Who Blinks First? The Crisis in Kosovo is Just Beginning

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/levitin02282008.html


Who Blinks First?
The Crisis in Kosovo is Just Beginning
By MICHAEL LEVITIN

As renewed Serb protests this week in Bosnia and elsewhere demonstrate, the storm unleashed by Kosovo's Feb. 17 declaration of independence is long from abating. Rather, what recent events have showed is the start of a long and protracted struggle that, in the end, the West probably cannot win. Why not? Because we're not talking about a few hundred flag- and embassy-burning rioters as the media, the U.S. government and a chagrined Belgrade leadership speaking last week would have us believe.

Let's remember that in Serbia's presidential elections at the start of this month, 48 per cent of Serbs went to the polls with their faith in Europe already shattered. They voted en masse for the so-called ultranationalist Timoslav Nikolic not for any love of him or his Radical Party but because he vowed, unlike his pro-Western adversary Boris Tadic, to keep a grip on Kosovo even if it cost Serbia entry to the EU. His narrow loss signaled the depth of Serbia's outrage -- the fact that today's violence is about more than Kosovo, reflecting instead the accumulated frustration and failure of Serbia, nearly two decades after Slobodan Milosevic came to power, to move on politically and psychologically from its past.

In this sense, the crisis now gripping the Balkans is more than a reaction to the injustice over Kosovo than it is a symptom of deeper conflicts boiling to the surface in Serb society. "Milosevic's lies got deeply embedded," Dusan Prorokovic, State Secretary for Kosovo in the ruling Democratic Party of Serbia, told me several weeks ago in Belgrade, "and Serbs are still confused about their past." They are also -- as they've shown in recent tests, from the three-month-long protest aimed at ousting Milosevic in '96-'97, to NATO's 78-day bombing campaign in '99 -- masters of patience and endurance. Which is why America and its European allies backing Kosovo independence must realize: Serbia is in this battle for the long haul. As a Serbian Orthodox monk I was traveling with in Kosovo, put it:

" is just a pause. The war will continue and Kosovo will be ours again in 10, 20, 50 years when American power declines. Kosovo is our Jerusalem. It is our identity. Without Kosovo, Serbia does not exist."



Video my me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWYJobjmmtE

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. This is the latest in flare-ups going back 500 years

yes, same sides, same folks... (metaphorically speaking)

The last huge flare-up led to that short walk in the park called WW I... but I am sure observers outside the US are aware of this (in fact I know this for a fact)

So this is not going back to last elections...


Time to take out that book on Central European History... a lot of what we are seeing, we've seen before...

And why it scares me shitless

Ah the good ol days of the Black Hand (Serbian Anarchist organization) and the Tsarist Secret Service... did I mention it included a young prince, a serbian radical and a bullet? Bloody uniform is still in exhibit in Prague, in case anybody cares to ask...

[Warpy]

2. It all goes back to religion

and it goes back at least 600 years.

Maybe when they're all exhausted by slaughter they'll see what the problem's been all along and dump the religions.

Either that, or they'll just drag the rest of the world into it. That's happened in the Balkans, too.

[OmahaBlueDog]

3. Oh really?

<<Serbia is in this battle for the long haul. As a Serbian Orthodox monk I was traveling with in Kosovo, put it:" is just a pause. The war will continue and Kosovo will be ours again in 10, 20, 50 years when American power declines. Kosovo is our Jerusalem. It is our identity. Without Kosovo, Serbia does not exist.>>

The fact that Serbia thinks this is part of their identity must come as one helluva surprise to the Albanians who have lived there for the last thousand years or so.

...and let's not fool ourselves into thinking this is a new fight. Marshall Tito used a lot of political skill and brute force to keep the lid on that pot during his tenure.

An excellent piece on how we got to the current state of affairs is "Albania's Golgotha, Indictments of the Exterminators of the Albanian People."

http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/kosovo/juka.htm

On the other hand, in the interest of fairness (God knows why), you can read this counterpoint, as republished in Free Republic (which should say it all, right there)

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a377bafc916e6.htm

[rusty quoin]

4. This just scares the hell out of me.

Bush treats Turkey going into Iraq as a day in the park. These big time rich guys in this administration have nothing to worry about about as they leave office.