State Department Issues Serbia Travel Alert

Travel Blog  •  Joanna Kakissis  •  02.22.08 | 1:25 PM ET

The U.S. State Department has issued a travel alert for Serbia until March 6 following violent demonstrations in the country over Kosovo’s declaration of independence. In rioting in Belgrade Thursday, the U.S. and Croatian embassies were torched—that’s the U.S. embassy burning in the photo—as were many Western businesses. At least one person, a protester, has died. The U.S., UN and the European Union have decried what they view as the Serbian authorities’ weak response to the unrest.

Tags: Travel and Security, News and Briefs

Joanna Kakissis's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, among other publications. A contributor to the World Hum blog, she's currently a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder.


1 Comment for State Department Issues Serbia Travel Alert

John M. Edwards 02.22.08 | 7:39 PM ET

Hi Joanna:

If a Serbian hitman hadn’t assasinated the god king Archduke Franz Ferdinand, then maybe Duby Dubya One would have been a made-up story.

One of my grandfathers was a WWI flying ace, sort of like an American red baron.

But in the 25th century, the two disastrous twentieth-century conflicts would be about as obscure as, say, the so-called “Hundred Years War,” which, of course, is a misnomer. The last name Hitler might be a commonplace, as well as the distictive stash (for eventually this battle-hardened soldier skilled in trench warfare, vis-avis Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, during the First War would have been finally recognized for his painting not, his politics). Has anybody ever seen any of Adolph’s artwork? FDR, Stalin, Churchill, and Hirohito would have lived comfortably in their inherited family estates, much like mine, which is at least the size of a small American state.

Anyway, I hope this doesn’t put a dent on tourism to the ex-Yugoslavia. Remember the best way to solve a diplomatic crisis or impasse is to send in a bunch of backpackers in, raving about how nice everything is.

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