Byzantine Blog

The Emperor Has Spoken

By Neil Clark, The Guardian

So that’s that, then. After a meeting with the Italian prime minister Romano Prodi at the weekend, President Bush announced that it was time to bring the issue of Kosovan independence “to a head”. In other words, Kosovo should become independent even without the approval of the UN security council. Now the emperor has spoken, is there really any point discussing the future of the disputed Serbian province any further? Well yes, actually, there is.

Divide and Conquer Policy

What is at stake is not just the illegal seizure from Serbia of the cradle of its national history, and rewarding the campaign of violence by ex-KLA members which has seen an estimated 200,000 Serbs, Roma, Turks and other non-Albanian groups fleeing or being driven from the province since 1999. There is also the question of whether one dangerous and globally lawless state, the US of George Bush, has the right to redraw the map of the world in any way it chooses.

Bush is pressing for “independence” for Kosovo, and the word needs to be in inverted commas as the Kosovo the US has in mind will be no more “independent” than Iraq or Afghanistan — though not out of concern for Kosovan Albanians, or a passionate belief in self-determination. Contrast Washington’s stance on Kosovo with its position on the pro-Russian breakaway provinces in Georgia and Moldova, whose claims for statehood they regularly dismiss. Rather, Bush is acting because this is the final stage in what has been called the west’s “strategic concept” — the destruction of the genuinely independent and militarily strong state of Yugoslavia and its replacement with a series of weak and divided World Bank-Nato protectorates.

Washington Encourages Further Fragmentation From Which it Profits

Many will support the independence of Kosovo on simple grounds of self-determination: about 90% of Kosovans desire separation from Serbia. But Kosovo is no simple case. Given the recent history of the area, the minority rights of the non-Albanian population must also be a central concern. And the verdict of the Minority Rights Group that “nowhere is there such a level of fear for so many minorities that they will be harassed simply for who they are...nowhere else in Europe is at such a high risk of ethnic cleansing occurring in the near future — or even a risk of genocide” hardly inspires confidence in the future.

Furthermore, it is difficult to see how the creation of another new state in the Balkans will not destabilise the region further. Albanian separatists both in Montenegro and in Macedonia, where military hostilities took place as recently as 2001, will be encouraged. Serbia will face further disintegration: Albanians in the south of the country are keen to be included in a new Kosovo, while Hungarian demands for self-determination in Vojvodina are also likely to intensify.

Far from being concerned about this fragmentation, Washington encourages it. “Liberating” Kosovo from direct Belgrade control, achieved by the illegal 1999 bombardment of the rump Yugoslavia, has already brought rich pickings for US companies in the shape of the privatisation of socially owned assets.

The Bear Needs to End the U.S. Hegemony

Even more important, it has enabled the construction of Camp Bondsteel, the US’s biggest “from scratch” military base since the Vietnam war, which jealously guards the route of the trans-Balkan Ambo pipeline, and guarantees western control of Caspian Sea oil supplies. The camp, which includes a detention facility used to house those detained during Nato operations in Kosovo, was described by Alvaro Gil-Robles, the human rights envoy of the Council of Europe, as a “smaller version of Guantánamo” following a visit in November 2005. To guarantee US hegemony in the region, it is essential that Kosovo is severed permanently from Serbia — a country which, with its strong historical links to Russia, is never likely to be as obedient a servant as the empire demands.

Since the end of the cold war, Russia has allowed the US to surround it with military bases and, through interference in the electoral process, bring to power governments ready to do its bidding. But the tide is turning. The US’s attempt to engineer another “colour-coded” revolution in Belarus backfired spectacularly last year and, buoyed up by oil revenues, an increasingly assertive Russia is challenging the empire’s Drang nach Osten. And at last week’s G8 summit, President Putin reiterated his support for Serbia and his opposition to Kosovan “independence”. Let’s hope he keeps his word.

For those who believe the best hope for peace and progress for humankind is the derailing of the US juggernaut, it is imperative that on the issue of Kosovo, the bear makes a stand.

Bush Wrong on Kosovo Independence

By Craig Chamberlain, The Conservative Voice

Perhaps it was because he was greeted with a hero’s welcome, or perhaps his sympathy for illegal immigrants is great all over the world, President Bush thinks that Kosovo should be an independent state. President Bush made this statement while in Albania, while being greeted with cheers instead of black masked thugs who compare him to Hitler.

During the Clinton administration we bombed Serbia for 78 days in order to support the ethnic Albanian majority of Kosovo. It sounds like we were, once again, standing up for the underdog. Here’s the problem: Kosovo belongs to the Serbs, it always has. It is considered the heartland of Serbia. The Albanians who were fighting for Kosovo’s independence belonged to the KLA, a group with ties to Usama Bin Laden, and a group recognized by our own state department as a terrorist group. That is until President Clinton found them a useful poster boy for a group of freedom fighters and had them removed from the terrorist list in 1999.

Albanians, Not Serbs, Started the War

The Serbian army was fighting its own war against Islamic terrorism, and we sided with the terrorists. Now, I don’t want to stand up for the late Slobodan Milosevic. He was a brute and a dictator. But Serbia did not start the war in Kosovo, the Albanians did. The Albanians began illegally immigrating to Kosovo (probably assuring the Serbs they were there to do the jobs the Serbs wouldn’t do) and once they constituted a majority of the population they demanded independence.

Somehow, I don’t think independence is what they really want. They want to ethnically cleanse the area of Serbs. Today Serbs are only 10% of the population. They live in ghetto like conditions, unable to leave their fortified neighborhoods without risking violence upon themselves.They are prisoners in their own homes, and prisoners in their own country. The international community, instead of telling the thieving Albanians to get out, is insisting that the Serbs vacate their own country. After this ethnic cleansing is complete, the newly independent Kosovo will most likely attempt to unify itself to Albania.

America Should Give the Southwest Back to Mexico Then

By President Bush’s logic, we should give the southwest back to Mexico. After all Americans are quickly becoming a minority in those states as illegal immigrants from south of the border (here to do “jobs Americans won’t do”) continue to pour in. And unlike Kosovo belonging to the Albanians, the southwest once belonged to Mexico. Perhaps the U.S. could take a lesson from the Balkans and be reminded the price of open borders, what happens to a country when the cultural and ethnic balance shifts, and maybe we can wonder where the loyalty of our new arrivals lie?

Rewarding illegal immigrants, whether it is with amnesty, or giving them an independent country that isn’t theirs, is never a good idea.

Cartoon by Divac (Serbia)