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.
Because in practice there is precious little difference between the two parties.
Because in practice there is precious little difference between the two parties. That's why.
Take a look. We will be Kosovo.
Unintended consequences, Bad policy just got worse
[snip]TheTownCrier http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/
......headline........Native American Courts: Precedent for an Islamic arbitral system (Establish Shariah Law in USA). Source: American Muslim Published: Mar 3, 2008
My Grgrgrandfather is rolling in his grave. He and many of his contemporaries (all Cherokee) were trying to get rid of the tribal system of government/courts in the 1800’s because they knew it would be a contradiction to the Constitution and national stability. We NEVER learn.
What the hell are you talking about? Cantons? What cantons? Before you start shooting your mouth off, learn a thing or two about the history of the region. "Kosovars" don't exist -- much like "Palestinians." It isn't a nation, a people. There are Serbs (indigenous) and there are Albanians (illegal aliens / occupiers).
Regarding the fighting, the Serbs were only trying to defend themselves (learning a thing or two the hard way in 1941/2) and trying to prevent the sequel to WWII (which never really ended in Yugoslavia).
Albanians aren’t “Islamofascists”.
Serbs didn’t “choose to share”. They too were forced into Yugoslavia thx to Brit pressure since the promise from 1915 was withdrawn.
No, what we have here is four wars of secession, started by FOUR different different groups (Slovenes, Croatians, Bosnians, Albanians) against two different entities -- The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and now, with the Albanians, Serbia.
Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia were republics of Yugoslavia who chose to secede. Kosovo has never been "a republic". You are comparing apples to oranges.
In case you missed the memo -- Serbia was found "not guilty" on all charges of genocide in Bosnia, so don't drag that into the argument.
As for "apologists", you are the guy who just showed up here out of nowhere three days ago to argue this case, so I'd think twice before calling anyone names.
Serbs weren't "forced" to do anything -- they were on the winning side of the war, when Croatia was on the losing side. The British could have cared less about what happened to Croatia post-war, they had their own worries. Besides, Dalmatia wasn't even part of Croatia until after WWII when Tito gave it to them.
Just the beginning, Aunt B.
Granting Kosovo independence was like pulling that small snag on a sweater, only to find the whole sweater unraveling in your hands and you can't put it back together. In this case, "the sweater" is the geo-political world.
I suggest you pick up a history book or two. When the Russians were knocked out of the war by the Bolsheviks, the main backers for the Treaty of London were gone.
On the island of Corfu, the British insisted upon Pasic to accept a state that reached towards Carinthia and Istria instead of the one promised in the Treaty of London.
Again, pick up a history book. Dalmatia was the centre of the Croatian kingdom....all the royal capitals of Croatia were in Dalmatia, all Croatia's kings were Dalmatian.
When the Serbs and Croatians came to a deal in 1939 (Cvetkovic-Macek Sporazum), the whole of Dalmatia was included within the Croatian Banovina.
Now let's see if you'll again engage in Serbian amnesia the next time this historical fact is brought up.
However, they were there before the "Albanians," because the "Albanians" (a non-existant name at the time, obviously) represented a statistical error in Kosovo's population according to the Turkish census conducted some 8 centuries after the Serbian arrival. Actually, the population is almost exclusively Serb.
Furthermore, I was talking about the last 60 years when I said "illegal aliens." It was a well-known policy of the Communist rulers of Yugoslavia to have an open-door immigration policy toward Stalinist Albania. God knows who entered Serbia during those years. Conveniently enough, they created (the autonomous region of) Kosovo and kept expanding its jurisdictions and powers in order to further weaken Serbia. When the Minister of Interior of Serbia at the time started asking questions, he was promptly removed by Tito (1966).
History buff my a$$. Utterly, appalingly clueless more like.
‘Clinton and wesley clark should have been in the hague’
I don’t like either, but you’re wrong.
So you are worried about how long the Serbs have been there when it is at least 1000 yrs? If you are an Avar, Illyrian or Ostrogoth you got a bitch.
And yes, I know the history of the region.
A “Kosovar” is a resident of Kosovo. Most of them are ethnic Albanians, yes. But it's a useful concept if you reject the concept that every ethnic Albanian must be in Albania.
I'm sorry you don't like my point of view, but calling me stupid or imply I'm ignorant of the history. I've been watching this area since 1992, sadly.
Most of the albunnies living in Kosovo are refugees from the XoXa regime in Albania, which was one of the two or three most singularly ****ed-up regimes in the commie world. They basically brutalized and terrorized everybody else out of the province as they came in in what amounted to a kind of slow motion land theft.
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