trouble in the Balkans??

[Von Boy]

I didn't know that NATO still has 7000 soldiers in the Balkans keeping the lid on the tinder box between those loving people..... sometimes it makes you think that under the Soviet Bloc in the east, western europe was a better place??

[Essex Lad]

On Question Time a few months ago David Starkey described the Balkans as a series of failed states held together only by UN mandate.

The Balkans has always been a tinderbox and probably always will be.

[andy at handiwork]

After Tito's break with Stalin in 1947 or thereabouts, you could not describe Yugoslavia (as was) as being under the Soviet Bloc.

[william]

Yep the area is a powder keg waiting on a spark.....

It will pop again

[frankthring]

Pop again ? History tell us you might be right, William, but I hope not
anytime soon. Actually those UN troops are in one very small area and
you cannot have something as terrible as all that ethnic cleansing of a
decade or so ago, the Srebinicia massacre etc, and expect that when a
Peace Accord is signed they just shake hands and become best pals.
Hell, I have a cousin who died recently and he hated, I mean HATED the
Japs all his life for what he suffered on the Burman-Siam Railway - and that
was 65+ years ago !! Time is a great healer. Things are better in the
Balkans than they were, but it will always be a tinderbox waiting for a
light.