Opinion Editorials, February 2008
|
|
Kosovo: Balkan intrigues
By Eric Walberg
ccun.org, February 21, 2008
By Eric Walberg
ccun.org, February 21, 2008
Kosovo’s declaration of independence 17 February
brings the number of statelets born out of the former Yugoslavia,
population 23 million, to seven — Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro,
Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzigovina, Serbia, and now Kosovo, which boasts
an impressive two million.
Statistics are trotted out to justify independence
from Serbia. Nintey per cent of residents are Albanian, it is said,
though this excludes 250,000 Serbs who fled when the NATO invaded.
Some 120,000 plucky Serbs remained and a brave 18,000 have trickled
back in recent years — under armed escort — to hostile
neighbourhoods, to reclaim homes seized by Albanian squatters when
NATO troops occupied the province. But demographic shifts are no
reason to dismember a country.
The province was the heartland of the Serbian Kingdom
in the 13th century until conquered by the Ottomans in the 15th
century, and only by the end of the 19th century did it have a
slight majority of ethnic Albanians for the first time. It suffered
mass population transfers of both Serbs and Albanians over the years
and finally achieved quasi-state status within the Yugoslav
Federation by the 1960s. In the 1970s, the demographic balance was
75-25 Albanian-Serbian. Milosevic owed his rise to the presidency to
his defence of Serbs in Kosovo after the death of president Josip
Broz Tito in 1980, whose motto was “a weak Serbia means a strong
Yugoslavia.” Kosovan nationalists were demanding full republican
status within the federation by then, and in 1990 its parliament
even declared independence (only recognised by, surprise, Albania).
This dissolving of the delicately balanced federation would have
been suicide and the movement was suppressed, as similar movements
have been in Spain, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and many, many other
countries, with nary a whisper of protest by the “international
community”.
Milosevic’s attempt in the 1990s to resettle Serbian
refugees from civil wars in Croatia and Bosnia prompted the
formation of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1995, a rag-tag
rebel group financed by drug, arms and human trafficking, which made
it to the US State Department’s prestigious list of international
terrorist organisations in 1998 — Osama bin Laden made three visits
to Kosovo 1994-96, but which the West nonetheless supported in the
“liberation” of Kosovo in 1998-99. The denouement — Milosevic being
served up to the International Criminal Court by Serbia’s current
prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica — did nothing to reverse what was
by now a clear policy by the West to carve a new, compliant state
out of the remains of Yugoslavia.
As for who threatened who in the lead-up to the
current declaration of independence, the 10,000 casualties of the
upheaval of 1998-99 included Serbs, Albanians and Roma, with no one
group faring much better than the other, and despite intensive
efforts by NATO forces, no proof of mass murder of Albanians — the
excuse used to justify the NATO bombing — was ever found. Eerily
similar to the aftermath of the US pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, in
search of non-existent weapons of mass destruction. In any case,
with the invasion, it was the Serbs who ended up fleeing rather than
the Albanians. The last major outbreak of violence was in 2004 and
was against the Serbs.
Kostunica argues that the Serbs should not be held to
account for Milosevic’s supposed sins, that self-rule for Kosovo
within a federation is an acceptable compromise, that creating such
a statelet benefits no one, least of all ordinary Kosovans, and
merely acts as a dangerous precedent on the world stage, but only
Russia, China and a few others appear to be listening. He vowed the
nation would never accept this “gross violation of international
law” and angrily pointed the finger at the US, which was “ready to
violate the international order for its own military interests”.
Even pro-Western Serbian President Boris Tadic said, “I will never
give up the fight for our Kosovo.” Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly
Churkin called for the United Nations to annul the move, demanding
an emergency meeting of the Security Council 18 February. No
resolution on Kosovo’s independence was made, with members China,
Russia and Indonesia making it clear this was a stillborn child as
far as they were concerned.
Western hypocrisy is so thick it can be cut with a
knife: EU officials issued a statement acknowledging Kosovo’s
independence declaration without explicitly endorsing it, thanks to
Spain’s distaste. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said
the alliance would respond “swiftly and firmly against anyone who
might resort to violence.” US President George W Bush in Tanzania
produced his usual inimitable sound-byte: “The Serbian people can
know that they have a friend in America.” The US was low-key,
calling on all parties to “exercise the utmost restraint and to
refrain from any provocative act”, though it provocatively proceeded
to recognise the new republic, along with Britain and France.
But then, why bother to toot one’s horn? US Albanian
immigrants did that in any case, streaming into Pristina to dance in
frenzied jubilation. Beating drums, waving flags, shooting guns in
the air and throwing firecrackers, they chanted: “Independence!
Independence! We are free at last!” An outpouring of adulation for
the US was evident everywhere, in sharp contrast to the despair,
anger and disbelief that gripped Serbia and its ethnic enclaves in
northern Kosovo.
Europe has been busy in the Balkans
since it helped destroy the Ottoman Empire a century ago. Most
recently it welcomed Slovenia to its fold in 2004 and promises
Croatia membership next year. NATO has been flexing its muscles,
too, having swallowed up Slovenia in 2004 and promising Croatia
membership this year. The plan is to bribe Serbia into acquiescing
to the loss of Kosovo by giving it a nice, wet Euro-kiss. While
Serbia is wise to NATO, it is not clear if its wrecked economy and
exhausted people will give in to the lure of euros. In addition to
the 16,000 NATO troops, the EU has parachuted in 2000 police, judges
and administrators into Kosovo, but insisted Kosovo’s independence
will be severely circumscribed. A wise move, that, considering the
KLA and Kosovo’s reputation for terrorism and all kinds of
trafficking, and the new prime minister’s deep mafia connections. In
a faux show of
magnanimity, the KLA political leader and Kosovan prime minister,
Hashim Thaci, called on displaced Serbs living outside Kosovo to
return, guaranteeing them full rights. Thaci was a founding member
in 1993 of the Marxist-Leninist oriented People’s Movement of
Kosovo, which advocates Pan-Albanianism; his sister just happens to
be married to Sejdija Bajrush, the top Albanian mafioso.
The fallout from this latest chapter
of Balkan intrigues is already accelerating. At least three shiny
new border posts have been burned down and three bombs exploded near
Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe offices in
northern Kosovo. Demonstrators there demanded that the Serbian army
mobilise to keep their territories, which make up 15 per cent of
Kosovo, part of Serbia. The northern part of Kosovo already has
parallel institutional structures and does not recognise the
authority of the Kosovo government. Misha Glenny, an expert on the
Balkans, warns, “Whatever the outcome of Kosovo’s independence,
everyone knows we are heading for
de facto partition. But
no one is willing to admit it.” Serbian police officers have
deserted the multi-ethnic Kosovo police force and given their
allegiance to Belgrade.
Next door, Serbian separatists in the
Muslim-Croat Federation have stepped up their threats to secede from
Bosnia. Macedonia, which has the misfortune of bordering Kosovo,
Albania and Serbia, and has a substantial restive Albanian minority
to boot, will wait for at least 15 EU countries to recognise Kosovo
first. Biljana Vankovska from the Institute for Peace and Defence
Studies in Skopje said, “the perspectives of the Kosovo market are a
cold comfort for Macedonia’s economy.” Serbian President Boris Tadic
says that Serbia will recall its ambassadors from countries that
recognise an independent Kosovo, which already include the US, UK,
Germany and France. Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia, Bulgaria and
Romania are not planning to recognise Kosovo any time soon. Even
Poland is having doubts.
Kosovo’s independence will inevitably
lead to separatist efforts by other dissatisfied territories around
the world. The very day of the declaration, presidents of two
Georgian breakaway provinces — Abhazia’s President Sergei Begapsh
and South Ossetia’s President Eduard Kokoity — met with Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and received a commitment for
continued support. All residents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were
granted Russian citizenship after heavy-handed Georgian attempts to
cow the independent-minded territories in the 1990s. “We are told
all the time: Kosovo is a special case,” Putin said recently. “It is
all lies. There is no special case and everybody understands it
perfectly well.” After his official meeting with Lavrov, Bagapsh
said, “Abkhazia will soon ask the Russian Federal Assembly and the
UN Security Council to recognise its independence.”
Despite the tragedy of Chechnya, such enthusiasm to
team up with Russia by Muslim border states suggests that religion
is really not the issue here at all. There are also Trans-Dniester,
sandwiched between Ukraine and Moldova, Nagorno-Karabakh, the
breakaway Armenian district in Azerbaijan, and farther afield,
Taiwan, Kurdistan, Baluchistan, the Tamil Tigers, and many, many
other would-be countries all of which have gained a new lease on
“independence” from this latest Balkan intrigue.
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
||||||
