If the international community does not appreciate ethnic partition in the Balkans as a mode for division of the region, then it should not have championed that very cause when Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro all became independent and Yugoslavia, the region’s quintessential multi-ethnic state, was ethnically divided. The most fundamental lesson of recent Balkan history has been forgotten within a period as short as 20 years.
At the time of writing, there has been a spate of international journalism deploring a new series of crises in the Balkans. Western media articles have criticised recent elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the proposed land swap between Serbia and Kosovo, and the process of Macedonia changing its name. Yet this negative narrative is wrong. The Balkans are getting better. The people of the region are starting to learn how to work with one-another without international support.
See at: http://www.transconflict.com/2018/10/land-swaps-and-other-conversations-in-the-balkans-210/
