“I feel stronger,” said Ymer Govori, 36, carrying his daughter on his shoulders to celebrations downtown. “I have my own state and my own post code,” he said, “and it won’t say Serbia any longer.”
It was a long time coming, but Kosovo is finally- and deservedly- an independent country. This news hasn’t been received with universal applause, of course, and I realize that my excitement for the people I met in Kosovo is not shared by all concerned parties. People in Belgrade, por ejemplo, were something less than sanguine at the perceived loss of their ancestral homeland.
The Serbian government has apparently sworn off military action against Kosovo, but they’re threatening to downgrade relations with any country that recognizes Kosovo. This will likely prove to be a hollow threat, since Serbia needs the West far more than the West needs Serbia. After the 1999 war, successive Serbian governments have worked hard to improve their standing in the West in an effort to secure assistance in rebuilding Serbia’s moribund economy. I seriously doubt that Serbia will cut off it’s nose to spite it’s face. These threats will undoubtedly amount to a whole lot of saber-rattling with no bite behind the bark. Even so, they have to do SOMETHING to mollify the sizable number of nutjob nationalists who honestly believe that God is a Serb. I’ve met a lot of these folks, and they’re truly a scary collection of knuckle-draggers. Who else would spending their weekend “hunting Muslims” (no joke) in Bosnia?
Kosovo has a long way to go before it becomes economically self-sufficient. Serbia spent years decimating the Kosovar economy, stripping anything of value and moving it to Serbia. Kosovo is almost literally starting from scratch, and it’s going to be a long hard road to anything close to prosperity. Europe’s newest nation is in fact a Third World country not too far removed from Europe’s vast wealth. In many respects, Kosovo is a reclamation project and will remain one for some time to come. A country blessed with little in the way of natural resources and precious little agriculture, Kosovo finds itself facing long odds. It’s quite possible that, for the foreseeable future at least, Kosovo’s most valuable export may be it’s young people, many of whom may well emigrate in search of opportunities that don’t yet exist in their homeland.
Independence from Serbia is just the first baby step in what will undoubtedly be a long hard road. At Kosovars will be setting the direction and making the decisions for themselves. It’s about damn time.
