A Glimmer in the Balkans

by Martin C. Sletzinger

After 20 years of nation-building in the Balkan countries, a big payoff may be in sight. But it will still be a long time before the United States can declare victory and pull out.

There is a folk saying in the Balkans that encapsulates the region’s centuries of struggle. It goes something like this: “We have reached rock bottom, but we continue to dig.”

Twenty years after Slovenia and Croatia seceded from the crumbling state of Yugoslavia, touching off a civil war in Croatia followed by bloody conflicts in Bosnia and elsewhere in the region, the digging continues.

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