Posted on 03/05/2008 4:08:54 PM PST by Bokababe
BELGRADE, Serbia -- As editor-in-chief of Serbia's oldest and most prestigious daily newspaper, Politika, I am at a loss to explain the West's stubborn support for Kosovo independence to my readers. Only nine years ago, my country was bombed for 78 days by the most powerful military alliance the world has ever seen, and the last thing I want is to pour oil over the fire of anti-Western sentiment. But the truth is, I find myself grappling with the same bitterness and resentment as most of my countrymen.
I was very much part of the democratic upheaveal that rid Serbia of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, and all Serbia has done since was to mend its ways.
We sought to come to terms with the past, put old quarrels behind us, make peace with our neighbors and become friends with the United States and European countries that bombed us in 1999.
We set up war crimes courts and tried suspected war criminals, while extraditing others to the Hague Tribunal, where we sent a score of ex-presidents, including Milosevic himself, and roughly half of the former Army leadership.
We signed peace and cooperation treaties, invited Western companies to invest in Serbia's economy, and NGOs to monitor our progress in democracy and human rights.
We elected democratic rulers with impeccable anti-Milosevic credentials who carried out responsible and moderate policies, to the applause of Washington and Brussels.
We oppressed no ethnic minorities and violated no universal declarations.
In the meantime, a very different storyline unfolded in our southern province of Kosovo. As soon as Serb forces left Kosovo in June 1999, a massive campaign of reverse ethnic cleansing against 200,000 non-Albanians took place under the noses of 50,000 NATO troops.
Rather than the multiethnic democracy U.S. President Bill Clinton invoked on the day he dispatched the bombers, Kosovo is nowadays one of the most ethnically pure regions in Europe. Hundreds of Serb medieval monasteries, churches and cemeteries have been desecrated, dynamited, burned or razed to the ground. The few Serbs left in Albanian-majority areas live in NATO-guarded enclaves, fearful for their lives. Lawlessness is pervasive, crime is rampant, intolerance is the norm. Compared to Kosovo, post-Milosevic Serbia is a multiethnic paradise.
Why, then, the unseemly rush to grant Kosovo independence? Western officials grasp at straws to explain their motives. We are told "Milosevic lost Kosovo", and that we should blame him for the fate of the thousands and thousands of our co-nationals who have been cleansed from the mythical "old Serbia." But Milosevic is six feet under, and in Belgrade we feel as if we're witnessing the resurgence of the notion of "fundamentally evil" groups. If the Serbs' repression of Albanians in the 1990s lost them the right to govern Kosovo, as we were repeatedly told while NATO bombs rained on our heads, surely the Albanians lost political and moral high ground through ruthless discrimination against Serbs, Roma and other minorities?
Whatever Milosevic's transgressions, the Albanians' radical nationalism should neither have been encouraged nor rewarded in Kosovo. I am particularly disappointed by Chancellor Angela Merkel's championing of Kosovo's unilateral independence.
German history shows that radical solutions to the national question cannot be good, even when discontent is justified and minorities have legitimate grievances. It does not do to encourage secession or advocate annexation. Turning Kosovo into an independent state, with its half-terrorist, ultra-chauvinist leadership and its monoethnic population, is a radical event in European history. Of all countries, Germany should have opposed hasty independence for Kosovo.
Intellectually and morally, I do not know how to come to terms with Western democracies' support for Kosovo secessionists. For once, Serbs and their leaders did everything by the book. All they set out to do was to preserve their country's territorial integrity and sovereignty, guaranteed under Security Council Resolution 1244, which ended NATO's bombing. Serbia agreed to permanent international guarantees of Kosovo's political autonomy within the formal territory of Serbia, Kosovo's membership in international financial institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, and Kosovo's right to enter different types of international agreements. Its leaders presented only legal arguments and negotiated peacefully under international auspices.
It did them no good. International law was broken. Under the pretext that Serbia's late dictator had been a terrible person, Serbia's Konrad Adenauer and Willy Brandt have been denied and scorned, while the leader of Kosovo's brutal guerrilla army, the KLA, is being hailed as a democrat and a statesman.
And no, I am not proud that hundreds of angry demonstrators went on a rampage in Belgrade last Thursday, shouting anti-American slogans, burning embassies and pillaging shops. But just like my fellow countrymen, I cannot help but note the irony in Washington's outrage. The Bush administration angrily denounced Serbia for failing to uphold its responsibility under international law to protect embassies.
The Belgrade rally that turned violent had been called to do the very same thing: chastise countries who conveniently ignore their responsibilites to protect sovereignty guaranteeed under the U.N. Charter. The last time I checked, international law was also supposed to protect small countries.
Ljiljana Smajlovic is the editor in chief of the Belgrade-based daily Politika. Her article "The Story of Kosovo" first appeared in German in the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche.
I’m really struggling to why we are siding with the Albanian muslims and helping islam to spread it;s hatred of the west.
Clinton and wesley clark should have been in the hague
what I don’t get is what on earth is Bush thinking
Did that trip over there where he was greeted good of the Albanians go to his head
I struggle to understand it too.
LLS
Someone tell the editor, this American had nothing to do with it.
why did we side with the Albanians
well it’s called islam appeasment, we think that if we help them ion their ethnic cleansing they the muslims will now like us
yes I know how naive but I cannot think of another reason
o nearly forgot the reason why so many Americans think clinton was right bombing your country is because chritina ammanpour gave a very biased peice of kosovo and only ever telling one side to the conflict
"It was always clear that one of the major casualties of Kosovo Independence would be the bilateral relationship between the United States and Serbia. The United States of America was the driving force behind the initial NATO bombing campaign in 1999 and now the coordinated recognition of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the Kosovo Albanians."
same as me
the editor will find many who do not share clintons war and we too wonder why we sided with islamic nutjobs
In a just world, Bill Clinton would have been tried for war crimes, too. This is a 1984 world. Good is bad. Islam is a religion of peace and Eastern Orthodox Christianity is purged from the land under the watchful eyes of the EU and NATO.
this is why clinton and wesley clark should have bee at the hague on war crimes and especially ethnic cleansing
they those two helped to rid kosovo a part of serbia of it’s native people
ironic that Turkey see kosovo for the albanians yet they don’t see kurdistan as independant
Bush has just done something which will help Mexico to make CA, NM, AZ all part of Mexico
utterly stupid
I have no answers. I just don’t get it.
Because to a significant percentage of the Federal Government every revolutionary is George Washington...except the Contras. ;)
Maybe, just maybe, we are witnessing the end of "national sovereignty", period. Maybe Serbia and Kosovo were just the "petri dish" to experiment in.
However, Serbs were our allies during WWI so that example is not accurate. Times may change, but Islamofascists don’t.
this of course I have often thought.
I know the far wacky left would love to rid this world of borders, they think we will all hold hands and sing cum by yar or however it’s spelt
Bush has set a dangerous prescedent for this country saying that he wants mexicans to come here, infact I remember a pseech he gave to the border patrol where he stated that it was a great job as they learn a language
We have thrown serbia into Russia’s hands with this policy
I do wonder however if it ever gets told that many Americans do not support this and we too wonder what the hell is going on with us siding with albanian muslim extremists
I understand why the corrupt and twisted Clinton Administration supported Islamofacists when the West supported Kosovo. I DO not understand why the Bush Administration continues this reprehensible policy. It seems to me that Bush did not get rid of the leftist operatives when he took office. This has proven to be plain STUPID because too many corrupt and twisted decisions have been made by the State Department like "land for peace" and the continued support for killing Christians to help terrorists steal their own country, and gain a foothold in Europe. Plus supporting Kosovo independence establishes a dangerous precedent by encouraging other Islamofacists to "create" their own breakaway countries in Russia and maybe China (and elsewhere). This backward policy makes no sense to me!
It’s the Saudis. And when Bush complained about why OPEC wasn’t raising oil production yesterday-—it hit home that the US is no longer an independent state. In fact, it is more dependent (to the Muslims in the ME) than Kosovo has become.
http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=287
The driving force in the Balkans is still nationalism, not religion. Serbs have fought Catholic Croats was well as Muslim Bosnians and Kosovars. The claim that Serbia is fighting Islamic terrorism is window dressing. Serbia wants every canton with a majority of Serbians to be part of Serbia. Fine. That implies allowing the rest of Kosovo to got its own way, and allowing Croat cantons to join Croatia, and so forth. They haven’t allowed that.
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