[THS] Eric Walberg: Balkan Intrigues

[Peter Webster]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19399.htm

Balkan Intrigues

The latest country to find its place on the map 
is sending shockwaves around the world

By Eric Walberg

21/08/08 "Al-Ahram Weekly" -- 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 and terrorist 
groups all of which have gained a new lease on 
“independence” from this latest Balkan intrigue.
***
Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly. You can 
reach him at www.geocities.com/walberg2002/