Kosovo a year and a bit on

I feel Kosovo may be one of those issues I could completely change my mind on. As those of you who know my dispositions can attest I used to be ...condescending towards an independent and sovereign Republic of Kosovo. That conviction was informed by the feeling I have that, somehow, Albanians Serbs in Kosovo formed a community, one entitled to have a State and full sovereignty to protect it. This entitlement does not come from international law, that much is clear. Instead I intend to refer to the entitlement to sovereign protection that, in Walzer's terms, a community as such deserves.

The judgment was one of value, one that I developed largely while writing my thesis on Kosovo and learning its history and that of its people. I gained such insight into popular feelings amongst Kosovars through reference to primary sources for the events that have occurred since the death of Tito (1980) and the dissolution of Jugoslavia about a decade later.

Why did I think so? Ultimately because I thought there was enough common history to create a genuine and solid links between its members. Enough history, culture, language and emotion to give rise to a strong imagined community - a Nation in Ben Anderson's words.


I may have to rethink that through a little, here's why.

The first is a better understanding I now have of Serbia's point of view. As an established community, worthy of a State whose sovereignty is not undermined by aspirations of Kosovar independence, Serbia is now done the tort of seeing its territory stripped of what is arguably its most important region in terms of national history and identity.

The reasons for this are not noble. It is not the kosovars who, through uniting and peaceful demonstrations of their cultural and political independence, manage to seal it in legal terms. Serbia is cornered by the international community into giving up a part of itself to relieve them of what could become a frozen conflict, a similar pickle to that in which israelis and palestinians are stuck. The message from most European capitals is give up Kosovo (and give us Ratko) and we'll let you into our Union.

Moreover, since 1999, when the international community and NATO's KFOR moved into Kosovo and started running it from scratch, ex Liberation Front Guerrillas (who supposedly were meant to have been deprived of their weapons) started perpetrating gross Human Rights violations in Kosovo against its Serb minority. As Nahzi and Sudetic affirm here

"UCK members abducted Serbs, Albanians, Roma, and others after NATO’s arrival. UN missing-persons researchers – not criminal investigators – searched for them for years and found no trace of them in Kosovo. They did, however, find Albanian witnesses who asserted that UCK members took captured Serbs, Albanians, and Roma into Albania, where they were killed".

And let us not forget that Ksoovo, to a significant degree, owes its independence to a NATO military intervention undertaken in the name of human rights. All of this could effectively instill an 'original sin' of sorts, which could seriously hinder Kosovo's shot at independence, by isolating it from the international community and freezing its entry into the UN.

Are we sure it is a good idea to go with Kosovo, who still have everything to prove, thereby alienating Serbia at a point where its cooperation with the international community (helping us shave Radovan) indicates the good will of its pro-western government? I am not so sure anymore...