roots wherever Albanians resided: Germany, Switzerland, the USA, Canada and Australia. The ideology was an improbable mix of Stalinism (Enver Hoxha-inspired), Maoism and Albanian chauvinism. This was before Albania opened up to reveal its decrepitude and desolation to its Kosovar visitors. All delusions of an Albania- backed armed rebellion evaporated in the languor of Albania proper. Thus, the activities of the Nationalists were more innocuous than their concocted doctrines. They defaced government buildings, shattered gravestones in Serb cemeteries and overturned heroic monuments. The distribution of subversive (and fairly bromide) "literature" was rarely accompanied by acts of terror, either in Kosovo or in Europe. Nationalism is refuge from uncertainty. As the old Yugoslavia was crumbling, each of its constituents developed its own brand of escapism, replete with revenant nationalist leaders, mostly fictional "history", a newly discovered language and a pledge to fate to reconstitute a lost empire at its apex. Thus, Kosovar nationalism was qualitatively the kin and kith of the Serb or Croat sub-species. Paradoxically, though rather predictably, they fed on each other. Milosevic was as much a creation of Kosovar nationalism as Thaci was the outcome of Milosevic's policies. The KLA's Stalinist-Maoist inspiration was in emulation of the paranoid and omphaloskeptic regime in Albania - but it owed its existence to Belgrade's intransigence. The love-hate relationship between the Kosovars and the Albanians is explored elsewhere ("The Myths of Great Albania -Part I"). The Serbs, in other words, were as terrified of Kosovar irredentism as the Kosovars were of Serb dominion. Their ever more pressing and menacing appeals to Belgrade gave the regime the pretext it needed to intervene and Milosevic the context he sought in which to flourish.