January 5, 2003 7:41 AM

How long can you ignore the obvious?

Kosovars grappling with rights to province

Since I left Kosovo in 1995, I've kept close tabs on events in the province. I wondered if Albanians would ever be free of their Serb masters, and free to determine their own fate. Now the Serbs are largely gone, replaced by foreigners who can't quite figure out how to deal with the blindingly obvious- the Albanian desire for independence.

Even during my time there, at the height of the Serb occupation, independence was never far from the mind of Albanians. Though it seemed a remote possibility at the time, independence is no longer so far-fetched. It is also a concept that Kosovo's foreign benfactors are not so eager to embrace. Doing so would mean taking responsibility for the real work that lies ahead.

PRISTINA, Kosovo -- There is a taboo in Kosovo that none of the foreign officials who administer the province want to mention: independence. Most residents want to discuss little else.

Ever since NATO bombed the Serbia of Slobodan Milosevic in 1999 to stop Serbian attempts to crush an armed rebellion by Kosovo's repressed Albanian majority, the international bureaucrats have tried to defer a decision on the ultimate status of what remains, officially, a Serbian province.

It is an act increasingly hard to pull off -- largely because many of the Albanians of Kosovo are aware of the foreigners' desire, particularly palpable in conversation with American officials, to end their involvement here.

Driving out of Pristina, a sprawling mass of communist-era tower blocks and muddy streets, the road signs on the main highway are supposed to be bilingual -- Serbian and Albanian.

Instead, stickers written in English cover the Serbian listings of all destinations. Using the Albanian spelling of the province's name, they proclaim: "Independence for Kosova! The only way to peace in the Balkans."

The stickers reflect the growing impatience of many Kosovars with foreign diplomats who neither constrain Albanian ambitions nor try to entice Serbian politicians to abandon their claim to land that was the heart of Serbia's medieval empire.

"The status quo is not tenable for much longer," said Brenda Pearson, an expert on Balkan affairs with the Washington-based Public International Law and Policy Group.

"The Albanians and Serbians alike are waiting for the international community to do something courageous. Yet, left on their own, both would quickly choose partition, ignoring the consequences for their neighbors."

Splitting Kosovo in two, and trading the northern parts where most Serbs live for land inhabited by Albanians in other parts of southern Serbia, could open a Pandora's box of border disputes, potentially threatening the territorial integrity of both Bosnia and Macedonia.

The underlying reality here is that the international community wants to get the hell out of Kosovo. It's a no-win scenario, and it's a diplomatic backwater. No one is going to get a Nobel Prize for bringing peace to Kosovo. Indeed, as soon as the international community pulls out, peace will likely not be at the top of anyone's agenda.

By ignoring the 800-pound gorilla that is the Albanian desire for independence, all the international community is ignoring reality. The population of Kosovo is now over 90% Albanian. It only makes sense to address independence in a manner in which Kosovo's foreign rulers can act as an impartial third party. Ignoring what is blingingly obvious to everyone in or familiar with Kosovo will not lessen the likelihood of bloodshed.

The international community, in it's haste to leave Kosovo, is forgetting why it took over administration of the province to begin with. You may not be able to "solve" the problem, but with some creativity you might just prevent another Balkan War. Wouldn't that be worth the effort?

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on January 5, 2003 7:41 AM.

The state should not be your garbageman was the previous entry in this blog.

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