. The police in the Serbian enclaves are also employed by the Serbian Ministry of the Interior. They are paid by both Serbia and Kosovo to be cops, so Serbia exercises some control over them. Also, if a Serbian officer does try to follow orders from from the Kosovo police administration, they and their families are often threatened. Not long ago a Serbian police commander tried to follow orders from Pristina to report to a new duty location. He was stopped and threatened by radicals and his wife's car was fire bombed.