Serbs

Following the fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent downfall of European communism, the unity of the multinational Yugoslavs began to slowly unravel.

There had always been a degree of animosity between Serbs, Croats, Albanians, and Bosnians, but as ethnic tensions simmered away following various political confrontations, a violent, xenophobic conflagration seemed almost inevitable.

One particular event that preceded this inter-ethnic conflict was the segregation of high schools in an area known as Kosovo.

Serbian political leaders believed they needed to protect the integrity of their culture and language, insisting it was superior to the region's ethnic groups.

poacher as gamekeeper.

And while Europe should be pressing that point home with the Serbs, look at what Washington was doing on the very same weekend, undermining those very arguments.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that the Trump administration is encouraging Viktor Orban to run for Secretary General of the United Nations, potentially as a joint candidate of the United States, Russia and China.

A State Department official reckons he could win eight Security Council votes comfortably, with ten possibly in reach.

And the Ottomans actually continued that under their rule.

So during the Ottoman Empire, you had ethnic Serbians, ethnic Albanians, ethnic Arabs, ethnic Greeks, but they were all considered Rom, which were Roman people following the Eastern Roman Empire, the Orthodox religion.

And really for centuries, this is how the Greek people, who we consider the Greek people today, existed within the Ottoman Empire.

So again, this is really where we see the start of orthodoxy playing a central role in the Greek state today, the modern Greek state.

Whereas the Greek islands along the Turkish coastline in Thessaloniki, Yanina, near to the border with Albania, which was, again, part of Turkey and part of the Ottoman Empire until the early 1900s, these were flourishing trading cities.

Whereas Athens was kind of a backwater, okay? Anyway, the modern nation state of Greece comes into being, the borders that we know today, come into being by Greece gradually expanding from a declining Ottoman Empire, right? So every 30 or 40 years or so, there was a war in the Balkans, and these new nation states that were arising carved out parts, bits and pieces of it.

The Bulgarians carved out their part, the Serbians carved out their part, and the Greeks carved out their part.

Sometimes they fought each other.

They had bombed civilian areas in Belgrade.

It was a traumatic period for the Serbs.

Serbia decided to stay as neutral as possible.

and the great argument about whether it should join the European Union or NATO was basically decided in the area of caution.

It was a massive commitment to the war on behalf of the Allies.

And it did similar things in World War II when it was rebelling against German occupation and tying down German forces.

Something like 44 divisions of German troops were tied down by the Serbs in World War II.

So there's no question of the allegiance of...

The Albanian Kosovar community cooperate in the safe return of refugees and take steps to see that the legitimate rights of all the people of Kosovo will be respected.

To encourage a positive Serb response, NATO leaders have not ruled out the use of force if the violence in Kosovo continues.

And so I think this became a real driving force in favor of intervention, and one sees it now.

Even now, I think there are people who believe overthrowing the Iranian government is a good thing because they persecute gays, they persecute women, so the argument goes, supporting what I think objectively is a NATO war against Russia, objectively, is justified because we're protecting the weak, we're protecting the valiant Ukrainians from military attack by the Russians.

Yugoslavia broke up in 1991.

It's a very complicated story, and I won't be able to tell the story here today, but I will note that in 1992, Bosnia-Herzegovina, one of the constituent republics of Yugoslavia, seceded from the Yugoslav Federation.

And it was immediately realized that the three major ethnic groups in Bosnia, the Serbs, the Croats, and the Muslims, the Muslims were considered more an ethnic group than a religious group.

It was felt that they could very soon have a civil war.

This is a step in the right direction, but this is not panacea for everything.

Student, this is just the beginning because the student list now has a very important job and very important task not to repeat the same mistake that the Serbs made more than two decades ago when Milosevic was overthrown.

The mistake was that Serbs changed individuals, but they never changed the system.

And that's why even two decades later in Vucic's government, including himself, you had people linked to Milosevic.

This time around, if students really, really want to bring a serious change, they have to dismantle the system.

Is it by the people right now, the people making decisions today? Are they trusted? We have 30 seconds.

They only have hope.

Serbs, after we were betrayed after Milosevic overthrow and we had horrible government since then, it's very difficult really to trust government.

The incident was widely attributed to the graft-prone Serbian Progressive Party of then Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic.

In rallying a wide range of Serbs to protest peacefully almost daily, the students displayed an integrity in self-governance that many people now believe will translate to open and inclusive government.

The students' central demand was institutional accountability rather than ideology, wrote EU Today.

By concentrating on corruption, democratic standards, and the functioning of the state, the news outlet stated, the movement attracted voters with differing views on nationalism, foreign policy, and European integration.

Calm deliberation will now be needed for Serbs to work out their differences over issues such as recognizing neighboring Kosovo.

But the mental shift has begun.

We were a depressed nation, pushed by propaganda into fearing others, but Serbia is breathing easily again, Anna Mirkovic, a psychologist told the Times of London.

There's different versions of the story, but as you say, he's a miller, so he owns the local mill.

In one version, he's a bachelor and he's a former hadjuk, so that's an irregular soldier who fights for the Serbians, principally against the Ottomans.

In another, though, it's interesting, he's presented as a retired cattle merchant.

who has a bit of money, which is an interesting twist on it.