PRISTINA, Kosovo — I first arrived in Kosovo nearly 20 years ago. In 1999, NATO intervened on the side of ethnic Albanian rebels against the forces of Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia. I came to cover the war.
As NATO bombs fell, Serbian forces opened a campaign of ethnic cleansing that drove almost a million Kosovar Albanians, predominantly Muslims, from their homes. Serbia, mostly Orthodox Christian, soon capitulated and withdrew its forces. Afterward, Kosovo spent nine years under United Nations control, an internationally supervised limbo.
