That was the true tragedy that I remember from our coverage at the time. The most liberal and open-minded areas in the region were the ones targetted by the ultra-nationalist arseholes (which is how all of those “leaders”, regardless of ethnicity, were characterised by the miserable locals when we interviewed them).
“You’ve got to be carefully taught”, as the song goes. And there have been few more effective teachers of hate concentrated in one place than the various religious institutions of the Balkans. Combine that with outside interference from the now defunct empires surrounding them and that was the result.
