PRISTINA -- When a strong blast rocked the Kosovar capital of Pristina in the middle of the first night of August, very few locals doubted its origin. The Albanians and Serbs of Pristina expected the unfinished Serb Orthodox Church of Holy Savior would be destroyed; the only question was when.

It was a job poorly done. Four demolition charges were placed around the church, but only two exploded, shattering the windows and causing minimal structural damage.

The blast was just another episode in the macabre symbolism that is repeating itself all over the former Yugoslavia. Spurred by ruthless leaders who care more about their own power than about the well-being of their subjects, warring ethnic groups have established patterns that repeat themselves with unmistakable accuracy.

The safest way to claim territory in the Balkans is to eradicate any trace of other ethnicities or religious groups. The Serbs are Orthodox Christians; the Croats, Roman Catholics; Bosnians and the majority of Kosovar Albanians, Muslims. So the first target in each village during an armed conflict is usually a place of worship. This pattern was started in Croatia in 1991: Serbs blasted the Croats' Catholic churches from afar, showing off their supremacy with artillery and tanks; the Croats, in turn, were coldly efficient, reducing Serb Orthodox churches to piles of rubble by demolition charges at night.

When the Serb-Croatian war ground to a standstill, both sides turned their eyes to Bosnia. There, the minarets atop various mosques became practice targets, to great amusement of the soldiers who took pleasure in launching all available weapons until the loathed symbol was downed. Then the mosques would be burned or blown up, often in broad daylight, as they were in Banja Luka, where Serbs blew up the Ferhat-Pasha mosque and then bulldozed it into a parking lot. Kosovo was no different in the sense that the tensions hinged on ethnic and religious differences, except that in this case, the Serbs were so busy expelling Albanians from the province that they did not have enough time to bother with all the mosques. Now that the tide of war has turned against the Serbs, Kosovar Albanians are predictably exploiting their opportunity to exact revenge by destroying Serb churches.

As is always the case in the Balkans, claims to precedence over the territory of Kosovo are contradictory: Serbs maintain that Albanians only came from Albania after the Serbs were expelled by the Ottoman Turks; Albanians, in turn, profess they are the oldest inhabitants of the province. Both sides deliberately choose to forget an inconvenient part of the truth. The Serbs will rarely acknowledge that before their late 17th-century "Great Migration" -- which was prompted by an ill-fated military campaign against the Turks at the Austrian side -- there was not a single Serb village north of the Danube in what is today the province of Vojvodina. Kosovar Albanians are reluctant to acknowledge the fact that Kosovo was in fact the origin of the Serb state and nation, as testified by the Patriarchate of Pec and scores of medieval churches.

Yet, with so many unprotected churches all over Kosovo, many of which have great symbolic and religious value to the Serbs, why did the anonymous bomber choose to bomb an unfinished one in Pristina? The answer is surprisingly plain -- for its own symbolism.

While medieval churches and monasteries testify to a Serbian state so ancient that neither Serbs nor Albanians now alive can remember it, the Church of the Holy Savior was from its inception intended to be the symbol of the Serb state under Slobodan Milosevic. To Serbs, that was the state that gave them the right to rule Kosovo with total disregard for the Albanian majority; to Albanians that was the state of oppression, of human rights abuses and second-rate status.

Slobodan Milosevic was probably the first leader in Eastern Europe in the 1980s to realize that the Soviet Union would soon collapse. To secure his political survival, he turned from communism and embraced Serb nationalism. He never sincerely cared for it (his cunning and influential wife even less so), but he recognized it as a means to guarantee unchallenged rule. Milosevic had been a communist since he was 16, and communism was quickly falling out of grace. A crucial element in making him acceptable to the Serbs was to be provided by the Serbian Orthodox Church.

The church was weak, without influence, marred by infighting between the US-based émigré faction -- which professed hardline anti-communism -- and the pragmatists at home who often accepted compromise with the communists to survive. Despite the church's early reservations about Milosevic, it could not refuse his offer to elevate the church's status, build new churches, and once again make it prominent. Milosevic promised funds to complete the new Belgrade Cathedral, started before World War II and mothballed during communism. It was mostly built in time to be used by Milosevic as proof of his genuine concern for Serb Orthodox Christians. When it served no more political purpose, it was abandoned and remains unfinished to this day.

Soon, the anti-communist hawks took over the daily operations of the Church and offered wholehearted support to wars in Croatia and Bosnia and abolition of the Albanians' rights in Kosovo.

To demonstrate their newly acquired total supremacy over Albanians, the Serbs decided to build a new church in Pristina. Ignoring existing building regulations, they deliberately chose a spot in the town center, next to the university library whose architecture had been attacked by nationalists as "too Albanian." The new church's construction had nothing to do with religious needs: It was common knowledge that genuine Serb believers would continue to congregate at the nearby medieval Gracanica church. The new church simply served as evidence that Serbs ruled Kosovo once again.