Soldiers exchanging fire with guerrillas. People forced to flee in fear. Deepening ethnic divisions between peoples who have lived alongside one another for centuries. All this has returned to the Balkans with the eruption of fighting in Macedonia.
Western leaders say they are surprised at events.
They should be. They said they wouldn't happen. Cast your mind back two years ago to the start of NATO's bombardment of Serbia. Blair and Clinton claimed the problems of this part of the world were all down to one man, Slobodan Milosevic. And the answer to a decade of wars was simple-bomb Belgrade.