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The Spectacle Blog
Having decided that ethnic Albanians can leave Serbia, NATO in its wisdom decided that Serbs could not leave Kosovo. After dismantling Serbia, Western officials explain, we must not allow any border changes! Of course. This unbalanced approach long has been U.S. policy in the Balkans. Washington consistently criticized—rightly—Serbian atrocities against their neighbors, but rarely mentioned—shamefully—atrocities against Serbs.
No surprise, such an unprincipled policy has led to continuing instability in Kosovo:
Nato troops fired tear gas and gunfire was heard in north Kosovo late on Wednesday as hundreds of Serbs poured into the streets to defend barricades erected against the country’s ethnic Albanian authorities. Sirens called Serbs out to respond as Nato soldiers moved to dismantle one of more than a dozen roadblocks erected in July against an operation by the Kosovo government to post border police in the mainly Serb north, a Reuters witness said.
It’s time for genuine negotiations between Kosovo and Serbia, with no predetermined result by the West, as before. The obvious trade is to leave the Serb-dominated territory in the north of Kosovo with Serbia in exchange for Belgrade’s recognition of Kosovo. Neither side would be happy, but both sides would be better off than today.
View all comments (8) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Doug Bandow
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/11/24/more-good-news-from-nato-natio
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Sean| 11.24.11 @ 10:53AM
Time to give Kosovo back to the Serbs. Get out of there and let Serbia and Albania fight over it.
Dai Alanye | 11.24.11 @ 6:05PM
The ancestors of the Albanians were in Kosovo hundreds of years before the Serbs invaded the Balkans, and might possibly have preceded the Greeks.
That said, Bandow probably has the right idea in this instance - an example, I suspect, of the exception proving the rule.
Vincent Jappi| 11.24.11 @ 7:50PM
Before the Serb extermination attempt of the Kosovars in 1998 and 1999, only three municipalities had a Serb majority in the north of Kosovo: Leposavić, Zvečan and Zubin Potok.
To let Serbia steal the north from independent Kosovo would not only sanction ethnic cleansing, it would also open a Pandora's box of challeges to the internal Federal borders drawn in 1945, first of all in strategically sensitive and politically weak Macedonia.
The only way Serbia could get part of the north is through a voluntary exchange, among mutually recognized independent states, of the three original Serb-majority municipalities in Kosovo against the Albanian-majority municipalities of Presheva, Medvegja and Bujanovc in Serbia.
The Yugoslav Federation was the only state where "all the Serbs" could "live together" without leaving their homes or massively committing horrendous crimes and provoking violent, ultimately victorious defensive reactions.
THEY destroyed it; all that is needed now is to help them remember where the borders of Serbia are; through the use of force if necessary, as was finally acknowledged EIGHT years after their first acts of illegal violence against the Constitutional Federal framework of Yugoslavia.
Mr Bandow has consistently shown a disqualifying incompetence on the former Yugoslavia, whereas there are literally scores of experts on the region who have properly learned its politics and its languages, and who
have long since concluded that the full independence of 7 of its 8 former constituent units is the only just and viable long-term solution.
Vincent Jappi| 11.24.11 @ 8:42PM
Like in Croatia, where 2/3 of the Serbs registered in the 1991 census lived outside Serb-majority regions,
2/3 of the 120,000 Serbs in Kosovo live outside of the (now) Serb-majority north.
Those have understood that their future lies with their Kosovar neighbors, but such future would be compromised if politicians in Belgrade succeeded in their challenge to the frontiers of Kosovo.
Of the 600,000 Serbs registered in Croatia in the census of 1991, two thirds have now left, 130,000 of whom in 1995 --from the territories they had tried to steal from Croatia when the Croatian army took them back, but the others because such an attempt had soured relations in the rest of the country.
The politicians in Belgrade, just as they didn't care about the Serbs in Croatia, do not care about the Serbs in Kosovo either: they are only playing, for their constituents, a game of diversion from the problems they are unable to solve in Serbia,
by subsidizing illegal parallel administrative structures in Kosovo, by encouraging violence and more recently by inviting Russian meddling there.
It seems that, of all Serbs, Milorad Pupovac, a representative of the remaining Serbs in Croatia, whose party, the "Serb National Council" is part of the current parliamentary majority there, had more concern for the well-being of the Kosovo Serbs, when he expressed, on November 22 2011, the:
"hope that the Serbs in Kosovo will not repeat the same errors which the Serbs committed in Croatia."
"We, too, had opportunities which we missed, and the Serbs in Kosovo now have an opportunity which I hope they will seize so that Kosovo is also theirs, and not belong only to the Albanians",
Pupovac declared on RTV Voivodina.
He added that the Serbs in Kosovo ought to be conscious that...
"It has meant, so far, to take part in the negotiations in order to define the kind of institutions, the institutional framework where the Serbs could have their place, a proper influence, a politics of their own".
http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/.....d=24399056
Nathan Albright | 11.26.11 @ 7:01AM
It is going to take a very pragmatic approach to come up with any solution that will work, and this is a fair one. The Serbs, however irrationally (and despite being a small minority), have a deep tie to Kosovo as a key element in their national identity thanks to their defeat by the Turks on that ground in 1389. Likewise, the Albanians have an unassailable popular majority there and any democratic government is going to be a primarily Albanian one. Perhaps it would make sense to give a small sliver of land to Serbia while the rest has its recognized independence (or seeks union with Albania), at least since it appears that neither the Serbs nor the Albanians can trust each other not to exploit their power to attack or oppress the other.
JA| 11.26.11 @ 10:47AM
Another example of why the US should not involve itself in the affairs of foreign nations; that part of the world has been a basket case for 1000 years - as have the Arab nations - and there is simply nothing that will change them.
The USA is broke, bankrupt; and it is the working families of this country that are paying for the US military to be there. A total waste of money, and millions of americans are out of work.
Absolutely disgusting.
The serbs, croats, albanians, macedonians, turks, greeks, sunni, shia, etc. etc. hate each other; always have, always will; what else is new.
The USA has literally bankrupted itself, post 1945, trying to bring peace and stability to many parts of the world - courtesy of the US taxpaying families. For what? Most people around the world hate the USA. Fine. Let them.
Time for the USA to mind its own business and take care of ourselve.
Vincent Jappi| 11.26.11 @ 3:47PM
The Communist, Muslim, drug-addicted sodomite Usurper and the Democrat party have bankrupted the United States, nothing else.
Wayne| 11.26.11 @ 5:18PM
Its not NATO, its the US. NATO is the US. These are the type of actions that makes people agree with Ron Paul. The US is not or should not be in the business of policing the world. Even worse is giving our autonomy away to NATO.