Im F (american) dating a Serbian man serving in their military. I heard theres a huge conflict with Serbia and Kosovo and people are saying theres ethnic cleansing going on. Is that true? I’m a black girl so I assume despite my bf being white he cares about rights considering he’s dating a black girl. But it doesn’t seem right. I don’t see my sweet loving bf doing such a thing. Could someone break down the situation for me?
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It’s a complicated history in the Balkans that goes waaaaaay back and people hold really old grudges over stuff that happened well over a thousand years ago there. The more recent history, after the Cold War ended in 1991 and Yugoslavia broke apart, the Serbs did a lot of bad things to the Bosnians and Croatians (who had been their neighbors). Then a few years after the civil war ended, the Serbs invaded Kosovo and in retaliation NATO bombed them and put troops in to protect the civilians.
The Serbs are ethnically Slavic and orthodox Christian. The Kosovars are a different ethnicity and predominantly Muslim. So as you can imagine, there’s some stupid hatred involved.
This is grossly oversimplified
Serbians generally see Kosovo as an illigetimate state full of lesser humans. NATO stopped them genociding the people in Kosovo, and Serbia hates NATO for stopping them, as they see it not as stopping mass murder, but an outside force cutting down their countries sovereign borders.
Serbians like Russia because Russia thinks the same about NATO and their borders, but Russia also would like to one day re-absorb Serbia.
It’s complicated. It’s possible (likely) though, that your boyfriend sees a whole population of people as subhuman, which is gross. It’s similar to Israel and Palestine in some ways.
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