Capt. Eric Wieland  must have a very understanding boss; in the last five years the 31 year-old landscape architect from Des Moines, Iowa has been deployed three times with the National Guard. A few weeks ago Wieland began his latest mission--working as a company commander in the eastern sector of Kosovo with NATO's 16,000 strong Kosovo Forces (KFOR). A day before Kosovars--both Albanians and Serbs--go to the polls to elect a new government, Wieland and his men are doing a foot patrol in the Gjlane, a mainly K-Albanian town of 100,000. As local kids follow the soldiers around as they walk by cafes and shops, Wieland tells me that unlike Afghanistan, where he served in 2004, this mission allows his soldiers to feel they are personally making a difference in these still largely embattled communities. "In Afghanistan when you leave the base you have to make sure you have a round in your chamber, you and your vehicle have to be protected and your interaction with the locals is very limited," he says as we pass people who smile and high five the soldiers. "But here even a junior soldier can get involved with a project--say teaching English or helping build a school--and feel like he is not just a small piece in a huge puzzle of events."

The irony is that if any place is a puzzle, it's Kosovo. Since NATO went to war here in 1999 to stop Slobodan Milosevic from wrecking any more havoc in the Balkans, Kosovo has remained a huge sticking point for the international community. Legally Kosovo is still a province of Serbia but since the war ended here it has been administered by the United Nations. In other words the two million residents --90 percent of whom are K-Albanians--are a stateless people. After years of international hand wringing over what to do with Kosovo the final recommendations will be presented to the Security Council on December 10. The K-Albanians, of course, want independence, the K-Serbs want to remain a part of Serbia. While the internationals have chewed over this Balkan quagmire, NATO's role, though mostly forgotten now because of Iraq and Afghanistan, has been keeping the peace and working alongside local communities to improve on an array of issues.

And it's been pretty peaceful of late. "The situation here is better now than it has been in recent Kosovar history and the main reason is that Kosovars are finally aware that any kind of problem could destroy the ongoing process," says KFOR's top commander, French general Xavier de Marnhac. But he warns that once status is solved--the conventional wisdom is that Kosovo will be given independence--there could be security problems when attention focuses back on social issues like mass unemployment, electrical powercuts and high taxes. These issues have thus far taken a back seat to the desire for independence.  "This is a forgotten region but it is a critical one and a place we need to pay attention to," says Lt. Travis Menke, a fellow Iowan who served alongside Wieland in Afghanistan. "I think Kosovo could serve as a template for Iraq and Afghanistan in how to properly develop the police and teach local government to be more self-sustainable." And unlike in those nations, Kosovars seem keen for foreign troops to stay for a long time--when I asked Hashim Thaci, who looks set to be the new prime minister, how long NATO should stay he said simply, "Forever."