US Embassy and others attacked in Serbia
I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop on this one.
Several hundred protesters have attacked the US and other embassies in Serbia's capital in anger at Western support for Kosovo's independence.
From the Serb's perspective, this has been a pretty bad couple of decades, with the Kosovar declaration of independence, and the West's support of it, one more humiliation added to the list. They've watched while the West has supported every movement set on breaking up their nation, suffered under sanctions while their enemies prospered, and were bombed into submission when they tried to hold on to a part of their territory. Then they got to see the ethnic Serbs in that territory, under the "protection" of NATO and the EU, attacked, beaten and killed by mobs, houses and churches set on fire, and driven from their neighbourhoods and towns.
Of course, the Serbian government did a fair bit of nasty during the break-up of Yugoslavia, and not a small part of Serb suffering can be pinned upon those acts, but as with most wars, there are rarely any simple distinctions between the "good guys" and the "bad guys". Every side was committing atrocities, but for whatever reason, only the Serbs seem to get blamed. In that, they have gotten the short end of the stick.
The Kosovo bombing campaign is also a good place to look for the first stirrings of the Russian Bear awakening from hibernation thanks to the traditional ties between Russia and Serbia. I remember the Russians were quite pissed about the whole thing at the time, and you can bet this little declaration and American support of it, isn't going to leave Putin feeling terribly cooperative over other international issues like Iran or missile defence.
Whatever your feelings about Kosovo's independence, the repercussions from it are probably just getting started.
