"You have to understand, this is different from Bosnia," one foreign worker said to me. "After four years of war there, they were really exhausted. They were ready for peace. But here there was a very short war with very few participants" -- the Kosovo Liberation Army rebels were a small minority of Kosovo's population -- "and a lot of people are not at all sick of the violence." He said this as a hopeful remark, implying that one day they will be.

In the municipality of Strpce, I get out of the car to photograph a particularly stark ruin. When I step off the road for a better angle, my guide slams on the horn. "Don't walk on the grass," she shouts. Thousands of unexploded mines still pollute the countryside. Another U.N. worker told me of an Albanian farmer who, thinking he was being helpful, walked toward two NATO soldiers, carrying a mine in his outstretched hands. "He's gone," one of the soldiers said. A second later, in a spray of red, he was.

After the NATO bombing, the Albanians returned the favor by mining some of the dirt roads in Serbian enclaves. So at considerable expense, UNMIK had to detonate the mines and pave the roads. More recently, UNMIK has been building roads that will allow Albanians to drive around the Serbian enclaves -- which has had the ironic effect of making the divides of hatred even more enduring.

Ironic, but necessary. If the Serbs are to survive, UNMIK must isolate them and KFOR must guard them. "We are not trapped under the myth of multiethnicity," one U.N. official explained. "NATO intervened to stabilize the region, not to strike a blow for social engineering."

Among the many international personnel from UNMIK and various nongovernmental agencies I spoke with, frustration with (if not outright dislike of) the Albanians was nearly universal. This is partly because many Europeans have long considered Albanians the riffraff of the continent. But more than that, these U.N. workers speak the language of reason, of process and diplomacy, and they cannot comprehend the Albanians' lust for revenge, their faith in the Serbs' collective guilt, their self-serving interpretation of history.

One American said to me, "The Albanians think they're the new chosen people," as if the NATO bombings were the hand of fate pushing Kosovo on its inexorable march toward independence, rather than a geopolitical move to counter Milosevic and stabilize the Balkans.

And if the Albanians were grateful at first when the U.N. arrived, now they seem to view UNMIK as a benign occupying force that will protect them while they recover their strength, set them on the path toward independence and then get the hell out. An example: UNMIK has attempted to convert the members of the KLA into a sort of National Guard-like group called the Kosovo Protection Corps, or KPC. The members of the KPC are supposed to disarm and engage in public works projects, but no one really believes that they are changing their stripes. The Albanian acronym for KPC is TMK, which, everyone jokes, stands for "Tomorrow's Masters of Kosovo."

One morning as I walked along one of Pristina's dirty, muddy streets, a little girl sitting on a stoop smiled at me and said hello in English. I was so surprised I almost forgot to answer her -- she was the only local during my visit who had given any sign of noticing me. Why should the locals notice me? The Albanians don't want to integrate with anyone. Even in Bosnia, there was intermarriage among Serbs and Croats and Muslims. Not here. In Kosovo, Serbs and Albanians have always lived and slept apart.

The same tribal instincts apply to visitors. Last summer, several foreigners who made the mistake of dancing with some Albanian women at a local club were so viciously beaten they had to be evacuated by helicopter. Sooner or later, the Albanians know, I will be gone, as eventually, they think, all the other foreigners will too -- including, especially, the Serbs.

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