The case against Kosovo independence

The case against Kosovo independence

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Miodrag Isakov , THE JERUSALEM POST

Dec. 12, 2007

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If
I were to say that Israel deserved to qualify for the European championship,
most local football fans might agree. Israel played really well - the best
ever. However, England deserved to qualify too - especially if you look back in
history: They invented the game, after all. Nevertheless, neither of them will
be heading to the championship because there are certain rules and conditions
which preclude that from happening.

If
someone came along insisting that Israel and England take part in the finals
anyway and made room for them by excluding teams that had won their places fair
and square, such behavior would destroy the entire football enterprise. The
championships would become meaningless.

This
is how things work in professional sports. Agreed upon rules must be applied -
equally across the board.

And
that's also how international relations must work. Fair is fair and rules are
rules.

For
instance, when someone states: "Kosovo deserves independence," as my
colleague Tonin Gjuraj, ambassador of Albania, did in his Jerusalem Post op-ed
(November 27), people of good intentions would be inclined to first ask: What
are the rules of the game?

OK,
they would say, if that's possible, why not? But in this case the rules are
clear: It is not possible without agreement from Serbia! International law,
above all the UN Charter and its fundamental principle of sovereignty,
guarantees territorial integrity and equality of states, and Kosovo is part of
sovereign state - the Republic of Serbia. That has been approved once again by
Resolution 1244 of the Security Council.

Regarding
the rights of national minorities, Albanians of Kosovo included, it is clear
that creating a state of their own is not one of those rights.

That
is why Albania's ambassador, wisely choosing his words, claims that Kosovo
deserves independence; he does not say that it has the right. He is advocating
for his fellow Albanians - that is understandable - but also carefully avoiding
mentioning that an independent Kosovo would be another Albanian state in
Europe.

Two
states, side by side, for about four million people - that would be difficult
to explain to Israelis who are struggling to preserve a single Jewish state.

Creating
a state for Kosovo could be a first step toward joining it with the Albanian
state - that was Hitler's solution. Only during the Hitler period did a
so-called Greater Albania exist, and only during the Nazi regime was Kosovo
treated as a separate region by itself, named New Albania.

That
was a time of ethnic cleansing which produced the Albanian majority in the
area. How could anyone justify such an approach today? Wherever you look in
history, Kosovo was part of either Serbia or some other empire that
occasionally dominated in the Balkans, but never part of the Albanian state. In
fact, there was no Albanian state until 1912.

A
MODERN Serbian state was established after the war in the Balkans. The Kingdom
of Serbia, on most of the territory of the old Serbian Empire, included Kosovo
and Macedonia.

Distorting
history can only have a boomerang effect. My Albanian colleague claims:
"The area was annexed by Yugoslavia against Kosovar resistance in 1918.
This annexation violated the right of the Kosovars to self-determination and,
therefore, violated international law."

He
is wrong on three counts.

First,
in 1918, Yugoslavia did not exist at all. With the downfall of Austro-Hungarian
and Ottoman empires in 1918 the "Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians"
was established.

Second,
the pillar of that new state was the Kingdom of Serbia, and Kosovo was part of
it. Finally, since the right to self-determination never belonged to the
minorities, it became proof that Albanians in Kosovo always had a status of a
minority.

Since
there was no annexation of Kosovo in 1918, that raises the question: Where does
that idea come from?

There
is only one case in history when the notion of annexation was connected with
Kosovo - from 1941 to 1944 when the Nazis annexed Kosovo to Albania and it was
called "annexed territories."

So,
here we are again at the idea of Greater Albania, which besides Albania and
Kosovo, at that time included large parts of Macedonia, Montenegro and South
Serbia. The idea of Greater Albania established by the "1878 First League
of Prizren," was and still is the dream of Kosovar irredentists, who
organized a so-called liberation movement on the eve of the last century which
Serbia treated as a terrorist organization.

It
is worth recalling that during World War II the 21st SS Division
"Skenderbeg" was created and comprised primarily of Kosovar Muslim
recruits. They committed genocide against the Serbian and Jewish populations in
Kosovo as well as in Bosnia and Croatia. Therefore, trying to make the Albanian
case to Israelis - as the ambassador did in his op-ed - using the example of
the 200 Jews who survived the Holocaust in Albania (under Italian control) is
disingenuous.

It
is equally cynical to claim that "Kosovo is not and will not be a Muslim
state" considering that during the past eight years over 150 Christian
churches have been destroyed while 400 mosques financed by Islamic countries
have been constructed.

The writer is ambassador of Serbia in Israel. The
case against Kosovo independence | Jerusalem Post

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Kosovo’s Independence Will Stir Up Trouble. Who Will Benefit?

Kosovo’s Independence Will Stir Up Trouble. Who Will Benefit?

From the desk of John Laughland on Wed, 2007-12-12 20:20

Perhaps
the most striking things about the impending declaration of
independence about Kosovo is that is happening at all. Why should the
Kosovo Albanians be striving for independence from Belgrade now, since
there has been peace in the province for eight years (interrupted only
in 2004, when a mob of Albanians killed 25 Serbs) and since the regime
in Serbia, of which the Kosovo Albanians are citizens, has been
democratic and pro-European since 2000?

Why, indeed, did the
Kosovo Albanians spend the whole of the first part of the 1990s in
peace, when the rest of Yugoslavia was in flames? If their desire for
independence had really been so intense as their national propaganda
claims, then surely the time to act would have been when the Yugoslav
federation was collapsing in 1992-1992, or during the Bosnian civil war
of 1992-1995.

For that matter, why did the Albanians inside
Serbia, who are in the majority in the area around the Southern towns
of Presevo and Bujanovac, start their attacks there in 2001, a year
after the fall of Slobodan Milošević’s fall from power, whereas they
had been left in peace during the civil war between Serbs and Albanians
in neighbouring Kosovo in 1998-1999?

None of this seems to make any sense.

One
thing is certain: the Kosovo Albanians would not have threatened to
declare independence if they were not certain that they would receive
diplomatic recognition from the United States and most European states.
The Kosovo leadership (which means the leadership of the Kosovo
Liberation Army, the guerrilla force whose head, Hashim Thaci, is now
the “Prime Minister” of Kosovo) has very close ties to the West. Thaci
famously kissed Madeleine Albright during the Kosovo war of 1999 and
also visited Tony Blair at Number 10; one of his predecessors as Prime
Minister, Ramush Haradinaj, who has since been indicted by The Hague
for war crimes, is known as a major CIA asset.

No doubt the
Kosovo Albanians have some claim to independence, although it is
notable how seldom they refer to the persecution of which they were
supposedly the victims in 1999 under Milošević. This is no doubt
because everyone knows that those claims of genocide bore as much
relation to reality as did the claim made in 2002-2003 that there were
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Indeed, the charge of genocide
turned out to be so unsustainable that it was never even included in
the indictment against Milošević.

The loss of Kosovo by Serbia
would be a terrible blow to the values of Christian civilisation, since
that region is itself a symbol of the victory over the European spirit
over the superior military force of Islam, having been the scene of
Serbia’ historic battle against the Turks in 1389. The province
contains some of the jewels of European architecture, the monasteries
of Peć, Dečani and Gračanica. But the truth is that the new battle of
Kosovo was lost a long time ago, when the Serbs, like most Europeans,
stopped having babies while the Albanians, like many other Muslim
peoples, continued having them – and at a vast rate. The demographic
battle having been lost, there is very little the government in
Belgrade can do now to halt the inevitable.

Worse, perhaps, is
the effect which the independence of this small province will have on
the region and the wider world. The anger of Bosnian Serbs is inflamed
by the West’s double-standards. While it demands autonomy and now
secession for the Kosovo Albanians, it is pushing ever greater
centralisation and curtailment of autonomy in neighbouring
Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Serbs there have been told they must never hold
a referendum on independence from Bosnia, while the EU-back “High
Representative” is determined to abrogate what remains of the autonomy
of Republika Srpska. Independence for Kosovo will, in all likelihood,
lead to the fragmentation of the artificial and largely bogus state of
Bosnia-Herzegovina.

But the double-standards are not confined
to the Balkans. The narrative in Cyprus is almost identical to that in
Kosovo: a Muslim population there, the Turks, was the subject of
persecution by its Orthodox co-nationals, the Greeks, until they were
protected by military intervention according to international law:
Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and invoked the terms of the 1960 Treaty
of Guarantee (between Britain, Turkey and Greece) which guaranteed the
constitution of Cyprus. Yet Northern Cyprus (the Turkish part) has been
the victim of an embargo and international isolation ever since then,
an international pariah while Kosovo’s leaders are the toast of the
world’s chancelleries.

The same goes for Transnistria.
Transnistria is a small sliver of land along the left bank of the
Dniestr river, North-West of Odessa. When the Romanian province of
Bessarabia was illegally annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, according
to the terms of the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact,
Transnistria became part of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova.
It had never before in history been governed from the Moldovan capital,
Chişinău, and most of its inhabitants speak Russian. The Soviet Union
started to collapse in 1990 precisely when Moscow admitted, after years
of denial, the existence of the secret protocol to the
Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and this led to the secession of the Baltic
states and, eventually, the dissolution of the USSR itself.
Transnistria naturally said that its incorporation into Moldova was as
illegal as Moldova’s incorporation into the Soviet Union and demanded
independence. Although it has indeed been de facto independent since
1992, the West has consistently told it that it will not allow it to
secede from Moldova. Ditto for Nagorno-Karabakh (formally part of
Azerbaijan, populated now exclusively by Armenians), South Ossetia
(part of Georgia but culturally linked to North Ossetia, which is
inside Russia) and Abkazia (also part of Georgia but de facto
independent since 1992).

Encouraging independence for Kosovo
will only re-ignite the conflict which has been basically frozen there
since 1999, as well as the similarly frozen conflicts in the Balkans,
in Moldova and the Caucasus. What is the point of this when the other
option is to let sleeping dogs lie? Does someone have an interest in
causing trouble?

The only common denominator in all these
various conflicts, indeed, is attitudes to Russia. Russia supports
Serbia on Kosovo and Bosnia; it is broadly supportive of Transnistria
and the other non-recognised states on the territory of the former
Soviet Union (although it has done little concrete to help them). Any
trouble in these area is trouble for Moscow in its own backyard, which
President Putin told me in September is the last thing he wants. Maybe
that is why the West is determined to provoke it.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2764

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What will be Russia's response to Kosovo's independence?

What will be Russia's response to Kosovo's independence?

19:40 | 07/ 12/ 2007

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Yelena
Shesternina) - The troika of international mediators (the U.S., EU and Russia),
after several months of trying to think up an elegant solution to the Kosovo
problem, has admitted its failure.

The final report, which it decided to submit to UN Secretary
General Ban Ki-Moon ahead of schedule (the original deadline was December 10),
does not contain a single concrete recommendation to Belgrade or Pristina, or
indeed, to the UN. What will happen next? How will Moscow respond if the Kosovo
authorities carry out their threat and proclaim independence unilaterally?

The troika mission has failed, as it should have. The
positions of its members were too wide apart.

Washington was pressing for the province's independence and
Moscow went out of its way to argue that there should be no haste. The European
Union, supposed to represent the interests of all its 27 member countries, was
doing a balancing act between the two positions.

Not everyone in Europe would welcome the appearance of a new
state on the world map. The most vocal opponents are Spain, Greece, Cyprus,
Romania and Slovakia. They know that as soon as Kosovo declares its
independence their own separatists will be quick to put forward similar
demands.

But it is not the position of the mediators that is the main
stumbling block. The Serbs were prepared to offer Pristina everything,
including the broadest autonomy, the likes of which no other autonomy in the
world enjoys, as long as the word "independence" is not used.

The Kosovars, however, were determined from the start that
secession from Serbia was only a matter of time. Yes, they were ready to go
through the diplomatic motions, even to sit down at the negotiating table with
the Serbs, but no more than that. And why should they if the United States and
several European countries had promised them independence in advance? The
Kosovars do not quite know themselves what they will do with the independence.
They seem to hope that the West will address their numerous economic problems
with greater zeal than now.

Moscow is still behaving as if the issue of the province's
independence has not been closed. But it seems that it has. The Kosovars are
right when they say it is only a matter of time. The question that remains is
when the independence will become official and how it will be "acted
out"?

The scenario until the end of the year is more or less
clear. After Ban Ki-Moon reads the report it will be submitted to the UN
Security Council. The discussion promises to be stormy, but the result is a
foregone conclusion: Moscow will categorically object to any document that
contains the word "independence." If it manages to persuade the West
that another round of talks is needed, it would be its biggest foreign policy
triumph of the year.

Most experts believe the Kosovars will not dare to proclaim
independence immediately after the collapse of the UN debate. First, they have
to wait for the presidential elections in Serbia, where the first round will
take place on January 20. Second, it would be good to enlist the support of the
"united Europe" in addition to that of the United States. The EU
leaders will try to agree their actions on the "Kosovo issue" at their
summit in Brussels next week. The declared position so far is encouraging: the
EU says it is necessary "to prevent unilateral moves on Kosovo's
part."

The Europeans, at least those of them who do not think
Kosovo would set a dangerous precedent, are developing at least two secret
plans. According to the report of the International Crisis Group, Britain,
Germany, Italy and France will support independence before May 2008. For
starters, they will try to get the Brussels meeting to pass a joint statement to
the effect that the EU considers the Kosovo negotiations closed and the best
way out of the impasse is to revert to the Ahtisaari Plan (Martti Ahtisaari is
the UN Secretary General's special representative who developed a plan for
Kosovo's independence). If Spain, Greece and other countries opposed to the
Ahtisaari Plan put their foot down, the European Commission will give every
country a carte blanche to decide whether or not to recognize Kosovo's
independence.

The second plan has been worked out in Paris. According to a
leak to the press, Pristina will issue its "final warning" in January
and officially proclaim independence in February. Albania would be the first to
recognize the new country, followed by the United States, Muslim countries and
some EU members.

What are Moscow's options in this situation? There are not
many. The "adequate response" variant (recognizing the independence
of South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transdnester) is unlikely to be used.

Sergei Lavrov has said more than once that the Foreign
Ministry will proceed strictly within the legal framework and will not violate
the territorial integrity of other states. And there is no point in aggravating
the quarrel with Georgia, especially because the West would certainly throw its
weight behind Tbilisi (it is not for nothing that it has prudently declared the
Kosovo case "unique").

Such a response will not lead to a reversal of Kosovo's
independence, and Russia will end up with more troubles on its borders than it
can handle. Tbilisi would not take the secession of rebel republics lying down,
no matter who wins the presidential election.

So, the chances are that we will again see Moscow trying to
do some diplomatic footwork. For example, stopping Kosovo from being admitted
to the OSCE and, far more importantly for Pristina, to the UN. After all,
Kosovo cannot join the United Nations without the consent of the Security
Council.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and
do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20071207/91418613.html

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Kosovo 'mess' could spark ethnic violence: ex-KFOR chief

8 hours ago

LONDON (AFP) — The Kosovo situation is "a mess" that threatens to
spill over into ethnic violence again, the man who first commanded
NATO-led forces in the Serbian province said Sunday.

General Sir
Mike Jackson, the former British Army chief who commanded the Kosovo
Force (KFOR) when it entered the province in June 1999, said there was
a minefield ahead in which all parties must "tread carefully", in an
article in the British weekly newspaper The Sunday Telegraph.

Last-ditch
talks between Serbia and ethnic-Albanian-majority Kosovo have failed
and the southern province could soon declare independence once the
United Nations deadline for sorting out its future expires on Monday.

"It
is, sadly, anything but clear: the Albanian Kosovars expect
independence, which Belgrade refuses to concede. We should not
underestimate the volatility of this situation," Jackson wrote.

"While
both Kosovar and Serb leaders claim to oppose the use of force to
achieve their aims, the same cannot be said of the ethnic paramilitary
groupings."

UN Security Council resolution 1244 stipulated that Kosovo was to remain part of Serbia, but under UN administration.

"At
this point, we have a mess. It seems that UNSCR 1244 remains extant
until the Security Council removes it -- but Russia will not allow
this," Jackson said.

"So what happens to the current UN mission
in Kosovo? Do the staff of recognising countries leave, while those of
non-recognising countries remain? What of KFOR? Will Kosovo qualify for
UN membership?

"All of this will provide much work for diplomats and lawyers -- but not, I fervently hope, for soldiers.

"I
do not believe the Serbs would be so foolish as to invade Kosovo in the
face of KFOR, but I do fear further ethnic violence, and thus the need
for KFOR reinforcement."

NATO has said its 17,000 strong peacekeeping force would "resolutely" deal with any violence in Kosovo.

"Perhaps the international community's aversion to boundary change should be re-examined in this case," Jackson added.

"The
largest concentration of Kosovo Serbs live north of the River Ibar,
adjacent to Serbia proper. This small area was transferred from Serbia
to Kosovo only 40 years ago. A restoration might have merit.

"Overall, I suspect that the die is cast. Understandably, Kosovo's independence will go very hard in Serbia.

"The
Serbian government's current sad predicament is (former Yugoslav
president Slobodan) Milosevic's wretched legacy, but all parties must
now tread carefully.

"If Kosovo's independence really is to be
the last piece of the Balkan jigsaw, there must be an unprecedented
generosity of spirit in all concerned."

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5ie7RcMnMnejw01bISqr-E9r8sdWg

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Gen. Sir Mike Jackson warns on Kosovo

Gen. Sir
Mike Jackson warns on Kosovo

Last Updated: 1:11am GMT 09/12/2007

General Sir Mike Jackson has warned that the Balkans could be engulfed in violence unless the crisis surrounding the future of the province of Kosovo can be resolved. Sir Mike fears that British troops will be sent to intervene if Kosovo's leaders unilaterally declare independence from Serbia. Serbian officials have stated they will use "all means" to preserve sovereignty over the ethnically Albanian province. The current crisis follows the failure of a peace initiative between the rival governments in Pristina and Belgrade. Writing in The Sunday Telegraph today, Sir Mike says: "The situation is volatile and likely to become more so." Many of the Serbian minority living in Kosovo have already left their homes for Serbia in the belief that they are about to be attacked. Kosovo is to be discussed at a meeting of European foreign ministers on Monday, and at a European summit this week before going before the Security Council on December 19.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/09/wkosovo109.xml

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Black cloud over
the Balkans

Misha
Glenny

Published 06 December 2007

The status of Kosovo was supposed to be the last obstacle to
solving the problems of the Balkans. Failure would affect the entire region.

Most people in the Balkans have seen the Kosovo train wreck coming for the
past two years. But now that it is upon us, apart from some dark warnings, few
have been able to spell out what the failure of talks on Kosovo's final status
actually means.

The international significance of a debacle that reflects poorly on all
participants is, by contrast, very clear: Russia and the United States have
combined to humiliate the European Union. "They are clearly trying to
undermine the EU - of that there is no doubt," a senior Brussels official
told me recently.

For several months, both Russia and the US have in effect supported the
maximalist demands of their chosen proxies in the Balkans: Serbia and Kosovo.
This neutered the most recent negotiations of the US-EU-Russia troika, which
were a last-ditch attempt to hammer out a compromise between Belgrade and
Pristina. Serbia knew Russia would block Kosovo's independence in the United
Nations, while Kosovo was secure in American support for a unilateral
declaration of independence. Neither side had any incentive to compromise, and
the EU was exposed again as incapable of managing a political crisis in its own
backyard, while its taxpayers will be compelled to clear up the resulting mess.

Over the past decade, Brussels has channelled incalculable diplomatic and
financial resources into the Balkans (far more money than either Washington or
Moscow). The reasoning behind this expenditure is eminently sensible: as a
consequence of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and the troubled transition from
communism, the entire region has suffered from stunted development. This has
enabled corrupt economic interests, chiefly from within the Balkans, but also
from the EU and Russia, to turn the region into a playground for
asset-grabbing, money laundering and other criminal activities.

By offering the inducement of huge infrastructural and financial support,
the EU has persuaded the new leaderships in the Balkans to embark on
far-reaching economic and political reforms. The EU's commitment has already
had a stunning transformational impact on its two Balkan members, Romania and
Bulgaria, not to mention Slovenia, the former Yugoslav republic that is now
almost indistinguishable in character from Austria.

But the Kosovo crisis is casting a big black cloud over the hope that the
remaining former Yugoslav territories would follow Slovenia's smooth passage
into the EU. Croatia is likely to slip in before the door shuts. But the
constitutional mess of Kosovo and Serbia may well keep that door closed,
probably temporarily but perhaps for many years, as the crisis reverberates in
Bosnia and Macedonia, and less directly in Montenegro and Albania.

So what happens now? In the long term, the question keeping EU officials
awake at night concerns Serbia's membership of the EU. The enlargement
commission and several key European foreign ministries have believed for some
time that Serbia's admission is crucial for long-term stabilisation of the
region, given its situation at the geographical heart of the Balkans.

Nonetheless, the major EU member states feel they have no choice but to
follow Washington in recognising the UDI that Pristina is preparing. But most
of them are doing so reluctantly - they know that, privately, UN officials in
Kosovo predict that some 50,000 Serbs living south of the Ibar River will head
to northern Mitrovica, the Serb enclave in Kosovo bordering on Serbia that is
in effect governed from Belgrade; and that the recognition of an indep endent
Kosovo will also result in the territory's de facto partition.

The sight of impoverished peasants throwing their worldly belongings on to
the back of carts and trucks will make for an unedifying spectacle to accompany
independence. But, though all sides in this dispute have long understood that
partition would be a consequence of almost any solution, diplomatic cowardice
has ensured that nobody has been prepared to articulate this clearly in public.
So the independent state will be divided, with Belgrade retaining absolute
control in the northern enclave.

Inelegant though a divided Kosovo might be, both sides can probably live
with it. The epicentres of potential political earthquakes lie elsewhere. Zone
one is Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the rule of a series of omnipotent European
high representatives has disguised the profound weakness of the state fashioned
in Dayton, Ohio. At stake is the very viability of Bosnia.

The most depressing symbol of the Bosnian Federation, which joins Catholic
Croats and Muslim Bosniaks, is Mostar, the capital of Herzegovina. After 12
years, the two communities on either side of the Neretva River have nothing in
common except a high school that Croat children attend in the morning and
Bosniaks in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, the leadership of the Serbian entity in the east and north,
Republika Srpska, reacts with open hostility to attempts by the current EU
Special Representative, the Slovak Miroslav Lajcák, to centralise in
anticipation of transferring more power to the government in Sarajevo. Serbia's
prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, is encouraging this intransigence as well
as contributing to the outbreak of Putin-mania in both Serbia and Republika
Srpska. The dour face of the Russian president stares down from kiosks
throughout the two territories as the presumed new saviour of Serbia's
interests.

The Bosnian state will feel the strain of Kosovan independence as Serbia,
backed by Russia, toys with demanding the same rights of secession for
Republika Srpska as the west has granted Kosovo.

What neither Kostunica nor other Serbs care to mention too often is how
Russia was the main international sponsor of another "betrayal" of Serbian
interests - the recent independence of Montenegro. Renamed Moscow-on-Sea by
local wits, Montenegro has invited Russian oligarchs to replace cigarette
smuggling as the profoundly corrupt state's main source of income. According to
the Podgorica weekly magazine Monitor, Oleg Deripaska, Russia's
aluminium king, now owns 40 per cent of the new country's indust rial capacity.

But apart from becoming the new money-laundering paradise of the Balkans,
Montenegro presents fewer potential problems than southern Serbia and
Macedonia. Here we must wait to see whether Kosovo's independence further
discombobulates the fragile relationships between large Albanian minorities and
the Slav majorities. Despite being an EU candidate member, Macedonia is coming
under renewed pressure from Greece in the ludicrous dispute about the former
country's official name. The argument may be arcane, but with Greece
administering a veto on Macedonia's progress towards European and Nato
integration, the implications are very serious.

And in Kosovo itself? The great headache is the economy - under UN and EU
administration, the province has experienced a precipitous decline in GDP and
frightening levels of un employment. This is a dismal record that underlines
the hopeless inadequacy of the west's post-intervention policies. The territory
is now thoroughly criminalised as a consequence, and it is hard to see how
independence will change this in the short term.

Two to three years ago, the EU was on the way to solving the fundamental
problems of the Balkans. Kosovo's status was the final, albeit very complex,
obstacle to circumnavigate. The collective failure to do so has cast the region
back into uncharted, choppy waters, where lie several concealed rocks.

3 comments from
readers

David
Edenden

06 December 2007

Dear Misha Glenny:

Along with Noel Malcolm and Human Rights Watch, you
are one of the very few people who have written about the sorry plight of
ethnic Macedonians in Greece (an EU and Nato member) struggling for human
rights.

There is a basic flaw in your argument that
"Russia and the United States have combined to humiliate the European
Union".

The EU is part of the problem in the Balkans, not
part of the solution. Greece and Bulgaria have conducted a slow motion cultural
genocide against their respective ethnic Macedonian minorities, Greece's values
regarding minority rights are EU values. Bulgaria was recently admitted to the
EU and Nato, notwithstanding their denial of minority rights to ethnic
Macedonians.

Any Serb in Kosovo who trusts the EU or Nato to
protect their rights is insane! They only have to look to Greece and Bulgaria
to see their future!

The best way to demonstrate EU commitment to
minority rights in the Balkans is to suspend Greece and Bulgaria from the EU
for one year and force them to re-apply using their treatment of ethnic
Macedonians as a criteria for membership.

Anything less is just smoke and mirrors!

"Despite being an EU candidate member,
Macedonia is coming under renewed pressure from Greece in the ludicrous dispute
about the former country's official name. The argument may be arcane, but with
Greece administering a veto on Macedonia's progress towards European and Nato
integration, the implications are very serious."

David Edenden

The Macedonian Tendency

http://the-macedonian-tendency.blogspot.com/

David
Edenden

06 December 2007

Dear Misha Glenny,

When discussing the positions that states take in international
affairs, we often forget that these positions of "national interest"
are the result of the interests of particular politicians, not of "state
interests".

If you want to make a splash in the US presidential
debate, you may want to discuss Barack Obama's pandering to the Greek lobby
regarding the Macedonian name issue. My suggestion is to contact Slate or
Salon.

Obama's proposed Bill (HR 356) in the House of
Representatives denounces the Republic of Macedonia for "irredentism"
for simply demanding that Greece grant basic minority rights to its ethnic
Macedonian minority. Obama ignores the rights of ethnic Macedonian for a few
pieces of sliver to his campaign.

Greece does admit to a "slavophone"
minority that speaks an "idiom" but does not have a language, history
or culture, you know … a bunch of "N….. Words".

Therefore the title of your piece may be:

"Barack Obama to Ethnic Macedonians: Drop
Dead!"

"Barack Obama to ethnic Macedonians: You are a
bunch of "N-Words"

"Barack Obama supports Greek Racism!"

Misha, if you want more information about the
impact on Macedonia about independence for Kosovo, don't be a stranger!

David Edenden

The Macedonian Tendency

http://the-macedonian-tendency.blogspot.com/

writeon


06 December 2007

I miss Misha Glenny. He used to be a regular on the
Today Programme and Radio 4, and I used to think after listening to his
analysis, he's too good, he won't last. What I mean by this is, he seemed to
have a real grasp of the complexities of the Balkans and the dangers and
possible consequences of Great Power interference in the region.

This was at a time when our political leaders
seemed bent on a policy of "simplifictaion" and taking sides, in of
all places, the Balkans! Every time I heard Misha Glenny his knowlegde and
analytical abilities seemed to put to shame and undermine the increasingly
emotional response of our politicians to the Balkan crisis.

If we recognise an independent and breakaway
Kosova, won't we in practice be re-drawing the borders of Serbia against the
will of the majority of Serbs? And without the support of the United Nations?
What about the issue of Serbian sovereignty in this matter? Surely they have
the right to oppose the forced re-drawing of their borders by foreign powers?

It seems that, looked at from a neutral
perspective, it's only Western powers and their clients that have the right to
re-define borders and create new states, if anyone else tries it they are in
Big Trouble. It almost appears like we think that we own the world, what we do
is right, we make mistakes, but we're fundamentally benign, and our national
interests the only interests that are legitimate, and natural; everyone else is
merely being "nationalistic", old-fashioned, unrealistic, and
selfish.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200712060031

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The Africanization of the Balkans

The
Africanization of the Balkans

The
lessons of Zimbabwe are lost in darkest Kosovo.



By Denis Boyles

The report in Le Figaro that a trio of today’s big powers — including Russia, the U.S., and the European Union — was at loggerheads in the Balkans, has a certain cold air of familiarity about it, right down to the annoying Serb nationalists at the center of it all. The sudden chill between Russia and what we can now again call “the West” is the result of the collapse of talks between the Serbs and the Kosovars a couple of days ago. Their negotiations were supposed to be the “last chance” at working out a “settlement” — ostensibly of what relationship the Serbian province of Kosovo should have with Belgrade. In reality, the two sides were negotiating the terms of Serbian surrender demanded by the Kosovar terrorists they had once fought. The Serbs were willing to continue to come up with something, as the IHT reports today, but most think it would be an empty exercise: On December 11, the international community will impose a “solution” and grant Kosovo the independence its leaders demand. The Serbs will be scarred and Russia might not like it, but they both had their chance to do something about it eight years ago, and they missed it. Serbia was being run by a dangerous buffoon and the Russians were broke. Now the Russians are rich as czars and everybody’s worried about what they might do — including, I guess, the Russians: Le Figaro’s reporter says the Russian foreign minister is “very alarmed” at the consequences of forcing Serbia to accept Kosovo’s independence. That Russian alarm was matched by American concern. Our negotiator, Frank Wisner, told Le Monde that “tensions are obvious.” Sorting out the Balkans should be a snap. The countries there are little and cute. But the “Balkan powder keg” is a local trademark, and for good cause. The place is a mess; for starters, the air war against Serbia left affairs in a state of perilous improvisation. The feebleness of Russia a decade ago is what permitted the bulldozer diplomacy of heavy-handed men like Richard Holbrooke, whose famous Dayton agreement criminalized not only Serbia’s actual criminals, including especially Slobdan Milosevic, but also the entire Serbian nation. As the architect of America’s diplomacy in the Balkans, Holbrooke left a legacy of lean-tos and shanties. The Dayton Accords ended the conflict in Bosnia by enshrining fractured politics in a state dominated by Muslims, and where today, consequently, “hundreds of mujahadeen fighters…are successfully spreading their fundamentalist Islamist views” at the expense of Bosnian Serbs, according to Der Spiegel. As in Kosovo, the international community will eventually force a settlement on the Bosnian Serbs. In fact, tensions will rise this weekend, as the Islamic presidency seeks to impose reforms that will eliminate the semi-autonomy Dayton had granted the Serbs, Muslims, and Catholics, in favor of the Muslim majority. The resulting Islamic state may well drift further toward the Wahhabism now firmly taking root there. Kosovo may travel a similar path path. During the last eight years of often ineffective NATO occupation, Kosovar Serbs have been effectively cleansed from all but the very northernmost districts. This constitutes an ironic end to a conflict that only came to America’s attention when Milosevic’s army tried to solve a backyard terrorism problem by driving Albanian Kosovars, including members of the Marxist-inspired Islamic Kosovo Liberation Army, back to Albania (a country that desperately didn’t want them). The goal of the KLA, of course, was to cleanse Kosovo of Serbs, as newspapers and magazines — including NRO and The New York Times, in dispatches like this one and others from the 1990s — occasionally noted. The Republican in the White House may think the KLA is heroic now, but in 1999, the party felt differently, as this Senate Republican Policy Committee report makes clear. The current Kosovo government is populated by the former terrorist leaders mentioned in that report, including Hashim Thaci, whose radical party defeated a more moderate one, and carried the elections that were held in the province on November 17. According to the BBC, Thaci, who’s married to an Albanian mafia princess (Pristina’s a long way from Queens), has long been associated with racketeering in Kosovo. He was also widely known as a ruthless opponent of the late Ibrahim Rugova, Kosovo’s popular moderate leader who died in 2006. Wary of the ex-KLA leaders’ ambitions, and maybe knowing a few things we don’t, most Albanians avoided the election (turnout was around 45-percent, and Kosovar Serbs boycotted the vote entirely.) But an independent Kosovo under the leadership of former KLA commanders is apparently a done deal, no matter what the Russians want. The statements from the Kosovar leadership imply the threat of violence if they are not appeased. Violence against whom? The few remaining Kosovar Serbs? The Independent’s ill-formed “big question” is “Would the Balkans flare up again if Kosovo declared independence?” That’s the wrong question, of course. The question is will violence flare up again if they don’t declare independence? The Kosovars may not want to make the mistake the Serbs made. The “war” in Kosovo was widely supported in the U.S., largely on the basis of genuine outrage at what Milosevic was doing, and if the press made mistakes in reporting, as some claim they may have in Radac, for example, there’s no escaping the fact that in Kosovo, the Serbs deserved to lose. And lose the Serbs did. It was a neat, Clintonian kind of war, led by a general only Clinton could really love, Wesley Clark (Peter J. Boyer’s entertaining New Yorker profile from 2003 is here), in which civilians may have been bombed in Belgrade but our casualty list was fairly short. Some wondered why we were cluster-bombing people in a country that had been our ally in two wars (at no small cost, either) instead of boycotting them into compliance with civilized norms, and exactly how much punishment Serbia deserves. But the larger question is why we were there at all. Kosovo became America’s problem only because the Europeans were no better at solving Balkan crises than they are at negotiating with Iranians. As Ed Morrissey recently observed in his Captain’s Quarters blog, “[Kosovo] is, and should always have been, a strictly European affair.” Maybe, but when there’s a spliff of moral outrage to be passed around, nobody wants to miss the buzz. So enthusiasm in the U.S. for an independent Kosovo comes from right and left. William Finnegan’s lively piece in the current New Yorker captures the mood about Kosovo in blue-state America perhaps better than it does the mood in Kosovo itself, judging from those election turnouts. But The Wall Street Journal also has demanded quick independence for Kosovo and lately has taken to giving Kosovo’s current prime minister, Agim Ceku, op-ed space not just once, but twice in three months (but each time inviting James Jatras of the lonely American Council for Kosovo to write a letter to the editor, the most recent of which is here). Richard Holbrooke, one of the most authoritative American advocates of independence for Kosovo, endorsed Thaci, telling the Sueddeutsche Zeitung that he had known the chap “for about ten years” and had found that he had a “remarkable” way about him. No doubt. Holbrooke and others are irritated by suspicions that an Islamic Kosovo might pose a security risk. They shrug off concerns by claiming, rightly, that most Kosovars are secular Muslims and that the place will never be an al-Qaeda base or a haven for extremists. But they say that about Bosnia, too. Besides, what was Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Frazier telling that jury in the Jose Padilla trial? Something, Reuters reported, about “al Qaeda-affiliated groups” fighting in Kosovo in the ‘90s? I guess they were our allies, back in the day. Any friend of Thaci’s… If 55-percent of the Kosovo citizens couldn’t bring themselves to vote at all, how rushed are they for independence? Maybe they realize that independence isn’t as simple as a slogan, and that they’ll have to live with whatever happens next. And maybe they too think there may be other ways to go, as this Christian Science Monitor article proposes. Kosovo’s neighbors, including Macedonia, Montenegro, and Albania itself, are deeply concerned about the implications of an independent Kosovo, and the whole idea of a “greater Albania.” It’s Europe’s Kurdistan in some ways. The Balkan crisis recalls more than just Sarajevo, 1914. It also smacks of Salisbury, 1980, and a dozen other African capitals upon achieving an expeditious, politically convenient independence, in which something bad was replaced by something arguably worse. The common complaint about colonialism wasn’t how it began but how it ended: When it was time to go, the retreating colonial power gave the keys to the guy with the most guns and ran for it, rather than trying to take the time to fight for a more careful solution that required careful thought, and saved lots of lives. Thus, the history of post-colonial Africa is littered with murderous tyrants, the most notorious of which is Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe (a recent NRO piece describing his early support from an unthinking international community is here). Kosovo’s not a colony and southeastern Europe isn’t Africa. But in Zimbabwe, we enthroned a known criminal. The result was much, much more criminality. Do we really want to do the same in the Balkans? — Denis Boyles, author of Vile France and the upcoming Superior, Nebraska.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OGIzYTMzM2JkODg0ZjczNjkzOWU2NDg0OTc1NzY2NDk=

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Serbia won't accept 'rogue' Kosovo

Serbia won't
accept 'rogue' Kosovo

Serbia's prime minister has said the country will never
recognise an "illegal and rogue" independent Kosovo, with no sign of
any likely deal on the eve of a final round of deadlocked talks on the future
of the province.

Serb and Albanian delegations are to meet in Baden, Austria
for a three-day attempt at a compromise on the status of the disputed province.

The negotiations so far have produced no agreement.
Mediators from the US, EU and Russia are to report to the UN Secretary General
Ban Ki-moon by December 10 about the process.

In the past several meetings, leaders of the ethnic Albanian
majority in Kosovo have rejected even considering anything short of
independence, while Serbia refuses to let go of its separatist region.

Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said Serbia will never
recognise an independent Kosovo, calling it "an illegal and rogue
creation". "Serbia will show that unilateral independence means
absolutely nothing," he said.

The US and its allies have backed independence for Kosovo,
suggesting they might recognise the region as an independent nation if talks
with Serbia fail altogether. Russia however, has backed Serbia in its efforts
to keep Kosovo.

Mr Kostunica said "a recognition by America or any
other country cannot change anything and turn an illegal act into a normal and
regular thing".

Kosovo formally is part of Serbia, although Belgrade has had
no authority over the region since 1999, when a Nato bombing forced Serbia to
end a crackdown against the Kosovo separatists and pull its troops out.

The province has been run by the United Nations and Nato
since June 1999.

President Boris Tadic said Belgrade believes that a
compromise is possible, and will again present a proposal for what he termed
"essential autonomy" for Kosovo. "We are going there fully
convinced that we are right, and we will defend our position very firmly and
carefully," he said.

http://news.uk.msn.com/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=6802470

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Mr. Ceku's Disorderly House

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119561138717200039.html?mod=googlenews_wsj



Mr. Ceku's Disorderly House

November 21, 2007; Page A17



The recent column by Agim Ceku ("Kosovo Wants Independence," Nov. 15)
presents the critic with what military planners would call a target-rich
environment. Virtually every assertion about Kosovo's prospects as an
independent state screams out for rebuttal.



For the sake of brevity, let us focus on just one: Mr. Ceku's suggestion that
Kosovo, under his U.N.-supervised administration, has "put our structures
in place and our house in order." This month's report by the European Commission
tells a very different story:



"Due to a lack of clear political will to fight corruption, and to
insufficient legislative and implementing measures, corruption is still
widespread," the report said. "Civil servants are still vulnerable to
political interference, corrupt practices and nepotism" and "Kosovo's
public administration remains weak and inefficient," the report added.



Furthermore, "the composition of the government anti-corruption council
does not sufficiently guarantee its impartiality," and "little
progress can be reported in the area of organized crime and combating of
trafficking in human beings."



War crime trials are being "hampered by the unwillingness of the local
population to testify" and "there is still no specific legislation on
witness protection in place," according to the report. "Civil society
organizations remain weak" and "awareness of women's rights in
society is low."



If this is the "house" Mr. Ceku claims "is in order" in
advance of what he hopes will be conferral of independence, one shudders to
think what disorder would look like. To be sure, Mr. Ceku makes use of the
usual dodge that Kosovo's progress is limited by the absence of "clarity
on our future status," namely independence. But Taiwan, by contrast, has
gone without such clarity for over half a century and is nothing like the
disaster over which Mr. Ceku presides.



Instead of falling for his fairy tales about Kosovo's fitness for sovereignty
the international community needs to open its eyes to the reality of this
corrupt, criminal, and nonviable entity. Granting independence to Kosovo, which
would mean handing de jure power to those responsible for this state of
affairs, can only turn a disaster into a catastrophe.



James George Jatras

Director

American Council for Kosovo

Washington

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First Kosovo, and then what?

November
20, 2007

EUROPE
STILL has a Balkans problem. This is the message to take away from the victory
of former guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci's party in Saturday's parliamentary
elections in Kosovo - balloting that was boycotted by the 10 percent of
Kosovo's population who are Serbs.

The UN-supervised region is officially part of Serbia. But ever
since NATO went to war in 1999 to force Slobodan Milosevic to end his ethnic
cleansing of Albanian villages in Kosovo, the region's Albanian majority have
set their sights on separation from Serbia. Recently, American, Russian, and
European mediators have been trying to craft a formula for autonomy or phased
independence that would be acceptable both to Serbia and the Albanian Kosovar government.

The
mediators are due to report to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon by
that date, and Thaci has threatened to declare independence unilaterally if
they do not recommend independence for Kosovo. But any such unilateral action
could set off instability across the Balkans and beyond.

While
20 of the EU's 27 members favor independence for Kosovo, nearly all dread a
unilateral declaration. That prospect conjures up memories of Europe's careless
acceptance of declarations of independence from Yugoslavia by Slovenia,
Croatia, and Bosnia in the early 1990s. Those acts ushered in horrific wars and
crimes against humanity.

A
unilateral lunge for independence by Kosovo could spur Serbs in Bosnia and
Herzogovina - half that country's population - to follow suit. And Kremlin
warnings against the imposition of any Kosovo formula not acceptable to Serbia
raises the specter of Russian backing for independence movements in Georgia,
Moldova, and even Ukraine. This would be a prescription for armed conflict
around the periphery of Europe.

Some
European diplomats also worry about the United Nations carving new countries
out of older countries' provinces. They recognize that separatist reflexes
persist in regions such as Catalonia and the Basque country. Even the Flemish
and Walloon populations of tiny Belgium may want a nationalist divorce.

The
Kosovo majority's impatience for independence is understandable, particularly
since it has been subjected to a corrupt and inefficient UN tutelage. But the
European, American, and Russian mediators should keep Serbia and the Kosovars
at the negotiating table as long as it takes to hammer out a resolution to
which both sides agree.

This
may mean incorporating the Serbian-populated area of Kosovo into Serbia proper,
along with Serbian monasteries and holy sites. It may entail minor population
transfers. But whatever the eventual solution, it should be accepted by the two
peoples and not imposed by outsiders.

© Copyright 2007 Globe
Newspaper Company.

First
Kosovo, and then what? - The Boston Globe

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It's hard to imagine a worse outcome for the Balkans

The prospect of another war and more
savage ethnic cleansing shows just what a fine mess we created eight years ago




Simon
Jenkins

Wednesday November 21, 2007

The Guardian

This one we can see coming. On December 10 the second round
of so far abortive talks on Kosovan independence will expire, bringing to a
crisis the unfinished last chapter of the west's 1990s "Balkanisation of the Balkans". In
Brussels this week European ministers will make a final effort to forestall the
decision of the newly elected Kosovan government to declare unilateral
independence of Serbia. Since Serbia is equally determined not to grant it,
irresistible force has met immovable object.

This is not a clash of tinpot
dictators but one of democratic outcomes. Kosovo's independence is the clear
wish of its electors, just as it is not the wish of Serbia's. The latter have
long regarded Kosovo as part of their emotional and historic integrity. The auguries
presage a return to conflict.

The instinct of British politicians and media is to declare that something
must be done. It is usually then to do nothing and then something messy, and
finally to say that something should have been done earlier as it would not
have been so messy. This is what happened successively in Croatia, Bosnia and
Kosovo in the 1990s. In each case militant separatists were encouraged, with
varying degrees of enthusiasm, to seek independence from whatever regime ruled
in Belgrade, which they duly obtained with considerable shedding of blood.

Faced not just with the break up of Tito's wider Yugoslavia but with the
defection of the core provinces of Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo, Serbs under
Milosevic tried to hold them by force. They treated the Kosovans so cruelly
that the outside world was moved to intervene. While most countries, including
America, tut-tutted and for three months dropped bombs, probably hastening the
carnage in Kosovo, Tony Blair rightly divined that only a ground invasion could
reverse a humanitarian outrage. In this he was successful.

But what did he expect to happen next? As in Afghanistan and Iraq, Britain
is, like the US, inclined to shoot first and plan afterwards. In Kosovo the
outcome was to reward "terrorist" separatists with a country of their
own, albeit smaller than Wales. Men who, were they Serbs, would be hauled
before a war crimes tribunal are now hailed in the west as heroes.

For eight years Kosovo has enjoyed de facto autonomy under the protection of
17,000 Nato troops. These have allowed the regime to
"reverse-cleanse" the province of half its Serbs, including virtually
all the 40,000 who once lived in the capital, Pristina. There are barely
200,000 left, just 10% of the population. Although the new prime minister, the
former guerrilla Hashim Thaci, declares that "Kosovo is ready for
independence", he cannot mean it. Kosovo
is a Nato protectorate under UN administration, with more aid per head than any
state in Asia or Africa. What Thaci wants is not independence but the luxuriant
post-intervention dependency enjoyed by Bosnia, Sierra Leone and the embattled
regimes in Baghdad and Kabul.

To this the Serbs remain implacably opposed. Even moderate opponents of
Milosevic's reign regard the enforced dismemberment of their nation as
excessive punishment for the barbarities committed by the Serb army in 1998.
Nor will they let it rest. Like the Basque country for Spain and the Falklands
for Argentina, Kosovo will always be a cause celebre for Serbia.

Independence for Kosovo clearly accords with current realpolitik, but
realpolitik is seldom the end of the matter in the Balkans. Russia says it
would veto Kosovo's acceptance into the UN, and to that extent Kosovo would be
an illegitimate state.

Nor is Russia's attitude purely due to Slav solidarity. Moscow is
understandably averse to western troops coming to the aid of separatist
movements wherever there is insurrection or cries of genocide, least of all
within bombing distance of the Caucasus. Russia is supported in this view by
Spain, Greece and Cyprus, each with separatist problems. And what does Britain,
so keen on Balkan partition, say to the Pashtuns or the Kurds when they demand
independence?

These are not diplomatic niceties. Already guerrillas of the shadowy
Albanian National Army are reportedly roaming the Serbia/Kosovo border, partly
financed by a massive heroin trade. Already Serbian militias are arming against
them, preparing to defend their compatriots under siege inside Kosovo.

At best, resumed hostilities would mean further savage ethnic cleansing and
a repartition of Kosovo. At worst, it would mean a long-running border war,
with western troops sucked into defending Kosovan irregulars and Russia into
defending Serbia's sovereignty. It is hard to imagine a worse outcome to
Britain's glorious "mission accomplished".

Any visitor to the Balkans soon learns that what in Westminster seems a
landscape of black and white, goodies and baddies, is in truth all grey.
Britain has been party to the military partition of a sovereign European state
at the instigation of its separatists, albeit with justice and local majority
opinion on their side. Such self-determinations are never straightforward, as
the English know in their dealings with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The prospect of war has commentators screaming that "something must be
done". I have not read one sensible answer to the question: what? Had Nato
negotiated some sort of delegated sovereignty for Kosovo with the post-Milosevic
government in Belgrade, Pristina hardliners might have been faced down and
Serbia's notional integrity preserved.

That day has passed. It is easy to "hope" that Thaci and the
Serbian prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, might see the virtue of compromise
and agree to go their separate ways under some sort of UN "sovereignty
umbrella" (once proposed for the Falklands). But with Russia behind the
Serbs, and Europe and America behind the Kosovans, why should leaders in either
Belgrade or Pristina risk the wrath of their electorates by compromising? Once
steeped in such dependency, no one feels any pressure to back down.

Kosovo is a western protectorate. There is no pressing need for de facto
autonomy to become de jure independence. Pristina has as much autonomy as it
can use and should be ordered to tone down its senseless confrontation and
leave Serbia a shred of pride - on pain of a genuine independence it would
certainly not like. In any resumed war, Kosovo would not be a winner.

simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk

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First Kosovo, and then what?

Email|Print| Text size –
+

November 20, 2007

EUROPE STILL has a Balkans problem. This is the message to take away from
the victory of former guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci's party in Saturday's
parliamentary elections in Kosovo - balloting that was boycotted by the 10
percent of Kosovo's population who are Serbs.

The UN-supervised region is officially part of Serbia. But ever since NATO
went to war in 1999 to force Slobodan Milosevic to end his ethnic cleansing of
Albanian villages in Kosovo, the region's Albanian majority have set their
sights on separation from Serbia. Recently, American, Russian, and European
mediators have been trying to craft a formula for autonomy or phased
independence that would be acceptable both to Serbia and the Albanian Kosovar
government.

The mediators are due to report to United Nations Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon by that date, and Thaci has threatened to declare independence
unilaterally if they do not recommend independence for Kosovo. But any such
unilateral action could set off instability across the Balkans and beyond.

While 20 of the EU's 27 members favor independence for Kosovo, nearly all
dread a unilateral declaration. That prospect conjures up memories of Europe's
careless acceptance of declarations of independence from Yugoslavia by
Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia in the early 1990s. Those acts ushered in
horrific wars and crimes against humanity.

A unilateral lunge for independence by Kosovo could spur Serbs in Bosnia and
Herzogovina - half that country's population - to follow suit. And Kremlin
warnings against the imposition of any Kosovo formula not acceptable to Serbia
raises the specter of Russian backing for independence movements in Georgia,
Moldova, and even Ukraine. This would be a prescription for armed conflict
around the periphery of Europe.

Some European diplomats also worry about the United Nations carving new
countries out of older countries' provinces. They recognize that separatist
reflexes persist in regions such as Catalonia and the Basque country. Even the
Flemish and Walloon populations of tiny Belgium may want a nationalist divorce.

The Kosovo majority's impatience for independence is understandable,
particularly since it has been subjected to a corrupt and inefficient UN
tutelage. But the European, American, and Russian mediators should keep Serbia
and the Kosovars at the negotiating table as long as it takes to hammer out a
resolution to which both sides agree.

This may mean incorporating the Serbian-populated area of Kosovo into Serbia
proper, along with Serbian monasteries and holy sites. It may entail minor
population transfers. But whatever the eventual solution, it should be accepted
by the two peoples and not imposed by outsiders.

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/11/20/first_kosovo_and_then_what/

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Kosovo: The Fuse on the Balkan Powder Keg

http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id=298431



Stratfor

Kosovo:
The Fuse on the Balkan Powder Keg

November 16, 2007 21 55 GMT

Summary

Kosovo's expected Dec. 10 declaration of independence from Serbia is already
inspiring minor violent incidents throughout the Balkans. If tensions erupt
over the issue, the fighting is almost certain to spread beyond Kosovo and
Serbia.



Analysis



Kosovo is set to hold parliamentary and local elections Nov. 17 amid tensions
surrounding talks on the region's status and the boycott of the elections
called by the Serbs. Leading up to Kosovo's expected Dec. 10 declaration of
independence from Serbia, small sparks of violence are surfacing not only in Kosovo
and Serbia, but also in other Balkan states -- illustrating that if this powder
keg blows, the explosion will not be limited to Kosovo and Serbia.



Though the international community is completely
split on the issue of Kosovar independence -- and has been since the
region's 1999 provisional break from Serbia -- the small secessionist
government has said it will not wait any longer. Serbs consider Kosovo the
birthplace of their national identity and view Kosovar Albanians as little more
than a recent infestation, though the province's population is now more than 90
percent Albanian and less than 5 percent Serbian. The Kosovars want nothing
less than independence, and the Serbs want to give them anything but.

Kosovo had expected the West
to continue supporting what it called the inevitability
of Kosovar independence. However, that inevitability is now lost in the shuffle
of a larger
political battle between global power players such as Russia, the European
Union and the United States, and Serbia and Kosovo are left with only
uncertainty.

All sides fear this uncertainty
will turn volatile -- and possibly bloody. If an explosion of violence does
occur, it will not be contained within Serbia and Kosovo's borders; it could
destabilize the entire Balkan region. Minor incidents of violence and
instability have already
been seen in Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.



Serbia and Kosovo



Serbia and Kosovo seem to have avoided violence on the scale of that seen in
the late 1990s, mainly because the Radicals did not come to power during Serbian
elections and because Kosovar independence was continually put on the back
burner this year. This does not mean, however, that such violence can be
avoided altogether, especially as each side gets more fed up with the
situation. Small-scale violence has been seen and is not unexpected. Tensions
are high between Kosovars and Serbs and within each ethnic faction as well.



The Serbs within Kosovo do not make up enough of the population to attempt any
meaningful military operations, but there are other threats. The most obvious
-- but not the most likely -- is that Serbia could do what it did in 1999 when
it wanted to reassert full control over Kosovo: send in the army. But the
military is not in the shape it was in then. Moreover, the Serbs within Serbia
proper are too fractured; some are willing to forgo Kosovo to gain EU
membership, while others are willing to fight to the end for the small
province. That is enough to cause trouble, since only a few radicals are needed
to form paramilitary groups like those seen during the war.



There are also small Serbian terrorist groups that have been operating
periodically in Serbia and Kosovo. The best known is Tsar Lazar's Guard, which
was a joke when it first formed but has been gaining support -- and reportedly
weapons -- as Dec. 10 approaches. Serbs are not the only group reported to have
militants working for their cause; the Albanian National Army militant group
reportedly has been recruiting new members and equipment recently.



Kosovar Albanians also have been stirring unrest inside the recently
independent Montenegro. The small Albanian population in Montenegro on the
Kosovar border has already been stirred up, however; a handful of Albanians
were arrested in Ulcinj, Montenegro, and Kosovar Albanians began flooding over
the border and stormed the police station in protest.



Montenegro understands what it is like to push for independence from Serbia,
but unlike Kosovo the country is still
very divided over whether it is content with its new independence.
Approximately 40 percent still consider themselves ethnically Serbian --
especially since they share the same church and same language -- and are thus
loyal to Belgrade. Some Montenegrin Serbians have already pledged to help fight
if Kosovo gets its independence.



Macedonia



The militants in Kosovo have also been linked to Albanians crossing the border
from Macedonia. Albanians are the ethnic minority within Macedonia but hold the
majority of the northwestern part of the country. The Macedonian-Kosovar border
is mountainous and incredibly porous, leading to large border crossings that the
already weak Macedonian military cannot prevent. These Albanians and Kosovar
Albanians have been seen actively engaging in violence on both sides of the
border, proving that the wounds from the 2001 Macedonia conflict -- in which
the Albanians within the country began attacking Macedonian forces -- are still
fresh.



Internally, Macedonia has been politically unstable because of the main
Albanian party actively pushing against the government as it keeps its eyes on
Kosovo. Macedonia is trying to keep a lid on any large-scale violence because
of its aspirations to join the EU, but hostilities have broken out within
Macedonia's borders. On Nov. 7, Macedonian police killed four Albanians in an
operation called Mountain Storm on Mount Sar Planina. Macedonian police said
the Albanians were planning a major terrorist act that would destabilize both
Kosovo and Macedonia.



Bosnia-Herzegovina



Bosnia-Herzegovina
could be a flashpoint in the struggle over Kosovo. Bosnia-Herzegovina is split
between two autonomous regions -- the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and
Republika Srpska (the Serb Republic) -- and three ethnic groups: Muslim
Bosniaks, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs. In short, the country does not
have a comfortable ethnic, social, historic or political mixture. The U.N.
administrative presence is the only thing keeping relative peace and general
unity in the country.



However, control is being transferred from the United Nations to the European
Union -- something many radical Serbs within the country are not happy with
because it means the loss of Russia's voice in Bosnia's future (Russia is on
the U.N. Security Council and supports the Orthodox Serbs). The Muslims within the
country do not want EU supervision, claiming the Union is not friendly to
Muslims. Republika Srpska has criticized the transfer, since they pledge their
loyalty to their brother Serbs next door and to their more numerous Orthodox
brothers in Russia.



The Muslim Bosniaks and Serbs -- with the Croats in flux -- are keeping the
country from moving toward any political unity or a real constitution. But with
Kosovo in play, the Serbs from Republika Srpska are threatening to declare
their own independence. It is no secret that the majority of Serbs within
Republika Srpska want Serbia proper to annex their region, though many Serbs in
Serbia proper look upon them as radicals or country bumpkins. Serbs in
Republika Srpska could become very problematic if they either split from
Bosnia-Herzegovina or decide to flood across the border to fight with their
fellow Serbs. NATO -- which commands the European forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina
-- is rumored to have a contingency plan to sweep into Republika Srpska if
either of these events happens, taking the government buildings and media
outlets and blocking the main roads into Serbia.



The Threat of Greater -- and Spreading -- Violence



Contagion effects of Balkan violence are well known; they were seen both in the
early 20th century and in the 1990s, and the recent outbursts are following the
same pattern. Since EU and NATO forces are present, there have been no large
wars declared by the states themselves. But if the region does ignite, Western
forces could face many problems. First, those forces are a mere shadow of what
they were during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s -- during which it took four
years to get the region generally under control. European and U.S. forces are
deployed only in the non-Serbian section of Bosnia-Herzegovina and within
Kosovo, not throughout the region. Furthermore, NATO and the United States are
bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq and trying to juggle threats larger than
the Balkans -- namely Iran and Russia.



To put it plainly, the West is not paying much attention to the Balkans other
than as a bargaining chip with other global players such as Russia. But with or
without the world watching, the actors in the Balkans are ready to move.

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