We all watched it happen on television: 1 million refugees
displaced from their homes; 78 days of NATO bombing over
Belgrade and Pristina; the destruction of whole villages and
innocent lives. In the spring of 1999, Kosovo had become the
battlefront for the Balkan’s latest war. In the immediate
aftermath of the war, some historians labeled the ethnic
cleansing of Serbs and Albanians during the conflict as one the
worst political crime in Europe since World War II. As virtual a
war as there had been to date, the images were horrifying and
indelible, but who can be blamed for not feeling any lingering
attachment to a war that had few perceivable consequences for
North Americans? No more than a few months later, our
journalists had turned their attention to capturing new human
disasters for our daily news programs while the job of
rebuilding and finding justice for thousands of displaced souls
transitioned to the United Nations, NATO, OSCE and several dozen
NGOs. The real “story” was just about to begin. After s