"In 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference, American and European negotiators carpeted the parquet floors with maps, then dropped to their knees to draw, erase, retrace the outlines of new nations, the shape of the post-World War I world. "The scene next time could be a cyber-equipped conference room where NATO experts, manning a virtual-imaging system, trace electronic lines through a simulated Balkan countryside, creating on their monitors new facts -- new borders -- out of old." Mapmakers Have Tough Job in Balkans By CHARLES J. HANLEY AP Special Correspondent ``It seems history is to blame,'' the Englishman sympathizes with the Irishman in ``Ulysses,'' sweeping centuries of oppression under a rug of empty words. ``History'' is at it again these days, in the mournful hills and dying villages of Kosovo. And scenes from history, now digitally enhanced, may soon repeat themselves in the back rooms of power in Washington and Brussels, as mapmakers at computer screens ``paint'' new borders in an old Balkan landscape. As Kosovo shows, the fires of nationalism -- of ethnic conflict -- are taking global center stage once more at century's end, after a half-century sideshow called the Cold War. Act I of a long-running drama was played out in 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference, when American and European negotiators carpeted the parquet floors with maps, then dropped to their knees to draw, erase, retrace the outlines of new nations, the shape of the post-World War I world. The scene next time could be a cyber-equipped conference room where NATO experts, manning a virtual-imaging system, trace electronic lines through a simulated Balkan countryside, creating on their monitors new facts -- new borders -- out of old. Ethnic conflict never vanished in the long shadow of the Cold War. But in the 1990s, in the aftermath of that U.S.-Soviet showdown, it has taken on a new urgency and ferocity. The spread of democracy has inspired minorities to demand more rights. The fall of dictators has allowed them to. In the old Yugoslavia, a nation born from the turmoil of World War I, the death of the unifier Josip Broz Tito left Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Muslims and others to fight among themselves. Other factors, too, embolden the oppressed, including the ethnic Albanians who quickly mobilized a guerrilla force to fight Serb domination of Kosovo province. Television's growing satellite reach, for example, gives the smallest groups a global forum for their grievances, and the world a window on their suffering. The Internet gives them a ready-made communications net. And a flood of disused AK-47s from a collapsing Soviet Union and elsewhere has given them the tools of war. After communism's fall, ethnic conflict exploded in the former Soviet regions of Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova and Azerbaijan. It has fractured Ethiopia, produced a holocaust in Rwanda and ignited endless war in Congo. In Indonesia, its dictator gone, a fragile, diverse nation is being shaken by ethnic and religious bloodshed. Such newer conflicts join a list of perennials tearing at the old world's borders: the struggle of Kurds in Turkey, Iraq and Iran; of Sudan's southern blacks; of Greeks-vs.-Turks on Cyprus; of Tamils in Sri Lanka; of armed minorities in Afghanistan and India; of Irish and Basque nationalists in Europe. The tangle of causes and history can be dizzying, even for presidents. ``Tell me again what this is all about,'' George Bush would often ask regarding Yugoslavia's ethnic wars, according to the former president's national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft. Bush tried to keep an ocean of indifference between America and the Balkans. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, entered the White House ready to ``take a stand'' against ethnic division, to support Bosnia's disintegrating ideal of peaceful coexistence among Muslims, Serbs and Croats. By 1995, however, at the Dayton, Ohio, peace talks, the Clinton administration had swung around, pushing through a de-facto partition of Bosnia into ethnic components, behind the shield of a NATO force. Western officials now say that force may stay in Bosnia for 50 years. The shift at Dayton was important. Statesmen had long disdained ``partition,'' citing the bloody 20th century examples of India and Pakistan, the Israelis and Palestinians, Ireland north and south. But some today say bloodshed would have been greater still if enemies had not been separated. Besides, they say, facts on the ground, not theory, must dictate action. In Kosovo the facts are stark: The Serbs are ruthlessly emptying the province of its majority Albanians, and NATO is staking its prestige on returning them to their homes. Now come hints that European and American leaders may be prepared ultimately to reject Serbia's sovereignty over Kosovo and establish an Albanian-populated ``protectorate'' there. Redrawing, redefining, picking up where others left off in 1919, the mapmakers have a new tool in 1999, the kind of virtual-reality programs that allowed negotiators to partition Bosnia while sitting at screens in Ohio. Along with Albanian crimson, however, their computer ``palette'' may need some Serbian red, blue and white. Kosovo, a cradle of Serbia's nationhood, still holds 200,000 Serbs and historic sites vital to Serbian identity. The NATO mapmakers may feel compelled to accommodate them with a Serb enclave. Or they may not. After all, as with James Joyce's Englishman, history is always there to take the blame. EDITOR'S NOTE -- Charles J. Hanley has reported on international affairs for The Associated Press since 1976.
