Joan writes:
"His (Havel's Czech nation) country did not have a long history of intense ethnic violence - including killing hundreds of thousands of each other in WWI and WWII - and he didn't have a significant Muslim population/legacy. There was no significant or historical territorial dispute between the Czechs and Slovaks - they weren't mixed and feeling that they lost land to the others, nor were worried about their ethnic group being harmed if it fell on the long side of the border.
The Croats, Muslims, and Serbs killed millions of each other (mostly Serb victims killed by German backed Muslims and Croats) before Milosevic."
Looks to me like the Serbs largely abandoned agricultural Kosovo during the industrial boom times in the north. The Albanians moved in to replace them in the agri-biz. Then the Serbs, in a burst of nationalism following the breakup of Yugoslavia, decided to reassert their control over Kosovo, and all hell broke loose.
There are towns all over California with names like Watsonville, that have been largely abandoned by the white settlers who founded them and replaced by a Mexican population that is still rooted in agriculture. If that white population came back with guns and dictated that the Mexicans should no longer have representation according to their numbers who do you think would have right on their side?
Keep in mind that this is not the first time that the population in Kosovo as swung between Serbs and Albanians.