There is no desolation like the one inflicted by
sincere idealists.
In 1991, Rugova set about organizing a Republic from a shabby office
building and the opposite "Cafe Mimoza". His government constructed
makeshift schools and hospitals, parallel networks of services
staffed by the Serb-dispossessed, capitalizing on a sweeping wave of
volunteerism. Albania recognized this nascent state immediately and
international negotiators (such as Lord Owen and Cyrus Vance)
conferred with its self-important figurehead (for instance, in
September 1992). Successive American administrations funnelled money
into the province and warnings against "ethnic cleansing" were flung
at Yugoslavia as early as 1993. Internally, Serb extremists in both
Belgrade and Pristina prevented Serb moderates (like then Yugoslav
Prime Minister Milan Panic) from re-opening the schools of Kosovo
and reducing the massive, Northern-Ireland-like Serb military
presence in it. An agreement signed in 1997 by both Rugova and
Milosevic to abolish the parallel Albanian education system and re-
open all the educational facilities in Kosovo was thus frustrated.
Kosovo fractured along ethnic lines with complete segregation of the
Serbs and the Albanians. To avoid contact with the Serbs was an
unwritten rule, breached only by prominent intellectuals.
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