NATO Says It’s Prepared to Keep the Peace in Kosovo
SKENDERAJ, Kosovo, Dec. 5 ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ NATO commanders in Kosovo say they are ready to shut down any violence in the wake of the province’s expected secession from Serbia. The scorched frescoes and shattered roof tiles at the Serbian Orthodox monastery of St. Joanikije testify to how difficult that task might be…. On Monday, mediators will officially report what has been clear for some time: they have reached a dead end in their negotiations with Serbia and Kosovo. Then the United Nations Security Council will meet to discuss the matter, and Kosovo’s leaders will decide on the timing of the province’s declaration of independence from Serbia…. For all the dry diplomatic language of resolutions and declarations, it is bloodshed that people most fear. In the worst-case situation, trouble begins in Kosovo and spreads like a contagion among the overlapping ethnic groups and across the fresh and often permeable borders in the former Yugoslavia.
Monday marks a point in Kosovo’s recent history that I’ve eagerly anticipated and yet still openly fear. Anyone who knows anything about Kosovo understands that independence from Serbia was not a matter of “if”, but “when”. After being openly and agressively repressed by the Serbian government and the minority Serb population, Kosovo’s Albanians want nothing to do with co-existence or shared government…and who can blame them? Did anyone ask Jews to accept joint rule with the Nazis? To you, that may seem a trite and overdone comparison, but as someone who’s lived with an Albanian family in Pristina, I can assure that it’s not from the Albanian point of view.
I’ve seen firsthand some of the suffering and persecution that was visited upon Albanians by their Serbian overlords and those Serbs who knew that they had the power of the police and the military behind them. When I was in Belgrade, I met Serbs who would occasionally spend their weekends hunting Muslims in Bosnia. That same mindset existed among the small but ultra-nationalistic Serb population in Kosovo. These folks have long-since convinced themselves that Kosovo is the very heart of the Serbian nation, and their efforts in Kosovo prior to 1999 were consistent with their ultranationalist motto: Samo sloga Srbina spasava. Roughly translated, this means “Only where there are only Serbs will Serbs be safe”. With that in mind, it’s not a stretch to understand that Kosovo’s Serbs, and indeed the Serbian government in general, were never about negotiation and compromise.
On the Albanian side, negotiating with their former oppressors was not ever really a viable option. While NATO and the West were all about trying to find something resembling middle ground, I can tell you from my own experience there that there is no middle ground. Serbs want Kosovo for their own historical and nationalistic purposes, while Albanians want it because they constitute an overwhelming majority of the population. Albanian leaders have known all along that all they really had to do was to wait NATO and the West out. Then they’d eventually be able to declare independence when the peacekeepers gave up trying to negotiate coexistence. It would appear that time is here.
I’m happy for Kosovo. It finally appears as if Kosovo’s Albanians will finally take the steps they feel are necessary to establish themselves as an independent country. It’s been a long time coming. Given my experience there, I’m not exactly the most dispassionate observer, but I do wholeheartedly support Kosovo’s desire for independence from Serbia. If you’d seen what I have and listened to the stories I’ve been told, I suspect you’d feel much the same. My only hope at this point is that independence can be achieved without bloodshed, and that Albanians there will look forward as they work to develop a functional and effective democracy. Living in the past has only resulted in the senseless expenditure of blood and tears.
I often wonder about the people I left behind in Kosovo: the friends I made, the family I lived with in Pristina, the people I ran across and whose stories I listened to every day, and I hope they’re well and safe. For years, they lived in a police state. Now they have an opportunity to live in a democracy of their own design. I wish them well, because they certainly deserve it after the years of suffering and oppression.
