By Nicholas Kralev
Foreign Policy Magazine
September 13, 2012
The mob that had gathered at a soccer stadium descended on the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, determined to avenge Washington’s recognition of Kosovo — a Serbian province until five days earlier — as an independent state. On that day in February 2008, the Serbian riot police stationed in front of the embassy at the request of U.S. Ambassador Cameron Munter conveniently vanished just before the hundreds-strong horde arrived. “The police marched away, got on buses, and drove away, so when the hoodlums came there was no one there,” Munter recalled.
A part of the embassy was soon ablaze. “One of the protesters who was drunk managed to get in and burned himself to death,” Munter said. Several others climbed the fence. The U.S. Marines guarding the compound had every right to shoot, but they managed to drive the intruders away with warnings and instructions instead. “I was very impressed that the Marines knew how to make judgment calls as well as to be defenders,” Munter, a Foreign Service officer since 1985 and until recently the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, told me in an early 2012 interview in Islamabad…
> READ THE FULL STORY IN FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE