Posted on 03/22/2008 7:55:37 PM PDT by Bokababe
UPI Outside View Commentator PITTSBURGH, March 20 (UPI) -- Fighting in northern Kosovo this week between Serbs and NATO-led troops shows that the independence engineered by the Bush administration for the breakaway Balkan province is not going according to plan.
When U.S. officials encouraged the unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia by Kosovo's Albanians Feb. 17, we were told that an EU mission would replace the United Nations in Kosovo, and everyone would then build a multiethnic, democratic society with respect for rights of the Serbs, a minority in the province as a whole.
That is not happening.
The Serbs of northern Kosovo, where they are a majority, believe that they have little future in an Albanian state. They have resisted its imposition on them, mainly through peaceful means, except for destroying the control posts on the border that they do not recognize despite U.S. insistence that they must.
The protests turned violent when U.N. police with NATO backing forcibly broke up the peaceful occupation of a government building Monday -- and the ensuing fighting left hundreds of Serb civilians, U.N. police and NATO-led troops injured, some critically, and one U.N. policeman dead.
The EU mission cannot enter northern Kosovo and the United Nations was forced to pull out, leaving NATO troops to guard a border that has no status under international law and that is rejected by the people living on both sides of it.
The problem is not that "Serb nationalists" are resisting "the West," as it is put by those U.S. journalists who honor the First Amendment by parroting the State Department, but rather that the Bush administration has attempted to force a military solution to a political problem, in violation of the U.N. charter and the most basic principles of international law.
This is not the first time they have done so, of course, and if the scale of violence in Kosovo is less than that in Iraq, the possibility of destabilizing another region -- this time the Balkans -- is just as grave.
Kosovo really was the birthplace of the Serbian nation 800 years ago, and was included in Serbia after the Ottoman Empire was forced out in 1912. But Albanians also always lived there. Demographic changes in the 20th century (some caused by ethnic cleansing of Serbs from the region during Italian occupation in World War II) led to a heavy ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo by the 1980s, and Serbia's continued control over the province required a police state.
But the Serbian hand in Kosovo was no heavier than Britain's rule of Ireland in the decades before Irish independence in 1923, or Israel's occupation of the West Bank until the Oslo accords, or Turkey's continuing control over the Kurdish-majority regions in eastern Turkey. And these situations usually end when the governing state realizes that maintaining control is too costly, in financial, political and even moral terms, and seeks a deal to permit withdrawal.
Such a deal could have been reached with Serbia, but neither the Clinton administration nor that of George W. Bush wanted one. Both saw Kosovo as an opportunity for isolating Russia from the Balkans for the first time in more than a century, since Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, never one of the world's great strategic thinkers, had chosen to ally Serbia with, first, the Soviet Union and then with Russia. Further, with the apparent end of the Cold War, NATO needed a job, since the alliance had been formed to keep the Soviet Union from invading West Germany. Attacking Serbia to "liberate" Kosovo was meant to transform NATO from a purely defensive alliance into a more proactive or offensive one, contrary to NATO's own charter, but responding to a certain realpolitik.
The most basic principle of international law since World War II, however, and the most fundamental principle of the U.N. system, is that aggressive wars are banned -- that was the justification the first George Bush gave for attacking Iraq after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and the whole world except for North Korea agreed with him. But attacking a sovereign state in order to occupy part of its territory and ultimately change its borders is another story. Unfortunately for international law and international stability, NATO's action against Serbia in 1999 was just such a war of aggression, waged without U.N. Security Council approval.
And it did not go as planned. As the State Department itself admitted in May 1999, once NATO attacked Serbia, Milosevic's forces turned what had been "selective targeting of towns and regions" suspected of armed Albanian resistance into a campaign to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of Albanians. This is worth repeating -- the 1999 NATO war against Serbia was not in response to ethnic cleansing but rather provoked it, which then made it necessary to carry the war on for three months in order to reverse the consequences of the NATO attacks themselves.
The 1999 war only ended when the Clinton administration went back to the U.N. Security Council that it had ignored in starting it. The resulting U.N. resolution recognized Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo. Since Russia does not feel obligated to assist the United States in isolating it from the Balkans, that resolution cannot be changed.
And rather than try to negotiate a solution, the Bush administration chose to try to impose one, in part to show the weakness of Russia.
But Kosovo is not recognized by most countries, or by the United Nations, or even by the European Union. Kosovo cannot achieve true independence unless and until the Kosovo Albanians reach a deal with Serbia -- exactly the course of action that the Bush administration has made more complicated than ever. Meanwhile, the whole system of international law is threatened, as is local peace in Kosovo and stability in the Balkans.
Kosovo can be settled if the Bush administration returns to the United Nations and engages in honest negotiation with the Serbs and the Russians. More fundamentally, stability in the international system can only be restored when the United States once again honors the fundamental principles of international law that it violated by attacking Iraq in 2003, and in recognizing Kosovo in 2008.
--
(Robert M. Hayden is professor of anthropology, law and public & international affairs and director of the Center for Russian & East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.)
--
The irony is that we had an opportunity to work with the Russians, we didn’t. We shouldn’t be crying foul when we poked the bear with a stick and it turned around and bit us.
Way to go bushbots.
Start there.
The Jihadists in Kosovo have destroyed over 200 Christian churches, monasteries, and cemeteries.
No Christian can support those action, but many who claim to be Christians step forward to support Jihad.
U.S. analyst: Recognition "not as expected"
23 March 2008 | 12:35 | Source: VOA, Tanjug
WASHINGTON -- The recognition of Kosovo's unilateral declaration is not going as expected, an independent U.S. analyst says.
This, John Zavales told the Voice of America, comes despite Washington's "international lobbying".
Zavales told the VOA that the protests in Belgrade and in northern Kosovo indicated that Kosovo's unilateral independence would cause instability in Serbia, Kosovo and the region.
"All in all, perhaps just about 50 countries will recognize Kosovo, out of the 192 UN members, which is not even one-third, and this certainly is not significant support, despite U.S. international lobbying for the independence of Kosovo," Zavales was quoted.
Zavales said that the unilateral declaration will have consequences on the secessionist movements in the world, and quoted Spain's concerns over the Basque region, and the concerns of Turkey, Iraq and Syria over their Kurdish minority.
"It is interesting that just a day after recognizing Kosovo's independence, Turkey sent thousands of troops to northern Iraq and implemented an operation against Kurdish separatists and rebels, which the United States supported," Zavales said, and added that "there are also the cases of Nagorno Karabakh, Abkhasia and South Ossetia".
"So, if the goal of the Western policy was to deconstruct the concept of statehood, reform the idea of sovereignty and create semi-states, then the support to Kosovo's independence may be interpreted as success, since from now on there will be countries which some states will recognize and some will not," Zavales concluded.
Actually, it is you who is bucking the system here, because the international court absolved Serbia of responsibility for the Srebrenica incident you are citing. That's fact. But, hey, "Greenberg, iceberg, what's the difference?"
2. "The Serbian government has presently announced its support for China’s crackdown against Tibet."
Serbia is a small country caught in the middle of games by the Great Powers. Her first choice was to turn West, but the West has repeatedly smacked her down and humiliated her, because the Administration continually plays "let's kick Russia in the Serbia". That stupid policy was bound to have repercussions. It forced Serbia to turn elsewhere for support. China supports Serbia's territorial integrity in the UN Security Council, could Serbia do any less for China even if she wanted to?
and here we go again about Silvertown.
How convinient that you can always take Srebrenica out of magician hat anytime you don`t have arguments on a completely different subject.
So how amusing for you would be Carla Del Ponte` book, “The Hunt”, to be published in Italy on April 3. The former Hague Tribunal Chief Prosecutor states that, during investigations into war crimes committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, against Serbs and other non-Albanians, the prosecutor’s office was informed that persons who disappeared during the Kosovo conflict were used in organ smuggling operations.
“Over the years, we have learned that a number of kidnapped Kosovo Serb girls and women have been used as sex slaves, kept under the lock and key in the dark, moldy cellars of Albanian bar and brothel owners, underfed, repeatedly raped and beaten, until they are deemed no longer useful and killed like dogs.
“There were also reports in the Serbian media about Kosovo Serb boys and men being forced to work in unsecured, illegal private mines, but with uncooperative UNMIK and indifferent KFOR (NATO) no investigation was ever initiated, and Serbian families of the Kosovo-Metohia missing are still without answers.
A Bloodcurdling Revelation in Del Ponte’s Book
“Now, however, the much discussed Carla del Ponte’s book ‘The Hunt’ offers a harrowing detail, revealing why have Serbian men been kidnapped throughout Kosovo province during past years instead of being killed on the spot, as is the usual KLA treatment for all non-Albanians, especially those of Serbian ethnicity: because they were used as a livestock for organ harvesting in the illegal trade with human organ transplants.”
http://byzantinesacredart.com/blog/2008/03/harrowing-truth.html
“Big fact that makes a difference between Serbs and Albanians:
Most Serbs have accepted the fact that a part of their nation commited attrocities against a lot of the ex YU nations. I for one, think that all the Serbs that have been pointed as suspects should go on trial and try and defend themselfs...WE sent Milosevic to THE Hague, even he did a lot of bad things to Serbs as well...
On the other hand we have ALBANIANS who think and are sure that not one single Albanian has ever commited any crime against anyone...They don’t even want to admit that the KLA killed Albanians that refused to join the KLA and those Albanians were considered as traitors...You still worship Taci, Ceku, Haradinaj and Jasari (just to mention a few) even they are the worst of the criminals. And you still think Haradinaj is a saint even he is the only one who ended up in The Hague...
Regarding Madamme Del Ponte, it is now obvious, that once that she is not the Chief Prosecutor of the ICTY she can tell the truth. I can hardly wait to read her book, because I’m sure I’ll find out of all the deals with the Serbian government on the Mladic case (and he should be at The Hague as well)...
And why this case of human organs trafficking was dropped? Probably because no one from UNMIK (and from the article of the other day we know why) wanted to help or were given orders not to help.
The Albanians should think of one thing: while most of them do not even have a job and live in really poor conditions, how does Taci live? And were does his money come from? Aren’t you pissed that some of them live like kings but the mayority don’t even have electricity 24 hours a day? This is what they should be worried about...
The more you defend them, the more we all know is that Del Ponte is right...”
“Serbian people have accepted its role in Srebrenica and President Tadic has appolagised for it...
It does not mean a lot to the family of the victims, and it will stay written in history of Serbia as its darkest moment and stain...
but at least we do not live in DENIAL...”
>I think the author explicitly calls for closer Russian >consultation
So what? Negotiations with Serbia should have indeed been pursued, and Russia has historic ties with Serbia. Negotiations with Serbia would have indeed inevitably included Russia, I’m afraid.
>Bush bad
Actually, it sounded to me like he blamed Clinton for creating the policy regarding Kosovo, and he stated that Bush continued it.
“1. Contrary to the claims of the author, murders of muslims began prior to the US intervention. Srbrenica is an inconveniet truth for the anti Kosovo crowd. Under the supervision of UN peacekeepers, Serbians murdered roughly 7,000 Muslim men. Consequent to these and other acts of violence by the Serbian government, the United States began a military intervention.”
Srbrenica was in fraking BOSNIA, not Kosovo.
>Milosevic implemented the slaughter at Srbrenica along with other slaughters.
Actually, Bosnian Serb rebel leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic were the ones responsible for Srbrenica and Bosnian atrocities in general, not Milosevic.
2. The Serbian government has presently announced its support for China’s crackdown against Tibet.
What exactly did they say?
>And yes President Bush is awesome and neither you nor the author are as good as he is.
In some areas, he’s done a very good job. In others, not. For example, he definetly could have done better when it came to border security, illegal immigration, and protecting our economy from outsourcing. On the other hand, he’s done well when it came to fighting Al-Qaeda, and eliminating Saddam’s regime, which was a threat to the stablilty of the Middle East.
Wrongo, bucko. We were working with the Russians on a lot of things. Still are.
We're having a problem working with Putin. Putin, who has decided the best thing to cement his power is a little Russian nationalism mixed with Soviet style press and fascism.
The petty tyrant threw a tantrum over the Baltics, the Ukraine and Georgia and is now rattling the oil saber. I say oil saber because the Russian military sucks and he knows it. And now his very transparent manipulations of Medvedev is to show there can be a new Stalin and he is happy to play the roll.
I care little for what the International Courts say.
International law is about defending sovereigns not people.
Nothing. Im from Serbia and Serbia didnt commented Tibet.
Chinese wont mess arround Kosovo, Serbia wont mess arround Tibet.
Serbia is a small country caught in the middle of games by the Great Powers. Her first choice was to turn West, but the West has repeatedly smacked her down and humiliated her, because the Administration continually plays “let’s kick Russia in the Serbia”. That stupid policy was bound to have repercussions. It forced Serbia to turn elsewhere for support. China supports Serbia’s territorial integrity in the UN Security Council, could Serbia do any less for China even if she wanted to?
True. It was declarative statement and it reffers more to the Kosovo issue then on Tibet. Mutual support to territorial integrity, no more no less. Nobody speeks of supporting violence in Tibet, especially by officials.
And for Russia – the only Power who wanted to help. Only they give mix of declarative support with a little of diplomatic actions. Nobody in Serbia belives in actual russian support and USA knows that. Both countries really do have historical ties, but more abstract ones – like in culture and religion (orthodoxy). But in the field of politics not much – Serbs asked for help of Russia in the past, but not getting much of it. Russia DIDN`T give any big help to Serbia during the fight for liberation of turkish ocupation in XIX century, just collecting some refuges from Serbia. Russian tzar REFUSED to help Serbia during the Habsburg Anexion crisis of Bosnia in 1908. `cose “we are allies now with Austrian Empire” tzar said (even serbian princess was married to one of Romanovs), what later caused WWI. Yugoslav army REFUSED to join Reds in “liberation” of Berlin in 1945 and to be part of USSR, and also there was big diplomatic conflict between Yugoslavia and USSR during Informburo crisis. So Serbs are very sceptical about this one too, just waiting to see what Russians will do for them. I`m afraid selling Oil industry to russian Gasprom under price will do any help. Wait and see.
This is really amusing. So, first Srebrenica, then China. What`s next – Papua New Guinea? Try to do some geography lonestar67 and read the article title first.
I think it`s more amusing to watch Indian Wells final.
Incorrect.
Srbrenica is completely innaplicable to this discussion. First, it occurred in Bosnia not Kosovo. Second, it was committed by Bosnian Serb forces not by the Serbian Army. Third, it was a much more complex situation then has been reported by the media and was more a retaliatory massacre than an unprovoked massacre.
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