Kosovo should Remain Serbian

By: Roni Harb & Phillip Smyth

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As opposed to the Kurds, Arameans, Copts and Berbers in the Middle East or the Tibetans or Uygurs in Central Asia, the Albanian people already have state to call their own. Still, ethnic Albanian Muslims have ambitions to create more entities out of the different countries they live in, all bordering the Albanian motherland. In the words of US ambassador to Macedonia, Christopher Hill, “We spent the 1990s worrying about a Greater Serbia. That's finished. We are going to spend time well into the next century worrying about a Greater Albania.”

Current examples include Serbia and Macedonia. Macedonia has been plagued by Albanian Muslim rebels and separatist political movements in the west of the country since 2001. In Serbia, also involved in numerous insurrections by ethnic Albanians since the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Albanians have recently managed to declare independence.  This new independent Kosovo is actually something that most countries in the world have been against. Despite this fact the Swedish and American media apparatus showed the scene in its entirety.  Those in the Swedish media tried to manicure the facts, essentially deceiving the people, making them think that the entire world has accepted the new state of Kosovo. While in the United States, little coverage or analysis was given to the situation. Unfortunately, the Swedish and American governments bought the argument for an independent Kosovo. In fact, until today most countries in the world have not recognized the creation of the Kosovar state, more than half of the European Union doesn’t even support it.

For years following the successful NATO campaign against Serbia to dislodge the Serbian presence in Kosovo and end ethnic cleansing of Albanians, the regional parliament and government of Kosovo have since proven that they are not ready for the autonomy they desire. Crime, both organized and unorganized is rampant, Gypsies and ethnic Christian Serbs have come under the same type oppression the Albanians were under before NATO stepped in. Frankly, there is little chance that without peacekeepers or other forms of intervention that Kosovo could survive as an independent viable state.

The regional parliament of Kosovo must:

1: Show that they can guarantee all people equal treatment. Give the Serbs of Kosovo a right to return to their homes and enjoy equal rights.

2: Show that they can fight criminality the right way, today the biggest mafia organizations take refugee in Kosovo.

3. Show that the UN troops are no longer needed in the area.

The above points are far from being realized considering that the Kosovo Liberation Army (Ushtria Çlirimtare ë Kosovës – UCK), guerrillas and government apparatchiks fear very little. They are the ones proclaiming independence and are:

1.   Aiding and even leading numerous criminal organizations

2.   In addition to Serb mobs protesting Kosovo’s independence, Albanian mobs have gone further even attacking UN troops and positions, the same UN that saved them so many years ago.

3.   They are attacking Serbs in their homes and destroying holy places.

      4.   According to Washinton Times correspondent Jerry Seper, “Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden.” Should America or Sweden, both countries threatened by radical Islam, ally themselves with a group that has trained with al Qaeda?

 What also needs answering is, what about the predicament of other groups that demand independence? Should Serbs who declared the independence of the Republic of Srpska or the Croats who claimed the Croat Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia, now located within the borders of Bosnia be allowed to declare their autonomy or even further independence? An independent Kosovo may set a much more dangerous precedent for other places, such as Russia with the separatist Chechens, in Western Europe with the Basques or even with American allies such as the Kurds in Iraq.

 Europe and the US must wake up, look at the situation factually and realistically. 

We need to protect minority rights in all of the former Yugoslavia, but sometimes unilateral declarations of independence can backfire, and only cause further problems.