Kosovo: The Fun Never Ends

What, 12 years after a NATO action to protect the Kosovar Albanians from the Serbs, the fun goes on as NATO moves to remove Kosovo Serb roadblocks:

Kosovo's NATO-led peacekeepers confronted crowds of angry Serbs on Thursday as they tried to remove Serb roadblocks in the volatile north of the country.

For nearly three months, Kosovo Serbs have been blocking roads to stop the country's ethnic Albanian leadership from extending its control over the part of the country populated mostly by ethnic Serbs.

The Serbs reject Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia and consider the region a part of the larger Serbian nation.

After Kosovo Serb leaders refused NATO's demand to allow freedom of movement, the peacekeepers in riot gear moved in at dawn Thursday against hundreds of Serbs at roadblocks consisting of parked trucks, rocks, mud and logs.

Shocked, I tell you, shocked! Corruption in Kosovo

John Rosenthal sends along links to a couple of his articles including Corruption and Organized Crime in Kosovo: An Interview with Avni Zogiani:

As Kosovo prepares for new Prime Minister Hashim Thaci to declare its independence in the days or weeks ahead, Kosovo society is wracked by corruption and organized crime. According to the estimate of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), organized crime accounts for some 15-20 percent of the Kosovo economy: a figure that would presumably be far higher if one subtracts the substantial portion of Kosovo GDP made up of foreign aid.

John also offers up a view of Kosovo becoming an EU protectorate (more likely a millstone about the EU neck) here:

As noted in the Executive Summary of the Ahtisaari Plan -- or, as it is officially known, the "Kosovo Status Settlement" -- the powers of the ICR will "include the authority to annul decisions or laws adopted by Kosovo authorities and sanction or remove public officials whose actions are determined by the ICR to be inconsistent with the letter or spirit of the Settlement." In addition to naming the ICR, the EU will dispatch a "European Security and Defense Policy" (ESDP) Mission to Kosovo. Whereas this mission is commonly described as having merely advisory or "mentoring" functions, a glance at the details of the plan (Annex IX, Article 2.3) makes abundantly clear that it will in fact assume the ultimate operational responsibility for a wide range of essential police and judicial matters in Kosovo. In short, the Ahtisaari Plan does not foresee the independence of Kosovo, but rather its definitive separation from Serbia and the establishment of an EU protectorate over the territory.

Kosovo has been a back burner issue for some time, but that pot is bubbling...

Oh, that Kosovo....

Retired Admiral James Lyons gets it exactly right in Kosovo train-wreck warnings�:

With an unemployment rate of up to 70 percent, no one who has been to Kosovo, as I have, can doubt we are looking at the creation of a failed, nonviable rogue state. This, notwithstanding claims by the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman that somehow Muslim-led governments will embrace the United States for supporting creation of a Muslim state in the very heart of Europe. They will embrace us the same as Iran did after our elimination of their archenemy Saddam Hussein.

There is no reason for the secretary of state to be beholden to the Holbrooke Cabal in the State Department. A recent op-ed by Richard Holbrooke, President Clinton's former ambassador to the U.N., urged the U.S. to move forward with Kosovo's UDI — a position also embraced by Hillary Clinton's campaign. Oddly, even Mr. Holbrook concedes that supporting Kosovo's UDI would set the U.S. toward a "train wreck" with Russia.

Related thoughts here.

"Messy Kosovo"

Seems like some things never go away - Messy Kosovo breakaway stokes fear of partition:

Serbia is telling Serbs in Kosovo to ignore an Albanian declaration of independence early next year, raising the prospect of an ethnic partition of the breakaway province that the West has long ruled out.

Serbs dominate a thin slice of northern Kosovo, frustrating efforts by leaders of Kosovo's 90-percent Albanian majority and their U.N. overseers to extend control over the entire territory of Serbia's southern province.

Kosovo's 2 million Albanians are expected to declare independence in the first months of 2008, almost nine years since NATO drove out Serb forces to halt the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in a Serb counter-insurgency war.

The Albanians have Western backing after almost two years of failed Serb-Albanian negotiations. But the flag-raising is unlikely to extend beyond the Ibar river that slices through the flashpoint town of Mitrovica, forming a natural boundary between Serbs in the north and Albanians in the south.

Beyond formally rejecting Kosovo's secession, Serbia promises to "intensify" a network of parallel structures that service the 120,000 remaining Serbs. It has opened a government office in north Mitrovica, to U.N. accusations of "provocation".

***
But Albanians in Kosovo are also not beyond using the taboo prospect of "Greater" ethnic states to drive their argument for independence and warn Serbia to keep its hands off the north.

"Albanians live in four countries other than Albania," outgoing Kosovo prime minister Agim Ceku was quoted as saying this week, in reference to Kosovo and Serbia's southern Presevo Valley, western Macedonia and Montenegro.

"If Kosovo is partitioned along ethnic lines, those would want to discuss uniting with Albania," he said.

Talk of a Greater Albania, officially rejected by Albania and played down by most ethnic Albanian leaders, is unlikely to go down well in Western capitals. It would appear to justify their fear of partition as an almost certain trigger for Balkan land swaps and forced population movements.

But the failure of the Western states with the lion's share of responsibility for running Kosovo to extend their control over the renegade Serb north means they will be faced with the territory's de facto partition whether they like it or not.

Half of Kosovo's Serb community lives in scattered enclaves south of the Ibar, but the rest are in the north with their backs to Serbia proper. It has been off-limits to Albanian leaders since NATO peacekeepers deploying in 1999 set down a dividing line at the Ibar to separate the fighting factions.

And here's an interesting question:

"Aren't we just realizing, ex post facto, Milosevic's vision of an ethnically clean Kosovo ? but this time an Albanian Kosovo instead of a Serbian one?... In 1999, Slovakia supported the military deployment against Yugoslavia as a humanitarian intervention, in order to prevent ethnic cleansing. It was not intended to promote Kosovan separatism and a separation of Kosovo from Serbia.

Nice to see somebody in Europe finally said what has been apparent for some time - the Kosovar Albanians have used NATO and the EU as tools in cleansing their own area. At great expense, too.

I wonder if Mrs. Clinton will be claiming Kosovo as a triumph of experience for her in foreign affairs?

Not that the situation there was ever as clear as a bell... the cartoon below was used to clarify the differences in the factions competing for power in the months following the Serbian withdrawal from Kosovo (about the same time the General Wes Clark was close to having a major showdown with the Russians...)



Of course, change the captions and you've got the picture of any number of locations where "insurgents" are being engaged...