In his mid-30s, he is the tough, ambitious, founding editor of the Kosovars' most influential newspaper, Koha Ditore (Daily Times), who stayed on in Pristina when the bombs began to fall.

ECONOMIST: The Kosovars

Indeed, one frequent criticism of the Kosovars, and of their intellectuals, is that, especially last year, they hugely over-estimated the strength of the Kosovo Liberation Army, praised it to the skies (in newspapers such as Koha Ditore, among others) and puffed it up when it was nowhere near ready to take on the Serbs.

ECONOMIST: Macedonia and its Kosovars