Please...Don't Leave Us...
The Croats hate the Serbs, the Serbs detest the Albanians, and all have had their opportunity in the past to wreak horrible atrocities one upon the other. They share adjacent geography in the Balkans, an uneasy part of Europe where it seems there is always the anguish of brutality close to the surface.Suspicion, anger, passions flare and one group sees the other as antagonistic to their well-being, the only acceptable response being to expel the 'others' from one's geographic territory, as the Croats in 1995 did in expelling 250,000 Serbians from their territory, amidst the shedding of blood.
It's just not possible to claim that one is more innocent than the other, that one has been more victimized than the other; they're all guilty of crimes against humanity. That having been said, they've proven more than adequately, that separation becomes necessity.
To give each of the representative peoples the comfort of distance from the other, with clearly indicated barriers which each should respect.
Now, in Serbia, post Kosovo's declaration of independence as an autonomous state, fury has been unleashed and pointedly directed toward the U.S. presence there, as the prime instigator of Kosovo's parliament's unilateral (and fundamentally illegal) separation from Serbia.
Invading the U.S. embassy, flying the Serbian flag from U.S. diplomatic territory, setting the chancery ablaze. Good thing the U.S. anticipated just that, and evacuated their personnel.
They were able to judge just how to respond after hearing Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica rally a crowd estimated at a hundred thousand outraged Serbians: "As long as we live, Kosovo is Serbia"; the impassioned call to arms. "Serbia has annulled and will annul every act of the illegal and fictitious state created on its territory by the use of force."
Serbia, of course, knows force when it sees it. It's an expert practitioner of exerting physical domination over its traditional cultural/religious enemies. However, no more so than that practised by those same adversaries against the Serbs.
Serbian anger is weighted not only by the assault against their geographic sovereignty and the U.N.-imposed semi-autonomy of Kosovo under Serbian nationhood, but by the signal loss of a geography sacred to their history as a nation.
For them, this illegal and insulting high-handedness in capturing and removing their prized geographic possession is not to be countenanced with any kind of equanimity. It's a call to war, to violent dissent, and the government has encouraged violence to be expressed, encouraging "demonstrators" to gather, to shout their outrage, to demonstrate their passion.
The Albanians expelled Serbians and appropriated their goods and properties. The Serbians expelled Albanians from majority-held territory and appropriated their good and properties. The Serbians rounded up Albanian men and boys and massacred them. The Albanians did their utmost to visit like atrocities upon the Serbs. And the Croats were happy to dispatch any strays that came their way.
History repeats itself. Serbia insists that Kosovo is its own, its cradle of their nation, since a lost epic war against Muslim rule in the 14th Century. But with a 10% Serbian presence in Kosovo, after the Albanians expelled 200,000 Serbs in 1999, it didn't have many feet on the ground to claim as its own in perpetuity. The Albanians had the upper hand in sheer strength of numbers.
Serbia legitimately can continue to claim that Kosovo is Serbian territory, but unless it is prepared to engineer a vast exodus of Albanians from Kosovo, all the rants and ravings will avail it nothing.
Labels: Political Realities, That's Life, World News
posted by Pieface @ Friday, February 22, 2008
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