An emerging success story

An emerging success story

Akron Beacon Journal: In violent spasms through the 1990s, the country forged together as Yugoslavia broke apart, its component republics reasserting their independence following vicious ethnic conflicts. Today, another section of the Balkans, the province of Kosovo, emerges out of the chaos of the ’90s as Europe’s newest independent country.

The transition from a province under U.N. protection to independence is remarkable progress, hard won in a restive region where the long presence of ethnic conflict continues to pose enormous political challenges.

Kosovo’s survival was the result of aggressive direct intervention by the United States and NATO allies followed by years of U.N. protection and oversight. But too often there is little political will to take on the financial and personnel responsibility to intervene in civil conflicts in sovereign states — whether it is for concerted international action to stop genocide in Darfur or massacres in Libya or Syria.