Alekseev: Unilateral Recognition of Kosovo’s Independence Would Be an “Historic Mistake”
by Srdja Trifkovic
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The Russian Ambassador in Belgrade warns of a dangerous precedent; Ahtisaari’s plan is “dead,” says the diplomat.
The ambassador of the Russian Federation in Belgrade, Alexander Alekseev, is a career diplomat who occupies an increasingly sensitive post, considering the continuing lack of agreement between Moscow and Washington over the future of Kosovo. He speaks on Russia’s position on Kosovo with the authority, tact, and easy command of issues involved that have been sadly lacking in his departing U.S. colleague, Michael Polt.
We met at his office on August 2, amidst a hectic daily schedule of appointments that he keeps even at the height of the summer holiday season. We talked in Serbian and English—he is fluent in both—about the vexed problem of the southern Serbian province that the U.N. has administered for the past seven years.
At the beginning of our interview. Alekseev noted that the case for Kosovo’s independence is fundamentally weak, and those advocating it are unable to make a coherent case for it:
A: It is very hard to tell what are the arguments of our colleagues who support Kosovo’s independence. They are making a fundamental mistake in that they assume the right to make far-reaching decisions, and yet they have no understanding of the real situation on the ground. In any event, the reality has now prevailed and the plan previously tabled by Marti Ahtisaari is dead and it is no longer on the negotiating agenda.
Q: The rhetoric from Washington indicates increasing readiness to extend unilateral recognition of independence to Kosovo if no agreement is reached at the UNSC. How is the Russian diplomacy preparing for this eventuality?
A: First of all, we’ll try to work with our friends within the framework of the Contact Group, and now within the newly-established “Troika.” The mediators have to function on the basis of consensus, and without any deadlines. We’ll try to explain to them that it would be a huge, historic mistake to let Kosovo proclaim independence unilaterally, and then to proceed with unilateral recognition of that act. It would be a revolutionary step, not only vis-à-vis the Balkan region but in international relations world-wide. It would be an altogether new page in the history of the security system and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area. Such a precedent would be used, absolutely, by many other movements claiming the right to control parts of other countries. They would also try to be recognized as the legitimate authority in that part of another state which they control. Many frozen conflicts could revert back to the hot stage, both in the former Yugoslavia and in the former Soviet Union.
Q: Is there some division within the European Union regarding that eventuality?
A: It would be too ambitious for me to try and predict the outcome of internal discussions within the European Union. It is nevertheless apparent that in Europe there are two schools of thought. Some countries are tempted to follow the path of unilateral recognition, while others take much more careful approach.
Q: Here in Belgrade, when we look at the statements of some Serbian politicians, there is a notable discrepancy between President Tadic and his associates, who talk of the need for Serbia to enter “Euro-Atlantic integrations,” and Prime Minister Kostunica who only talks of “European” integrations. Do you see some ambiguity on this issue, and how does Russia look on the desire of some Serbian leaders to join an essentially anti-Russian alliance, while at the same time relying on Russia to protect them from NATO powers in the dispute over Kosovo?
A: I don’t like to comment the activities of the government of the country where I have the pleasure to serve. Generally speaking, there are huge differences between two integrations. “Atlantic integration” means NATO, and it has nothing to do with the natural concerns of Serbia and the Serbian people. NATO does not make any material contribution to the well-being of a member country, and I can see no reason why Serbia should be involved. “European integration” is a different matter, however. Being in the EU could be helpful to a country, and if it is the decision of our Serbian friends to follow that road, we’ll welcome it.
Q: Kosovo is not the only contentious issue between Russia and the West. There are anti-missile radar systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, the dispute with Britain over extradition demands, rivalry over energy . . . so can we talk of a “New Cold War”?
A: No, not at all. Nobody has an interest to go back to the cold war. We would like to be friends, but friendship assumes equal treatment. Russia must be treated as an equal, and must be involved as an equal in the settlement of international conflicts. If that were to be the case, a lot of problems could be overcome very soon.
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1 Comment by Johan Dieckmann on 7 August 2007:
It would be a historic mistake, very much so indeed.
That rationality and foresight are not among this (or previous) U.S. administration’s most prominent virtues notwithstanding, one ponders on obstacles that lay on that path.
The central question of the interview was “… How is the Russian diplomacy preparing for this eventuality? …” and the answer was “First … [w]e’ll try to explain to them …” However, this failing, what would be next?
Add to this the overseas-”cultivated” Tadic clique monkey wrench.
2 Comment by Michael Kenny on 8 August 2007:
The interesting point is that Ambassador Aleksaeev has come as close as diplomats ever do to endorsing Serbian membership of the EU, and indirectly thereby, endorsing the organisation itself, while condemning NATO and US attempts to manufacture a new cold war. The implications for the former Soviet republics in Europe are interesting.
3 Comment by Rohil Koovappara on 8 August 2007:
Well we all know how Bush and Blair were seen as “friends” (aka pawns) of both the Albanians and Kurds in their wars against Serbia and Iraq. We know that both leaders are very unpopular around the world. They know that this time around both Russia and China are rising and that the neocons and the liberal hawks are now in full or partial retreat. But hey these people always want to ignore world oppinion and even international laws and treaties.
4 Comment by EMete on 8 August 2007:
Of all the aspects of the interview with the Russian ambassador to Belgrade, Aleksander Alekseev, what drew my attention was his statement that the case for Kosovo’s independence is fundamentally weak, and those advocating it, he claimed, are unable to make a coherent case for it. “It is very hard to tell what are the arguments of our colleagues who support Kosovo’s independence,” he is quoted as saying.
Arguments the Russian ambassador claims he “does not know”:
Kosova – The cradle of Serb civilization?
The cradle of Serbian monasticism in the first two or three generations of Nemanjid rule was located where the cradle of the Serbian state had been: not inside Kosova, but further to the north and west. History proves this fact. The earliest foundations were mainly in the old nucleus-territory of Rascia, to the north of Kosova: Studenica and a monastery dedicated to St. George near Novi Pazar. Further to the north, near the central Serbian town of Kraljevo, the monastery of Zica was founded by Stefan the First-crowned, which was chosen by Sava as the seat of his autocephalous Church. Only at the end of the 13th century after Zica had been burned down by a raiding expedition of Tatars and Cumans, did the seat of the archbishopric move to Pec in western Kosova. The second most important monastery was Mileseva after Studenica, located much further to the west, towards the Bosnian border, whereas the main foundation of the next-but-one Serbian king was at Sopocani, which lies just to the west of Novi Pazar.
Kosova’s constitutional position in the former Yugoslavia:
Kosova has never been a legal part of Serbia. It was a constituent part of the Yugoslav Federation with clearly defined territory and borders although not a republic. Like the Yugoslav republics, it was represented to the federal institutions not through Serbia but directly and had a separate political and territorial identity and constitution, which are prerogatives of a federal constituent part of the Yugoslav federation. Hence Kosova was not part of the independent sovereign state of Serbia as recognized by the Berlin Congress in the year 1878 or of Serbia at the 1943 Second Congress of the Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ). In 1944, AVNOJ did not assign Kosova to be part of Serbia. In 1945 when the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia was founded, Kosova was not part of Serbia in the structure of the Constitutional Assembly of Yugoslavia. In the same year, during its military occupation, Kosova was not included in sovereign Serbia, but in federal Serbia within federal Yugoslavia. The abolition of its autonomy, an outcome of the amendments to the Constitution of Serbia on March 28 1989 were an illegal act, as was their “endorsement” at the Kosova Assembly because of the politica and military pressure on the delegates who could not express their free will under duress.
Albanian politicians of Kosova held a number of high posts in Kosova and Yugoslavia. The Albanian leader from Kosova, Fadil Hoxha, People’s Hero of Yugoslavia, who served as president of the Assembly of the Kosova Autonomous Province, was appointed in 1967 to the Yugoslav Communist Party Presidium and in 1974 became a member of the Federal Presidency. In 1978-79, the same as the heads of the Yugoslav republics, he held the rotating post of president of the Federal Presidency, the highest leadership post in Yugoslavia under Tito.
History against Serb’s theses:
History is not an argument to prove the case of the Serbs who came to the region in the 7th century as mercenaries of the Byzantine emperor Heraclius. If the Serbs’ case were proved, then Greece would claim Istanbul, Bulgaria and Hungary would lay a claim on Belgrade, Germany would claim Sudetenland, Albania would claim the Illyrian territories, which until recently were called Yugoslavia, Iraq would claim a right over Kuwait and so on and so forth. Returning Kosova to Serbia would be the same as restoring Roman provinces to Italy and Ottoman provinces to Turkey. As an occupying power, Serbia’s claim to Kosova would also be tantamount to the claim of Great Britain, Spain, France, the Netherlands and Portugal to their former colonies.
The relationship between Kosova and Serbia can be likened to that of Indonesia and East Timor, to the case of Singapore, which split from Malaysia, to that of Namibia that broke away with South Africa as well as to the case of Eritrea. Readers who are not familiar with such cases can find enough online information on how these countries became independent.
Kosova’s independence and the secessionist movements:
Kosova’s independence cannot be likened to secession of territories such as Gagauzia and Transnistria, Southern Osetia and Abkazia or other regions. These territories lack the ethnic basis of Kosova where about 95 percent of the population is Albanian, were not annexed unilaterally against the will of the people of the original sovereigns and did not have an autonomous or federal status at the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union as Kosova did at the time of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. The situation of the Albanians in Kosova cannot be likened to that of the Scots, Catalonians, Welsh, Corsicans or Basques. They have never been deported or massacred en masse by the states which control them. As to the Kosova Albanians, I can say that ten thousand Albanians were massacred by the Serbian army and paramilitaries prior to and during the Kosova conflict and war in 1998-1999 besides hundreds of thousands of Albanians slaughtered and deported abroad over one century under Serbia.
The state of Albania and the state of Kosova:
The existence of the Albanian state cannot be an obstacle to the independence and sovereignty of Kosova the same as the existence of Romania did not hinder the independence of Moldavia or that of France was not an obstacle to the establishment of the canton-state of Switzerland. In fact, the establishment of an Albanian state of Kosova would not be an advantage of the Albanians in the Balkans compared to the option of the unification of Kosova and the present-day Albanian state. The size of territory and population of Kosova cannot be an obstacle either if we consider that there are 34 United Nations member states with a smaller territory and 58 other states that enjoy the same status with a smaller population than Kosova’s. As regards the admission of new members, it should be noted that 34 new states became members of the United Nations from 1990 to 2002.
5 Comment by Johan Dieckmann on 8 August 2007:
Some relevant facts about Kosovo.
.
From “Serbs and Croats”, by Alex N. Dragnich, 1992, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, N.Y., ISBN 0-15-181073-7
Alex Dragnich was Professor of Political Science at
Vanderbilt University, Cultural Attaché and Public Affairs Officer in the American Embassy in Belgrade, and Chester Nimitz Professor at the U.S. Naval War College.
.
(From Chapter 9, “Tito’s Legacy and the End of Communism”)
“… Marx had taught that capitalism was responsible for national or ethnic conflicts. Accordingly, with the inauguration of Communism, Tito and his comrades had declared the nationality problem solved, and they provided criminal penalties for those who disagreed. The most dramatic evidence that the nationality problem was far from solved was Kosovo, the autonomous province created out of the republic of Serbia.
It had been the center of the Serbian kingdom of the
Middle Ages, when Serbia was the strongest empire in the Balkans for more than a hundred years. It is there that the most cherished Serbian Christian monuments, its monasteries and churches, are located. It was there that the Serbian army suffered defeat in 1389 at the hands of the
Ottoman Turks, and the Serbian monarch, Prince Lazar, lost his life. In the nearly five hundred years of Turkish rule that followed, the Serbs never stopped dreaming of a resurrected Serbian state, a dream that was realized in the nineteenth century. In Montenegrin epics—the last true folk epics that thrived in Europe—the deaths of Lazar and his heroic leader, Milos Obilic, were sung to the accompaniment of the Serb national instrument, the gusle, from 1389 to 1992, and no doubt will persist for centuries more.
The holy ground of Kosovo was not regained until the Balkan Wars of 1912. During the intervening centuries, many
Serbs fled Kosovo to escape enslavement, while the Turks sent in more and more Islamicized Albanians, who engaged in massive persecutions of Serbs, which today would be called genocide, and which were reported in detail by consuls of the European powers. These persecutions were particularly odious in the nineteenth century. The net result was a sharp increase in the percentage of Albanians in Kosovo. The high birthrate among Muslim Albanians also contributed to that increase.
After Mussolini’s takeover of Albania in 1939, and the defeat of Yugoslavia in 1941, Italy enabled the Albanians to create a Great Albania, which incorporated Kosovo. Following the defeat of Italy in 1943, the Kosovo Albanians sent a pro-Nazi regiment to fight on the side of the Germans. At the same time, Tito, as leader of the Partisan resistance, in a desperate effort to get help wherever he could find it, offered advantages to the Kosovo Albanians. He got precious little help from them, but he allowed at least a hundred thousand Albanians to move to Kosovo, making the balance between Serbs and Albanians nearly even.
Tito also had promised the Kosovo Albanians that they could be annexed to Albania, and although he reneged on that promise, he did allow them to form an autonomous province. The Kosovo Albanians lost no time in seeking to make of Kosovo an ethnically pure area. To that end, they engaged in continual and brutal persecution of the Serbs:
They raped and pillaged; desecrated Serbian religious institutions, including cemeteries; set Serbian barns and haystacks on fire; cut timber on Serbian lands, and constructed buildings on Serbian property. The purpose, of course, was to force Serbs to flee, and they did so in large numbers.
Local Communist authorities looked the other way or, worse, actually conspired with the Kosovo Albanians. Protests of Serbs to local and federal authorities were to no avail. Although an autonomous province of Serbia, Kosovo was ruled as if it were a sovereign state. One indication of this was the importation from Albania of more than two hundred professors and countless textbooks for the University of Pristina, originally a part of Belgrade University and therefore funded by Serbia.
A year after Tito’s death, the Kosovo Albanians launched large-scale demonstrations, demanding the status of a re public and even the right to be annexed to Albania. Not until then had informed people in Belgrade dared mention the suffering of the Serbs in Kosovo. A notable exception was the great Serbian novelist Dobrica Cosic. Although the demonstrations were put down by force, the situation for the Serbs continued to deteriorate.
In April 1987, Slobodan Milosevic, who a few months earlier had become head of the Communist Party of Serbia, went to Kosovo to listen to the Serbs. He got an earful. The meeting lasted thirteen hours; seventy-eight persons spoke.
The newspapers in Belgrade thereafter began openly to speak of genocide, and to express amazement that in the past six years there had not been a single political resignation in Kosovo—nor at the top of the Yugoslav government—as an indication of the acceptance of responsibility for this.
In June, the LCY [League of Communists of Yugoslavia] concluded that the “most difficult part of the problem of Kosovo and the whole of Yugoslav society is to be found in that the policy of the LCY is not being implemented.” It did not say who was failing to implement party policy. A month earlier, at an “ideological” meeting of the central committee of the LCY, a member asserted: “If we cannot quickly overcome genocide,” then we should call for “free elections, with multiple candidates, so that men can come to the top who can bring an end to the genocide.”
Milosevic vowed that he would not permit anyone to abuse Serbs the way they had been mistreated in Kosovo.
This act won him a great number of supporters among Serbs; even the most anti-Communist among them looked upon him with at least grudging admiration. As Serbs studied the nationality policy of the Communists, they were horrified to learn that the Serbs of Kosovo, whose percentage of the population had shrunk to about twelve, were not even entitled to the minority-rights guarantees of the Yugoslav constitution. The explanation is simple. The constitution recognizes nations and nationalities. Nations are the major groups that have their own republics (for example, Serbia,
Croatia, Slovenia); they are not minorities. Nationalities are groups (for example, Albanians, Hungarians, Italians) that do not have their own republics, which makes them minorities. By constitutional definition, therefore, Serbs who lived outside Serbia were technically not minorities. Consequently, the Serbs of Kosovo could not invoke the minority rights guarantees of the national constitution. The same was true of the Serbian minority in Croatia.
The problem of Kosovo deserves attention because the events there led many Serbs, who had been the strongest supporters of the Yugoslav state, to question that long-held commitment. Adding to this change in attitude was criticism by other republics, notably Slovenia and Croatia, of Serbian actions in Kosovo to protect the Serbian minority. The Serbs felt that the leaders of their brother republics, who had helped the Albanian authorities in Kosovo, had sold out to separatism. Understandably, they feared the destruction of historical Serbia. …”
.
(See also: http://www.serbianunity.net/projects/Kosovo/heritage_destruction/Kosovo2000Part5.pdf )
6 Comment by Johan Dieckmann on 8 August 2007:
Population of Yugoslavia in 1991 :
—————————-
Bosnia-Herzegovina 4,365,639
Muslims 1,900,000
Serbs 1,450,000
Croats 750,000
Yugoslavs 250,000
—————————-
Croatia 4,703,941
Croats 3,500,000
Serbs 700,000
Yugoslavs 400,000
—————————-
Macedonia 2,033,964
Macedonians 1,300,000
Albanians 425,000
Serbs 100,000(?)
Turks 100,000
Bulgars 50,000(?)
Gypsies 40,000
—————————-
Montenegro 616,327
Serbs 550,000
Yugoslavs 40,000
Albanians 25,000
—————————-
Serbia 9,721,177
Serbia Proper 5,753,825
Serbs 5,500,000
Muslims 125,000
Gypsies 50,000
Croats 40,000
Kosovo 1,954,747
Albanians 1,630,000
Serbs 250,000
Muslims 40,000
Gypsies 30,000
Vojvodina 2,012,605
Serbs 1,400,000
Hungarians 450,000
Croats 100,000
Romanians 50,000
—————————-
Slovenia 1,974,839
Slovenes 1,800,000
Croats 60,000
Serbs 50,000
Yugoslavs 50,000
—————————-
From Yugoslav Survey, XXXII (March, 1990-91), 5. The numbers for republics and autonomous provinces are actual; the numbers for the population groups are estimates.
(post #4, op. cit.)
["Muslims" under Kosovo heading are Muslims who declared themselves so and not as Albanians; "Yugoslavs" declined to declare ethnicity.]
7 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 9 August 2007:
Isn’t it romantic? Not once has any truth been able to escape the lips of Arnauts on this (and other) forums. All of a sudden Serbian heritage is “relocated slightly to the North West”? Too bad that the indigenous Arnauts named their villages Obilic, Urosevac (how do we explain that – and what of all the churches that are considerably south of Mitrovica? Bogorodica Ljeviska? Kamenica? Draganac? But to the terrible sadness of the Arnauts there are even UN documents which clearly show the destruction of Serbian churches and monastaries at
http://portal.unesco.org/en/file_download.php/de50bbccdc64acccdac9fb710576b46809-04-40.pdf
Really peculiar how generous all the Arnauts were to name their villages using Serbian words. Perhaps these are not Arnaut villages, perhaps these are Serbian lands?
8 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 9 August 2007:
Incredible that not a single truth has escaped the lips of the Arnauts. All over Kosovo Serbian names (Obilic, Urosevac, Bogorodica Ljeviska, Zli Potok, etc. etc.) Why would Arnauts use Serbian names on “their own lands”?
http://www.byzantinesacredart.com/map-fullsize.html
9 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 9 August 2007:
Arnauts manage to escape the truth, yet again. There seems to be some question about their claim to have truly been refugees from Kosovo, OR NOT? Available at:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23400727-details/Crackdown+on+Albanians+who+lied+about+fleeing+Kosovo+war/article.do
surprise, surprise
10 Comment by Albiqete on 9 August 2007:
Dobrica Cosic Former Yugoslav (Serbian) President
“We lie to deceive ourselves, to console others; we lie for mercy, we lie to fight fear, to encourage ourselves, to hide our and somebody else’s misery. We lie for love and honesty. We lie because freedom. The lie is the trait of our patriotism and the proof of our innate smartness. We lie creatively, imaginatively, inventively.”
ilia palvovic Lenin
Dick– man
you all are part of this stupidity
http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/reports/sevenfallacies.htm
11 Comment by Albiqete on 9 August 2007:
Read your fellow serb what says about your stupidity
http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/reports/sevenfallacies.htm
12 Comment by Albiqete on 9 August 2007:
http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/reports/srpclean1.htm
13 Comment by Albiqete on 9 August 2007:
.If I talked to someone that has no knowledge and never visited Kosovo than I can say he does not know any better. Lets talk about a video that
The video that you linked here is Serbian propaganda tool to show that we are terrorist Islamist. That is what Jim Jatras describes us jihadists but is far out from the truth and I have now word to describe it.
Albanians have never and will not ever be against Christianity but they are against Serbian domination and to them those churches do not represent the places of worship but places where plans of extermination have their roots because your constitution intermingles state affairs with religion, which in turn makes a very bad government. Separation of power is one cornerstones of democracy or ever THE CORNER STONE OF DEMOCRACY.
To the Serbs mosques, represent Albanian heritage or at least is what they try to use them for propaganda reason. They try show the West that they are “the other side” “they are not ‘us”. That is an old game that is over. People working on the ground in Kosovo understand this very well and don’t pay any attention. If you were in Kosovo you are aware how many NGO from Islamic countries came and built mosques even though the local Albanian population did not want them. They wanted schools, roads, electric stations, and employment. However, like after every war there is a time of vacuum, which those NGO’s used very quickly to build those mosques. The local population came from a 10 year of suffering of enormous proportions (in top of many decades of discrimination) and the last thing in their minds was religion.
To a Albanian in Kosovo the Orthodox church represent an occupation not in sense of Christianity but in the sense that what Role the orthodox church played in wars. However, this phenomenon is not true in Republic of Albania. Do some research and see how many new orthodox churches are build recently in Albania. We are a very open society when it comes to religion even though the Greeks are thinking and doing the same thing as Serbs have done few centuries ago. It will come a time when Greeks are going to say see this is Greek land because we have an Orthodox church here.
I am not against building a church and personally, I encourage people to follow religion, which to me is a personal choice, but THE WAY THE RELIGION IS USED FOR megalomania purposes and land grab is very wrong.
In Albania and in Kosovo a Catholic can marry a Muslim a orthodox marry a Muslim or vice a versa. .It has never been an issue.
Since we are in the subject of religion Albanians are far as can anyone be to the Muslim religion. We were born Muslims and just a very small percentage practice it.
First, they were of Roman Catholic Religion before the Ottoman occupation of the Balkans. I challenge you to go to yahoo maps and see the physical map of Albania and Kosovo. In the highland, everyone when I say everyone is of Catholic religion and one can ask why?. The answer is the relief and geography . In the mountainous region of North Albanian and Southern pat of today’s Montenegro kept their religion because ottoman hordes could not go there but in the plateau or valleys most of the people were converted because: first they were far less in numbers that the ottoman military second because of high taxation combined here with killing, burnings of houses, and rapes and third they felt that was better to convert to Islam in turn to survive compare to extermination and assimilation by the Serbs. ( To me there is not an ethnicity called Bosnians they were Serbs and Croats converted to Islam so don’t ask us why we converted to Islam.
We always have fought much bigger armies that we could handle but now that is not the case. We in much better position regarding international support, weapons and soldiers. *n Kosovo today you can build and army of 20 years old kids in a very short period of time. If it comes to that point we will fight again. even something does not wants to stay with us we have Agim Ceku to retake it again. He knows you people like the back of his hand. The time has come for ALBANIAN RENAISSANCE.
14 Comment by Albiqete on 9 August 2007:
Ever since Martti Ahtisaari made his plan public, we have been hearing the most unbelievable pronouncements coming from Serbian officials concerning Kosovo’s future status. Whether ‘imaginative’ or ‘threatening’, they have the following in common: they are formulated in such a way as to prepare public opinion for a Serbian refusal to accept the international community’s decision.
An imaginary Kosovo
As in all previous years, their statements address only an imaginary Kosovo. During the parliamentary session at which the Resolution on Kosovo was adopted, no one (except the deputies of the coalition around the Liberal-Democrats) spoke about the concrete political questions that would be posed if by some miracle Kosovo were to remain in Serbia. No one spoke, for example, about how the Serbian army and police would enter Kosovo, given that only the presence of such instruments of force testifies to real national sovereignty. No one spoke about how Kosovo citizens would vote in Serbian parliamentary elections, or how the Serbian elite would deal with Albanian deputies in parliament and Albanian ministers in Serbian governments. What sort of educational system would there be? How would the Battle of Kosovo and the Balkan Wars be taught? Would it be in the spirit of ‘the only truth’, ‘our truth’, as our current educational authorities like to say? During all these years, ever since Kosovo was separated from Serbia, I have heard no explication of such questions, because no one ever mentions Kosovo’s population. What is talked about in such conversations is only ‘Kosovo’ – a Kosovo that does not exist in reality, a Kosovo without the people.
It is my view that Serbia lost Kosovo essentially on that issue. For the Serbian political and intellectual class, Kosovo never implied its inhabitants, but only territory – an imaginary territory torn out of time, torn from reality. A battlefield without people, in the year 1389! This is why the debate on whether Kosovo will be lost in 2007 or whether that happened in 1999 is superfluous in my view. Taking into account all the relevant data, I think it happened in 1912, the moment when, five centuries after the celebrated battle, the territory in question was absorbed into the Serbian state.
What is the whole thing all about? Immediately after the start of the first Balkan War in 1912, the Serbian army promptly entered the territory of Kosovo; when peace was signed the region was joined to Serbia, along with Sandžak and Macedonia. The papers of the time were full of patriotic outbursts, declaring that Kosovo had been avenged, that Lazar’s promise had been fulfilled, that the medieval Serbian state had been resurrected, that the old pledge had been redeemed… At that moment even the habitually cynical Jovan Skerlić was swept along by the patriotic surge. All was exalted and patriotic until the question arose of what kind of government would be established for Kosovo: i.e. a question similar to that which meets with no reply today either. A very interesting debate opened up in the national assembly, which needs to be recalled if we are to think seriously about the very difficult question: how was it possible that within less than a century Serbia lost part of its territory – a part, moreover, that its highest representatives insist is a holy place?
Occupied territory
Back in 1913 the issue acquired the name of ‘regulation of the new territories’. The governing Radical Party, led by Nikola Pašić, argued that a separate military-police regime should be introduced there. During the parliamentary and public debate, government officials insisted that the inhabitants of those territories were not sufficiently civilised, that they were not sufficiently politically mature, and that the Serbian democratic constitution could not be extended to those lands because their inhabitants would not know what to do with the rights it granted. The deputies worried about what would happen if the inhabitants of the ‘new territories’ gained equal voting rights, how this would influence the political balance inside Serbia itself, what would happen to the established relationship between the parties, and whether this might not bring down the government. Asked by the parliamentary opposition whether the government intended to consult the inhabitants of the ‘new territories’ on the form of government to be imposed, Stojan Protić [a prominent Radical] replied: ‘We did not consult them about their liberation either, which is why our brethren would surely permit us to govern them for five or six years in the manner we deem best. It is because we know better than they how to do it, because we are older and more mature, that we do not feel bound to ask them how they should be governed.’
15 Comment by Albiqete on 9 August 2007:
This question divided the parties at the time. The otherwise conservative Progressive Party demanded that the constitution promptly be extended to the annexed lands, and advocated the convening of a Grand Assembly at which a revision of the 1903 constitution would be carried out. Its deputies argued that Serbian democracy was being tested, and that Serbs should remain consistent opponents of any division between higher and lower races (the effects of which they themselves had experienced). Opposing the government, the Independent Radical Party wrote at the time in its paper Odjek [Echo]: ‘The Radicals have proclaimed half of [the new] Serbia to be their pashalik. Through their minister of the interior they have proclaimed half of Serbia not to be Serbia, and on the territory which they consider not to be Serbian they have installed a regime of their own choosing.’ The Social Democrats were the most vociferous. They wrote in their Radničke novine [Workers’ News]: ‘One can make all sorts of criticism of the Turkish constitution, but one thing is for certain: on entering these lands Serbia should not have moved back from it but instead marched forward – promptly replacing the limited and false Turkish constitution with a true constitution, turning the patriarchal and primitive municipal self-government into a modern one, and giving the population an opportunity to feel itself to be really in Europe rather than treating it as a conquered people.’ Responding to the government’s analogy of democracy with swimming, and the argument that the population of the ‘new territories’ could not yet swim, the Social-Democrats responded: ‘Can a child ever learn to swim, unless it first jumps into the water?’
The weighty and interesting debate which took place in 1913 (of a kind that we have not had during the past decade or so) did not bear fruit, in that a decree on the new territories was adopted by virtue of which Kosovo was placed under military-police administration. The constitution was not extended to Serbia’s new territories, and their citizens did not gain the same rights as those enjoyed by the inhabitants of Serbia proper. A key role in this outcome was played by the conspirators gathered around Apis and the Black Hand. It was they, in fact, who directed Serbia’s foreign policy, and who in many ways proved stronger than the Radical government that they had brought to power after assassinating the last Obrenović [in 1903]. They were given the newly annexed territories as a kind of personal fiefdom, in which their power had no bounds.
Kosovo ‘lost’ in 1913
Another problem for the population of the annexed area was that police, military and civilian officials preferred not to be posted there. Being sent there was in the nature of a punishment The officials posted to the annexed area were ones who had been found guilty back in Serbia of corruption, or of physical brutality towards prisoners. It was an administration based on convicts and retired soldiers, who governed without any supervision. This is why I think that Kosovo was ‘lost’ before it had been ‘gained’. It was ‘lost’ because of the way in which the Serbians thought about it, because of its place in the myth-prone national ideology, and because of the inability of the ruling elites to accept and understand reality. While seeking to ‘free and unite the Serb people’ and to create a large national state, Serbian politicians proved unable to rule the annexed lands in a way that would make the new inhabitants accept the new state as their own. This was true of the expanded Serbia in 1913 as well as of all subsequent Yugoslavias. Their attitude towards ‘the other’ excluded tolerance and equality.
Their understanding of the state, in other words, never went beyond the pre-modern period. The state remained an abstraction, rather like Kosovo. It seems to me, therefore, that we are witnessing the end of a policy, not that of Milošević but one that was ideologically formed at the start of the history of the modern Serbian state. The denouement in Kosovo is also the unravelling of that national ideology, the end of a certain way of perceiving ourselves and others, space and time. It represents the final defeat of a stubborn refusal to understand the world and historical circumstances, and critically to confront ourselves. It is the end of a national arrogance and a distorted perception of reality.
16 Comment by Rohil Koovappara on 9 August 2007:
The Albanians have already lost the battle for Kosovo. With the “liberal hawk” Tony Blair no longer in power and with Bush soon going to loose his own, it is obvious that Kosovo will never gain its “independence,” at least not any time soon. So all you members of the Albanian lobby should admit that you have lost. Your propaganda will never work again. In fact most of the progressives today have given up on you in both America and in Europe.
17 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 9 August 2007:
All irrelevant issues as to add confusion and obfuscation. Albania – proper exists only since 1913 – not before. Albania has already violated the UN charter by declaring support for the Kosovo’s indpendence and thier intent to unite under the same flag into one “Greater Albania” – this no longer a secret. Fatmir Seidiu announced it last week during his Summer holidays in Albania. Since the question of Kosovo has become rather clear I think it is time to engage in PEACE-KEEPING joint military exercize with Russians, Greeks, Republika Srpska and Serbia, on the ground of today Presevo, Bujanovac. Every Serbian bullet will be inscribed with letters “this a peace keeping bullet-projectile”. Since the Arnauts (Turkish word meaning a stable cleaner, boy who tenders to Turkish horses) are about to be disposed of by the Empire – way too much blood spilled in Iraq, Iran must be watched, Korea is a potential enemy and the Ruskis are under the North Pole – there is no practical solution to deploy in Southern Balkans any time soon. So Arnauts will see what it’s like to be in the shoes of Manuel Noriega and some prior boot-lickers (inlcuding OBL – their ideologue, who carries an Albanian passport).
I simply advocate a strong decisive PEACE KEEPING MISSION. If by any chance this mission should result in Albanian expulsion from Serbian, Macedonian and Greek lands – so much the better.
18 Comment by Johan Dieckmann on 9 August 2007:
(Re. # 16)
“… So Arnauts will see what it’s like to be in the shoes of Manuel Noriega and some prior boot-lickers …”
Add to that list Saddam Hussein, propped by the administration (and other western countries) during the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980-s, once even referred to as “our valiant friend” – at that time… Then, add Osama Bin Laden, a darling of the administration since the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, and for many years thereafter – in fact, a CIA collaborator until almost the very 9/11. And so on.
Many very good reasons for sweating profusely.
[P.S. "M. Sells form Haverford" was a notorious pest on various bulletin boards in mid-1990-s, "supporting" the Croats and Muslims in Bosnia, during those wars, obviously someone's employee. A British colleague of mine was having much fun easily "neutralizing" him.]
19 Comment by budimir on 9 August 2007:
The western propagandist and their vassals in Belgrade keep repeating that Kosovo consists of 90%+ Albanian population as if that is a legal justification for stripping the province from Serbia.
There are parts in the United States where the population is also 90% of foreign origin, who can just as easily demand seperation of that part from USA proper and joining it to their mother country. Take for example parts of Florida around Miami or parts of the Southwest and California. Would USA tolerate an attempt of Cubans and other Latinos to take back parts of the state where they constiture predominant majority? Would parts of France, Germany, Holland, etc. tolerate the attempt of Moslem immigrants and their descendants to establish some form of Sharia jurisdiction where they constitute an overwhelming majority?
Western hypocrisy is one thing, but what they suggest and support is “over the top” and clearly criminal.
What is taken by force, should be reclaimed by force; and if the West wants to station NATO or some other form of EU army in Kosovo to help guard it for the Albanians, they will have to guard it for ever. Sooner or latter they will tire and leave-as did the Ottomans- at which time Serbs will reclaim what is rightfully theirs.
20 Comment by Albiqete on 9 August 2007:
Ever since Martti Ahtisaari made his plan public, we have been hearing the most unbelievable pronouncements coming from Serbian officials concerning Kosovo’s future status. Whether ‘imaginative’ or ‘threatening’, they have the following in common: they are formulated in such a way as to prepare public opinion for a Serbian refusal to accept the international community’s decision.
An imaginary Kosovo
As in all previous years, their statements address only an imaginary Kosovo. During the parliamentary session at which the Resolution on Kosovo was adopted, no one (except the deputies of the coalition around the Liberal-Democrats) spoke about the concrete political questions that would be posed if by some miracle Kosovo were to remain in Serbia. No one spoke, for example, about how the Serbian army and police would enter Kosovo, given that only the presence of such instruments of force testifies to real national sovereignty. No one spoke about how Kosovo citizens would vote in Serbian parliamentary elections, or how the Serbian elite would deal with Albanian deputies in parliament and Albanian ministers in Serbian governments. What sort of educational system would there be? How would the Battle of Kosovo and the Balkan Wars be taught? Would it be in the spirit of ‘the only truth’, ‘our truth’, as our current educational authorities like to say? During all these years, ever since Kosovo was separated from Serbia, I have heard no explication of such questions, because no one ever mentions Kosovo’s population. What is talked about in such conversations is only ‘Kosovo’ – a Kosovo that does not exist in reality, a Kosovo without the people.
It is my view that Serbia lost Kosovo essentially on that issue. For the Serbian political and intellectual class, Kosovo never implied its inhabitants, but only territory – an imaginary territory torn out of time, torn from reality. A battlefield without people, in the year 1389! This is why the debate on whether Kosovo will be lost in 2007 or whether that happened in 1999 is superfluous in my view. Taking into account all the relevant data, I think it happened in 1912, the moment when, five centuries after the celebrated battle, the territory in question was absorbed into the Serbian state.
What is the whole thing all about? Immediately after the start of the first Balkan War in 1912, the Serbian army promptly entered the territory of Kosovo; when peace was signed the region was joined to Serbia, along with Sandžak and Macedonia. The papers of the time were full of patriotic outbursts, declaring that Kosovo had been avenged, that Lazar’s promise had been fulfilled, that the medieval Serbian state had been resurrected, that the old pledge had been redeemed… At that moment even the habitually cynical Jovan Skerlić was swept along by the patriotic surge. All was exalted and patriotic until the question arose of what kind of government would be established for Kosovo: i.e. a question similar to that which meets with no reply today either. A very interesting debate opened up in the national assembly, which needs to be recalled if we are to think seriously about the very difficult question: how was it possible that within less than a century Serbia lost part of its territory – a part, moreover, that its highest representatives insist is a holy place?
Occupied territory
Back in 1913 the issue acquired the name of ‘regulation of the new territories’. The governing Radical Party, led by Nikola Pašić, argued that a separate military-police regime should be introduced there. During the parliamentary and public debate, government officials insisted that the inhabitants of those territories were not sufficiently civilised, that they were not sufficiently politically mature, and that the Serbian democratic constitution could not be extended to those lands because their inhabitants would not know what to do with the rights it granted. The deputies worried about what would happen if the inhabitants of the ‘new territories’ gained equal voting rights, how this would influence the political balance inside Serbia itself, what would happen to the established relationship between the parties, and whether this might not bring down the government. Asked by the parliamentary opposition whether the government intended to consult the inhabitants of the ‘new territories’ on the form of government to be imposed, Stojan Protić [a prominent Radical] replied: ‘We did not consult them about their liberation either, which is why our brethren would surely permit us to govern them for five or six years in the manner we deem best. It is because we know better than they how to do it, because we are older and more mature, that we do not feel bound to ask them how they should be governed.’
21 Comment by Albiqete on 9 August 2007:
This question divided the parties at the time. The otherwise conservative Progressive Party demanded that the constitution promptly be extended to the annexed lands, and advocated the convening of a Grand Assembly at which a revision of the 1903 constitution would be carried out. Its deputies argued that Serbian democracy was being tested, and that Serbs should remain consistent opponents of any division between higher and lower races (the effects of which they themselves had experienced). Opposing the government, the Independent Radical Party wrote at the time in its paper Odjek [Echo]: ‘The Radicals have proclaimed half of [the new] Serbia to be their pashalik. Through their minister of the interior they have proclaimed half of Serbia not to be Serbia, and on the territory which they consider not to be Serbian they have installed a regime of their own choosing.’ The Social Democrats were the most vociferous. They wrote in their Radničke novine [Workers’ News]: ‘One can make all sorts of criticism of the Turkish constitution, but one thing is for certain: on entering these lands Serbia should not have moved back from it but instead marched forward – promptly replacing the limited and false Turkish constitution with a true constitution, turning the patriarchal and primitive municipal self-government into a modern one, and giving the population an opportunity to feel itself to be really in Europe rather than treating it as a conquered people.’ Responding to the government’s analogy of democracy with swimming, and the argument that the population of the ‘new territories’ could not yet swim, the Social-Democrats responded: ‘Can a child ever learn to swim, unless it first jumps into the water?’
The weighty and interesting debate which took place in 1913 (of a kind that we have not had during the past decade or so) did not bear fruit, in that a decree on the new territories was adopted by virtue of which Kosovo was placed under military-police administration. The constitution was not extended to Serbia’s new territories, and their citizens did not gain the same rights as those enjoyed by the inhabitants of Serbia proper. A key role in this outcome was played by the conspirators gathered around Apis and the Black Hand. It was they, in fact, who directed Serbia’s foreign policy, and who in many ways proved stronger than the Radical government that they had brought to power after assassinating the last Obrenović [in 1903]. They were given the newly annexed territories as a kind of personal fiefdom, in which their power had no bounds.
Kosovo ‘lost’ in 1913
Another problem for the population of the annexed area was that police, military and civilian officials preferred not to be posted there. Being sent there was in the nature of a punishment The officials posted to the annexed area were ones who had been found guilty back in Serbia of corruption, or of physical brutality towards prisoners. It was an administration based on convicts and retired soldiers, who governed without any supervision. This is why I think that Kosovo was ‘lost’ before it had been ‘gained’. It was ‘lost’ because of the way in which the Serbians thought about it, because of its place in the myth-prone national ideology, and because of the inability of the ruling elites to accept and understand reality. While seeking to ‘free and unite the Serb people’ and to create a large national state, Serbian politicians proved unable to rule the annexed lands in a way that would make the new inhabitants accept the new state as their own. This was true of the expanded Serbia in 1913 as well as of all subsequent Yugoslavias. Their attitude towards ‘the other’ excluded tolerance and equality.
Their understanding of the state, in other words, never went beyond the pre-modern period. The state remained an abstraction, rather like Kosovo. It seems to me, therefore, that we are witnessing the end of a policy, not that of Milošević but one that was ideologically formed at the start of the history of the modern Serbian state. The denouement in Kosovo is also the unravelling of that national ideology, the end of a certain way of perceiving ourselves and others, space and time. It represents the final defeat of a stubborn refusal to understand the world and historical circumstances, and critically to confront ourselves. It is the end of a national arrogance and a distorted perception of reality.
22 Comment by EMete on 9 August 2007:
The language used by I.P. (Iliya Pavlovich) in his posts on this Website does not befit an educated Serb. I say this on the assumption that he is an intelectual. I do not think he represents the industrious Serb people. If yes, I would be very sorry for them.
There should be no room for nitpicking and racism in this prestigious website.
Do you agree with me?
23 Comment by EMete on 9 August 2007:
To Albiqete,
What you say in your posts is a hundred percent right but brainwashed people do not understand it. They go on and on endlessly with their racist cliches and untruths thinking that by repeating them, people will believe that they are real.
From my experience, I think there are such people in this world including some who post their comments on this website. They are and will always be our co-travellers. Without them, the world wouldn’t have been so interesting and we would have been bored to death. Thank God that they are amongst us.
24 Comment by EMete on 9 August 2007:
Albiqete,
Sorry to write again. My question is: Where did you find that quote from Dobrica Cosic? Please, would you provide some more information on how to locate his article, speech or whatever it it so that we, including Serb readers, can read and draw the relevant conclusions from it abot today’s big lies of the Serbs?
25 Comment by Albiqete on 9 August 2007:
When demographics are central in the resolution of political problems and relations, then the efforts of political circles and regimes to manipulate the statistical data and ethnic-demographic composition of a territory are understandable. Serbia and its cultural and scientific circles have been doing just this to Kosovo and its ethnic structure for almost a century.
“The fertility of Albanian women” was always considered a significant obstacle to Serb plans to change the ethnic structure of Kosovo by colonizing the country with Serbs and deporting Albanians.
The open institutional war against the Albanian demographic factor became part of the anti-Albanian strategy, in particular during the 1980s and 1990s.
At that time, racist and genocidal slogans – “Albanians must be deported beyond the Bjeshket e Nemuna Highlands [to Albania]” and “Albanians must be killed” – came out of many populist-nationalist meetings, promoting ethnic homogenization and mobilization of Serbs and concentrating the energy of the Serbian population entirely on confrontation with other nations.
During the past 100 years, Serbia has launched several waves of colonization in Kosovo. But even according to Serb-Yugoslav statistics, the Albanian population has remained the majority during all of the 20th century.
According to a 1921 registration, Albanian-speakers represented 65.8% of Kosovo’s population, Serbian-speakers represented 25.9%, and Turkish-speakers represented 6.3%.
During Milosevic’s rule, anti-Albanian sentiment rose to a level of high concern. When the politicization of the Albanian population’s natural growth and Serb migration reached their peak in 1987, a Serbian demographer from the Belgrade-based Demographic Research Centre concluded that Albanians represented 90% of Kosovo’s population (D. Avramov Population (Stanovnistvo) 3-4/1990 and 1-2/1991 page 240). She said that Kosovo had finally been “Albanianized” and that the Serb community almost did not exist.
But, for political purposes, Serbian political circles started manipulating the figures, saying that Albanians did not constitute the majority. A fantastic campaign to minimize the number of Albanians was launched, particularly at the beginning of the Rambouillet Conference in 1999. Then President Milan Milutinovic shamelessly stressed that Albanians did not constitute the majority in Kosovo. He said that they represented under 50% – even less than 40% – of the population, which contradicted the conclusions of Serb statistical and demographic institutes, which found in 1991 that Albanians made up 82% of the Kosovar population.
The greatest absurdity was the invention of ethnic communities that had never existed as ethnicities, such as Goranis, Egyptians, and Ashkanlis.
In general terms, Albanians make up approximately 90% of the Kosovar population. Coexistence between the Albanian majority and the Serb minority can be discussed, but no realistic dimension can be given to multi-ethnicity in Kosovo.
Now Serbia does not accept the results of official censuses that were organized and conducted by Belgrade statistical and state authorities. With the withdrawal of Serbian police, military and paramilitary forces in June 1999, one half of the Serb population left, and the other half remained in Kosovo.
International organizations report that a considerable number of Serbs still lives in Kosovo. According to the European Stability Initiative (ESI), “there are still nearly 130,000 Serbs living in Kosovo today, representing two-thirds of the pre-war Serb population. Of these, two-thirds (75,000) are living south of the Ibar River in areas with an Albanian majority. Almost all urban Serbs have left, with North Mitrovica now their last remaining urban outpost. However, most rural Serbs never left their homes. The reality of Kosovo Serbs today is small communities of subsistence farmers scattered widely across Kosovo (The Lausanne Principle: Multiethnicity, Territory and the Future of Kosovo’s Serbs, European Stability Initiative (ESI), Berlin/Pristina, June 7, 2004).
According to post-World War II official censuses, the Serb population in Kosovo had the following evolution: 171.914, or 23.6%, in 1948; 209.497, or 13.2%, in 1981; and 194.190, or 9.9%, in 1991.
There is not a single demographic indicator that speaks to an increase in the Serb population. On the contrary: if we refer to the vital-demographic statistical data of relevant Serb institutions, there is a decrease in birth rate and an increase in death rate among Kosovo Serbs over the past ten years.
This is due to the continuous decrease of the Serbs’ yearly natural growth. In 1990, the natural growth of Serbs in Kosovo was 2.021 persons (Demografska statistika 1990, SZS, Beograd, 1992, page 146, 178). In 1995 it was 2.135 persons (Demografska statistika 1995, SZS, Beograd, 1998, page 177, 203). And in 2000 it was 1.693 persons (Demografska statistika 2000, Beograd, 2002, page 207, 233). The average yearly natural growth of Serbs is 1.949 persons, which means that from 1990 to 2000 there was an increase of 19.490 Serbs.
When this number is added to the 194.190 Serbs registered by Belgrade’s official census of 1991, then we can see that the total number of Serbs living in Kosovo in 2001 was 213.680. This would have been possible only if no Serb had left Kosovo. In spite of the regime’s efforts to increase the number of Serbs living in Kosovo, the population has always had negative migration figures and a decreasing yearly natural growth.
Because of the politically tense environment and because of hostility between Albanians and Serbs due to the actions taken by the Serbian state, many [Kosovar] Serbs have taken this opportunity to migrate to Serbia, where they moved into urban areas. They profited greatly from selling their properties in Kosovo and then purchasing properties in Serbia for much lower prices.
For this reason, Milosevic’s regime cannot accuse Albanians of persecuting Serbs.
Serbs were leaving Kosovo even after the 1989 occupation of Kosovo and after the genocidal actions of the 1990s.
According to Belgrade projections made more than ten years ago, the number of Serbs living in Kosovo was decreasing. It was predicted that the number of Serbs (and Montenegrins together) would be 194.000 (8.1%) in 2001, 170.000 (5.9%) in 2011, and 155.000 (4.6%) in 2021. Demographers estimated that in 2051 there will be only 130.000 Serbs in Kosovo, representing 2.9% of the overall population (B. Krstić, Kosovo izmedju istorijskog i etničkog prava, Kuća Vid, Beograd, 1994, page 193). This is the real picture of the ethnic-demographic position of Serbs living in Kosovo.
26 Comment by Albiqete on 10 August 2007:
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:Rha80_2GiTAJ:hrcak.srce.hr/index.php%3Fshow%3Dclanak_download%26id_clanak_jezik%3D4768+The+Nonconformists:+Dobrica+Cosic+and+Mica+Popovic+Envision+Serbia&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us
27 Comment by Sasha on 10 August 2007:
Indeed, the plan of the USA and the EU to promote Kosovo and Metohija as an independent and internationally recognized country is failing. And it is failing for some very good reasons :
Firstly, American strategy to buy peace on Middle East and recognition of Israel by support to Turkey and Balkan muslim countries doesn’t yield results. The grip over Israel from different Arab neighbours is ever stronger and it is seems that there are no concessions on horizon on the question of Jerusalem. This strategy was profoundly shaken in September 2001. Unfortunately for Americans and consequently for others, Washington strategists are not able to concieve an alternative. Sadly but truely, they are stuck with old and outmoded paradigms and in their own former source of success. US centers of power (the dark side of the force
still believe that Middle East peace process can be broken elsewhere, even that all evidence from reality defies this approach. So, America is stuck, we are stuck in the end , but the fact of the matter is that this aproach doesn’t yield any results for them.
Secondly, it is failing, because there is on horizon a very viable strategic alternative for Serbia and some other countries in the region. It is entry in a kind of Eurasia, a new supernational organisation, which is, under very noses of US and EU, being created, inspired and lead by Russia and economically backed by China. If EU recognizes Kosovo and Metohija, Serbia will enter this new organisation, Russian army will establish in Serbia (or even in Northern Kosovo) a military base with substatial presence and balistic defence systems. This now sounds like a very radical theory, but having in mind the path Russia has achieved last 8 years, it is a very realistic scenario for the near future (5-10 years). This would make problems for the very existence of EU, since some other countries might join this organisation as well. Indeed, they can break their back on the Serb issue and fall apart. This has already been perceived by Brussels strategists as a real risk for the future of “choux de Bruxelles”. They can’t negliect this risk, except the UK who, for their own reasons are not very much interested for the future of EU.
The reality has changed very much. Unfortunately, the dark side of the force is blind for the reality. When and how this situation will be resolved, only Fates with their abacuses know. However, it seems that the combination of factors like Chinese economic domination and swift rise of Russia, on one side, climate changes that struck severely EU and American problems with islamic terorists on another side are reversing the tide.
28 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 10 August 2007:
Ooooooooooops? Sorry, but any serious inconsistency which is contradictory to itself could also be called A LIE. Perhaps the author ran out of insults so it becomes forced to contradict itself just to keep the seeming dialogue going – while there is no dialogue of any kind. As somebody (myself included) have remarked at an earlier point, the Albanians present at many similar forums seems so ill-equipped, ill-informed, and devoid of all logic and reason that it is more likely that those “Albanian posts” are places by Serbian moles or people intent on discrediting any value associated with Albanians. The dreadful choice of non-credible sources, dubious quasi-educational systems, poor logic, lack of coherence all speak volumes of Albanian inflexibility, lack of mental competence and poor thinking process – it is therefore quite easy to believe that some “Serbian planted mole” has infiltrated Albanian circles and keeps posting rubbish just to discredit the few decent Albanians (they must exist somewhere by definition).
Look at this joke of a poor thinking:
a) The language used by I.P. (Iliya Pavlovich) in his posts on this Website does not befit an educated Serb. I say this on the assumption that he is an intelectual. I do not think he represents the industrious Serb people. If yes, I would be very sorry for them.
b) About your comment that this place is a prestigious I have psoted a link above to show what is all this serbian propoganda and where it all comes from. It is abvious that all peope here work for serbian goverment. I have great respect for Pat Buchanan but he lost someone loyal to his iideas just being part of this network of educated liers
So, make up your mind, are these sources here educated or uneducated Serbs, liars or moles? You can’t have it both ways. It must be pretty terrible when you paint yourself in a corner and have to talk from both sides of your mouth and such gibberish comes out that nobody can follow a single thought. Same Albanian sources frequently trying to launch similar lies at:http://messages.yahoo.com/Cultures_&_Community/Issues_and_Causes/Current_Events/World%255FNews/messagesview?bn=7088119-kovosocrisis – where a good number of these “contributors” have been banned for offensive, racist speach and other forms of inciting riot and unrest. I was under the impression that even the FBI got involved in pursuing one of these “contributors” – who knows? I surely don’t have an inside look into the FBI activities, but some of the comments here are equally contrary to the First Ammendment (Free speach does not entitle anybody to incite riot, advocate hatred, death or bodily injury to any other people under any circumstances).
It is quite impossible to even attempt to clarify any of the US Constitution to these “Albanians” – if they really are Albanians.
29 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 10 August 2007:
http://messages.yahoo.com/Cultures_&_Community/Issues_and_Causes/Current_Events/World%255FNews/messagesview?bn=7088119-kovosocrisis
just a reposted link which didn’t come clear in my prior post.
30 Comment by Johan Dieckmann on 11 August 2007:
Why the U.S. administration is s o interested in Kosovo.
From a highly informative 1998 article http://kosovo99.tripod.com/minerals.htm :
“…
KOSOVO – THE WAR IS ABOUT THE MINES
By Sara Flounders
31 Comment by Boba Borojevic on 11 August 2007:
This is how Albanians in Kosovo behaved then [a year before a criminal NATO attack on Serbia] and this is how they behave now! Remeber: Clinton had said that Serbs have cleansed 800.000 Albanians from Kosovo! Please do read:
=====
http://www.hri.org/news/balkans/yds/1998/98-06-24.yds.html
32 Comment by Boba Borojevic on 11 August 2007:
Remeber: Clinton said that Serbs had cleansed 800.000 Albanians from Kosovo!
33 Comment by Qeni on 12 August 2007:
http://www.bndlg.de/~wplarre/back150.htm HAVE THE ALBANIANS OCCUPIED KOSOVA?
by Alain DUCELLIER (University of Toulouse, France)
34 Comment by Hunden on 12 August 2007:
I am amazed at the knowledge and accuracy of the Albanians who have posted here.
I am, on the other hand, not surprised at all by the carelessness withy which the Serbs display their racism towars the Albanians.
Partick Moore, an expert journalist at Radio Free Europe, has an interesting interpretation of the US posotion on Kosovo. To be sure, unilateral recognition is the standard procedure in international law, and there is no need for the UN Security Council, since Resolution 1244 applied to the “Federal Republic of Yugoslavia” and that republic disappeared more than a year ago.
_______________________________________________________
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/07/85b2d7fb-5cbb-4607-8f10-5b28920d5a15.html
KOSOVO: [PATRICK MOORE] SAYS AHTISAARI PLAN STILL RELEVANT
RFE/RL Balkan Report, August 8, 2007, Vol. 11, No. 8
35 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 12 August 2007:
What kind of Hundens are these? Teufel Hunden or some milder kind?
With this new nebulosity that resolution 1244 was made between the Nazi NATO and (former) Yugoslavia that no longer esists – how about we put that idea to a test and see how right you are and you must believe in what you’re saying so let’s do the following excercize. All the moneys that the Former Yuglavia ownED – today’s Serbia SHOULD NOT PAY, BUT WE CAN FREELY ATTACH ALL THOSE OBLIGATIONS TO YOUR OWN BAK ACCOUNT. You should feel pretty safe since that country no longer exists and nobody in their right mind will pursue the debts of a non-existing country – right? Equally the newly formed countries never cary on with any legacy of the prior entities they were based on (Byzantine Empire had nothing to do with the Roman cultuture, and the theater, sculpture, architecture of Rome had nothing to do with the Hellenic period it preceeded. Are there any more idiotic arguments here cloaked in civility or do we really have such poor thinkers who can’t put the 2 and 2 together?
36 Comment by Qeni on 13 August 2007:
Here is the original quotation where Dobrica Ćosić, the “father of the Serb nation”, a former President of the so-called “Federal Republic of Yugoslavia”, and a catastrophic liar himself, describes mendacity as an “aspect of patriotism” among the Serbs: it’s in page 135 of the first volume of “Divisions” (Deobe I).
“Лажемо да би смо обманули себе, да утешимо другог; лажемо из самилости, да нас није страх, да охрабримо, да сакријемо своју и тудју беду, лажемо због поштења. Лажемо због слободе.
“Лаж је вид нашег патриотизма и потврда наше уродјене интелигенције. Лажемо стваралацки, маштовито, инвентивно.”
(Деобе I, стр.135)
37 Comment by Qeni on 13 August 2007:
The whole of Dubravka Stojanović’s article in “Helsinška povelja”:
http://www.bosnia.org.uk/bosrep/report_format.cfm?articleid=3185&reportid=173
KOSOVO-THE ULTIMATE MYTH
by Dubravka Stojanović, Translated from “Helsinška povelja” 103-4, January-February 2007
38 Comment by Qeni on 13 August 2007:
Now for the Serb version:
http://www.helsinki.org.yu/doc/pubs/charter/srp/povelja-jan-feb.pdf
KRAJ NACIONALNE AROGANCIJE
Dubravka Stojanović, “Helsinška povelja”, januar – februar 2007.
39 Comment by Pelivan on 14 August 2007:
Hee hee, funny to see “Iliya Pavlovich” mention the name “Uroševac” as evidence that Kosovo is Serb. That name was adopted in the 1930s instead of “Ferizović” — the Serb mirror-name of “Ferizaj”, to “serbify” the region.
All the more funny since, as Professor Ducellier tells us above, the other Slavic names in Kosovo have a Bulgarian, not a Serb origin.
40 Comment by Qeni on 14 August 2007:
Here is the (formerly) untranslated final paragraph of Dubravka Stojanović’s article:
“All this is why I am beginning to think that Dobrica Ćosić was right. Now I think that his formula that Serbia won in wars but lost in peace is correct. Only, it wasn’t because of the ‘unfairness of the Great powers’ as he understood it, but because it couldn’t attach to itself ‘what it had gained at war’ through a clever, reasoned and civilized policy. It hasn’t been able to ‘adopt’ what it had ‘conquered’.”
41 Comment by jack bailey on 16 August 2007:
I find the Dubravka Stojanovic article rather silly as it is supposed to show that Kosovo really isn’t Serbian because policemen would not willingly serve there and because it was not IMMEDIATELY included into a Serbian democracy. (did it also appear to other readers that she argues Serbia actually was not a democracy at all, since Apis was the real master of it all behind the scenes? Also since she also believes that the Serbs were basically primitive and bloodthursty themselves, it is impossible for her to accept that the Serbs would have some sense of self esteem which made them feel that they had to act as MISSIONARIES in the new territories. Instead it is supposed to serve for her as a further proof of Serb inhumanity. Does this sound familiar? Calling the kettle black?). OK, so the NGOs is Serbia may have a role in raising the level of democratic discussion. BUt I do not believe that Mrs. Stojanovic truly means what she says because this article, the way it was written, makes only sense to someone who is not from the Balkans and who thinks that everyone that lives there is a savage. Since she lives there, obviously she does not think that. Why she writes an article that is ultimately illogical is probably just to amuse a stray reader, because either Serbia was a democracy or it was not, but both of these arguments are irrelevant as to whether Kosovo should be a part of Serbia. Serbs fought for it and now hundred years later they still don’t want to give it up even though it seemed to us for a little while that they should. Why they want it and What they mean to do with it is their business. That is why it makes little sense for some of the bloggers here who wish to top each other with historical facts and rights. It does not matter. Serbs may want it within Serbia for whatever reason that they do, that we do not fully understand and they want it pretty bad, enough to mess things up for the USA. So why should this continue to matter to US as our continuing involvement there is even more insane than our war with the Iraqis? If we can’t fix it the way we originally thought we could, some sane person should suggest that we fix it in a way that we can. This means that we should leave it the way we found it and move on to something more pressing like illegal immigration. There is obviously a lesson there.
42 Comment by Dallas on 18 August 2007:
hi nice post, i enjoyed it
43 Comment by Marisa on 18 August 2007:
hi i enjoyed the read