This week in history: October 27-November 2
Kosovo elections rebuff KLA; Ford backs NYC austerity; Nationalist uprising in Puerto Rico; Mikhail Frunze poisoned by Stalin.
On October 8, 2000, local elections were held in Kosovo under the supervision of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), established in June 1999 following NATO’s bombing campaign and the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces.
The vote took place amid a volatile regional atmosphere: only weeks earlier, a political crisis gripped Yugoslavia when Slobodan Milošević lost the presidential election to Vojislav Koštunica.
Western officials and media celebrated the Kosovo elections as a
“democratic milestone”for the war-torn province.
In reality, the results revealed both the persistence of severe poverty—marked by unemployment exceeding 50 percent, collapsing public services, and an economy in ruins—and the nationalist fractures created by imperialist intervention.
Author's summary: Historical events of October 27-November 2.