Print Article Former President Hashim Thaci (C) and other rebel chiefs were once feted for liberating Kosovo from Serbia in a 1990s war STRINGER Text size After more than a decade at the helm, Kosovo's former guerillas may have finally met their match -- not at home but in The Hague, where they are on trial for war crimes. It has been a long and hard fall from grace for former president Hashim Thaci and other ex-rebels who were once feted as heroes for liberating Kosovo from Serbia in a late 1990s war, with the help of NATO. Yet if they were once associated with the joy of that victory, in recent years they have become the face of a political elite accused of corruption and clientelism that has clouded Kosovo's first decade of independence.