All posts tagged Serbia

Today marks nine years since the start of NATO’s bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to end Slobodan Milosevic’s brutal crackdown on Kosovar Albanians. Belgrade is marking the occasion by proposing an ethnic partition of parts of northern Kosovo where Serbs are a majority.

Creating a Republika Srpska-style zone in Kosovo may prove to be the best short-term solution in order to prevent any further outbreaks of violence like the recent unrest in Mitrovica. But maintaining what is in essence the status quo is not a viable endgame. Maybe things will fester for another five or 10 years with a deteriorating economic condition for the Serbs. That sounds a like a crock pot for ultra-nationalism. Seeing first-hand the state of Serbs in the enclave of Gracanica in 2006, I find it abundantly clear that maintaing isolation will merely add to their frustrations.

So what then? Those in the West who see closure of the Balkan problem in Kosovo’s well-deserved declaration of independence are sorely mistaken. An independent Kosovo is a bitter pill to swallow, even for EU-wanting, nationalist-hating moderates. Not only have they lost the heart and soul of their country, the realization of ethnic Albanian dreams came with the price of fodder for Serb nationalists.