I think I do have some "concept of the tensions and indeed hatreds that had built up in the Western Balkans over many generations" - I can read the history books as well as you can. Nevertheless, no ethnic group has been entirely innocent, in this respect, and for every atrocity committed, at any one time, one can usually find an earlier atrocity committed by the current 'victims'against the current 'aggressors'. I think that the problem is that many Balkan ethnic groups appear to have a sort of toxic relationship with their own histories. I well remember, on a visit to a non-Yugoslav Balkan country, a young man telling me how much he hated the Turks because they had abducted young Christian men, of his nation, to train them as soldiers ('Janissaries') - the so-called 'Devshirme' or tax on Christian sons. I wanted to shout at him, "for God's sake that was centuries ago!" But I didn't, of course, being English and far too polite. To my mind deliberately stirring up ethnic hatreds, against this background, is tantamount to a criminal act in itself! To do so for opportunistic reasons when one has no strong nationalist feelings oneself is positively psychopathic!