Serbs Struggle to Understand Western Support for Kosovo Independence

Center for Peace in the Balkans ^ | Mar 5, 2008 | Ljiljana Smajlovic

[GAB-1955]

I understand your point. Yes, I was thinking of Bosnia; blame sleep loss on a day when the power went out.(I sleep with a CPAP from apnea; I had no sleep that night.) I will admit that no one in the Balkans is 100 percent right or wrong. I'm not even anti-Serb; I'm not anti-anything except being insulted.

I would like to see an end to conflict in the Balkans. I fear it will never happen.

[Banat]

Bull$hit. While nobody here claims that Albanians didn't exist prior to the census in question, it is an absolute fact that there were (almost) no Albanians in Kosovo-Metohia before the Turkish invasion/conquest (1457).

The Illyria myth is nice, but baseless, ridiculous and preposterous. The Romans had long since wiped most of the Illyrians off the face of the earth (see Illyrian Wars; 229BC and 219BC; final destruction 169BC). The Albani were just one of the dozens of Illyrian tribes (who sharedthe Balkans with some Celtic and Venetic tribes, such as the Histri, Liburni, Colapiani...) and they NEVER inhabited any lands north of the present-day south-central Albania. Therefore, their historical "right" to Kosovo-Metohia is non-existent.

The Serbs certainly weren't the first ones to live in Kosovo, but they got there at least 750 years before any Albanian ever set foot in Kosovo-Metohia. The Serbian towns and the names of those towns, as well as of Kosovo's rivers, valleys, mountains, hills, etc; the hundreds of churches, monasteries, etc all bear witness to the Serbian origin and ownership of today's Kosovo-Metohia. It has been inhabited by Serbs since the 6th century.

To this day, the Serbian government has the deeds to some 60% of Kosovo-Metohia, whereas the Serbian Orthodox Church owns the rest (Metohia; private property donated to the SOC by Serbia's mediaeval nobility and/or state).

Kosovo is Serbia. Plain and simple.

[LjubivojeRadosavljevic]

Kosovo is Serbia. plain and simple.

In view of the above, ask yourself why it is that the career-level bureuacrats in the US State Department (and in the EU) are unable to understand how plain and simple it is to know that Kosovo is Serbia.

[montyspython]

More Albanian revisionism, the Illyrian myth is dead, deal with it.

[Serb29]

The pre-Balkan history of the Albanians John Wilkes: Albanians are not Illyrians
The pre-Balkan history
of the Albanians
In his book, “The Illyrians”, John Wilkes states on pg: 219:

“NOT MUCH RELIANCE SHOULD PERHAPS BE PLACED ON ATTEMPTS TO IDENTIFY AN ILLYRIAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL TYPE AS SHORT AND DARK SKINNED SIMMILAR TO MODERN ALBANIANS.”

“Wilkes, having published this work in the early 90s ruined the earlier accepted theory that Albanians were the descendants of the Illyrians. Wilkes is the foremost authority on Illyrians in the world today. An anthropologist, archeologist, a published historian and Professor of History whose familiarity with Balkan archeology is first hand, Wilkes’ conclusions lead to the conclusion that the modern descendants of the Illyrians may in fact lie in Bosnia, Serbia and Dalmatia. While Albanians do have Illyrian blood, Wilkes leads the reader to conclude that Illyrian blood and culture most definitely to be found to a greater degree than ever thought before, in Serb lands.”

[canuck_conservative]

If you are under 50 years old and the answer to the second question is “No”, then you don’t know what you are talking about.

So we can assume you're over 50?

[joan]

He is 33 ½. He’s from Toronto and he actually met with Freeper “ma bell” back in August 1992, around his birthday, at some bar in Canada and they were posting about it at this forum (they both used different names back then.)

[joan]

I meant August 2002, not 1992. FR didn’t exist in 1992 of course.