To understand what is happening in Afghanistan today, Faheem Hussain takes us back to the attack on Yugoslavia by NATO forces in February 1999

Far from rehabilitating liberal interventionism, the Kosovo experience has exposed the fatal flaws that lie at its heart, writes Seamus Milne.

Last week, the European Union (EU), under pressure from the United States, sent a 1,800-strong “rule of law” mission—the largest in the bloc’s history—to replace the United Nations mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). The EU mission’s job, writes Paul Mitchell, is to reform the police, prisons and judiciary and pave the way for Kosovan independence, which the US wants the provincial government to declare early next year.

Loukas Christodoulou looks at what has been done in Kosovo since the Nato invasion to ‘promote economic prosperity’, and questions whether mass privatisation and economic deregulation have really been for the good of the local population.