Cyprus MailThe Yugoslav jigsaw is not quite over yetLAST SUNDAY'S independence referendum in Montenegro passed with barely a whimper, a majority voting to break away from the union with Serbia in what has been widely described as the final act in the disintegration of Yugoslavia.
Few today dispute Montenegro's right to secession. Even in Belgrade, there is a relief that the will-they-won't-they charade of recent years is finally over. In recent years, Montenegro had in any case been independent in all but name, the remaining link a mere fig leaf to mask a de facto separation.
What's more, coming at the tail end of a 15-year disintegration that saw a decade of savage wars of succession, there is widespread congratulation that the last piece of the Yugoslav jigsaw has been plucked away without bloodshed.
And yet it isn't the last piece of the jigsaw, because in advocating the absolute right of self-determination when it first recognised the secession of Slovenia and Croatia all those year ago, the international community deployed reflecting mirrors of ethnic conflict that cannot be tidily sealed within tidy state borders.
While saying that multi-ethnic Yugoslavia was untenable, the international community created a mini-Yugoslavia in Bosnia. In freeing Bosnia's Muslims from the tutelage of Belgrade, it placed Bosnia's Serbs under the tutelage of Sarajevo.
Today, Bosnia-Hercegovina is a failed state, still run by a foreign governor appointed by the international community. As indeed is Kosovo, whose final status remains undecided. And why should Kosovo's Albanians – a majority in the province but a small minority in Serbia – be allowed self-determination, but not their ethnic brethren in the neighbouring Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia? Or the Serbs or Croats of Bosnia who want to unite with their motherlands? And so the list goes on…
Few today fear a resurgence of the wars that tore apart the Balkans in the 1990s. The region is simply worn out. What is important now is not to allow seeds of resentment to mature to a stage where they might give rise to future conflict. And the best guarantee for that is to ensure that the Western Balkans are integrated into the European Union as soon as realistically possible.
Just as the Greeks of Cyprus feel more comfortable belonging to the same club as Greece, so the Serbs now spread out over half a dozen micro states will feel more comfortable if those are all united in the greater European family.
More practically, the access to European funds and the improvement of people's living standards that has accompanied every European enlargement so far is the greatest promise of future stability in the region. Prosperous countries do not take rash decisions; they have too much to lose. But those that are poor, that feel isolated, unfairly treated, backed into a corner, they wind up with nothing to lose.Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2006
No comments:
Post a Comment