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The United States and its NATO allies bombed Yugoslavia to prevent ethnic cleansing.
Now it's becoming clear they were unsuccessful in achieving that goal. Only an estimated 20,000 Serbs remain in Kosovo out of an estimated 200,000 who lived there before the war.
The idealistic goal of a multiethnic Kosovo might be unattainable. A partition in Kosovo might be the only answer to maintaining a stable peace.
The Serbs fled Kosovo in fear of ethnic Albanians who returned to their homes harboring recent memories of extortion and butchery. Many ethnic Albanians lost family members at the hands of Serbian forces.
Meanwhile the Kosovo Liberation Army is becoming more restive. Challenges to NATO peacekeepers are frequent. The unpopular Russian troops, seen as allies of the Serbs, are fired upon nightly, a Russian major told The Washington Post.
But French, British and U.S. troops also have had armed confrontations. The KLA has been blamed for fomenting demonstrations against French troops who blocked ethnic Albanians from access to a sector of the city of Kosovska Mitrovica in which many Serbs live. British troops shot and wounded three ethnic Albanians they found trying to evict a Serb family.
Abandoning the goal of a multiethnic Kosovo will not be easy for the Clinton administration, which advertised that objective as reason for the 78-day air campaign.
Some observers, however, predicted that consideration of partitioning would be inevitable, given recent memories of mass graves, forced marches and seizure of homes and personal possessions.
For example, even before the peace settlement U.S. Rep. Doug Bereuter, R-Neb., suggested that partitioning might be the eventual outcome of the war, with Serbs relegated to the northern portion of Kosovo, which contains many of their prized Orthodox monasteries and historical sites.
Partitioning is nothing new to the Balkans. Partitioning has been a workable solution to ethnic violence in Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia.
If NATO allies do not warm to the concept of officially sanctioned partitioning, what might in fact take place is de facto partitioning in which no Serbs at all are left in Kosovo.
That should loom as a large defeat for human rights, which, after all, was the justification for the air campaign against Yugoslavia, wasn't it? Crude and imperfect a tactic as it might be, partitioning could be the most practical answer to the ongoing hostilities in Kosovo.