This became painfully evident with the signature
of the Dayton Accord in 1995 which almost completely ignored Kosovo
and the Kosovars.
True, the West conditioned the total removal of sanctions against
Yugoslavia on its humane treatment of its Albanian citizens and
encouraged the Albanians, though circumspectly, to stand for their
rights. But there was no explicit support even for the re-
instatement of Kosovo's 1974 status, let alone for the Albanians'
dreams of statehood. In the absence of such support - financial and
diplomatic - Kosovo remained an internal problem of Yugoslavia, a
renegade province, a colony of terror and drug trafficking. The
Kosovars felt betrayed as they have after the Congress of Berlin and
the Balkan Wars. Perhaps securing such a sponsor was a lost cause to
start with (though the KLA succeeded where Rugova failed) - but then
Rugova misled his people into sanguinous devastation by declaring
the "Kosovo Republic" prematurely. His choice of pacifism may have
been dictated by the sobering sights from the killing fields of
Bosnia - and proved his pragmatism. But his decision to declare a
"Republic" was pre-mature, self-aggrandizing and in vacuo. The
emergence of a political alternative - tough, realistic, methodical
and structured - was not only a question of time but a welcome
development.
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