I tried to explain my thoughts on Kosovo but a friend of mine from Serbia summed it up rather succinctly, from his point of view, after reading what I had to say. I think it is fair to say that most Serbs agree.
'American embassy in Belgrade was demolished. Of course, it is not good. But, how would Americans feels if Osama Bin Laden is prime minister in the state on your own land? It is exacly the same situation with Kosovo and its independence.'
The Serbs fought their own 'War on Terror' against Albanian separatists and the KLA led by Hashim Thaqi for years prior to the NATO bombing of 1999. Kosovo was autonomous in Yugoslavia for decades but that autonomy was largely revoked in 1990 by Milosevic.
The typical KLA attack would be an ambush on a police patrol, or bombing a police station, then the Serb government would respond in kind. Often civilians would get caught in the middle, and the cycle of violence would continue.
After years of this fighting NATO, looking for a reason to exist after the fall of the Soviet Union, seized on this opportunity to prove its relevance, bombed Serbia until it agreed to withdraw troops from Kosovo, with the agreement that Kosovo would remain in Serbia but would be granted autonomy and administered by the UN.
But the Albanians never gave up their desire for 'independence' and it is not entirely clear to me why the US and our allies decided to fully support this movement. Not just support it but really advocate, orchestrate, and demand it.
Probably most disturbing for the Serb people is that Hashim Thaqi, the leader of the disbanded KLA, is Prime Minister of Kosovo.
The KLA and Thaqi are roughly equivalent to Al Quaeda and Bin Laden in the Serb 'War on Terror.'
The key here really is what US interests are involved because if not for the US push for Kosovo independence it is doubtful that there would have been any kind of serious move by Thaqi to declare independence. And without some real US interests being involved there would have been no push by the US for Kosovo independence.
So when the Serbs hold the US responsible for Kosovo 'independence,' there is pretty good reason for that, since it was the US that encouraged the Albanian separatists with the rhetoric in the runup to the 1999 NATO bombing, not to mention the bombing itself, the NATO passivity while 250,000 non-Albanians were driven out of Kosovo, and finally the casting aside of UN 1244 which guaranteed Kosovo would remain part of Serbia by pushing for and recognizing the 'independence' of Kosovo.
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The more I hear things like this... the more I wonder exactly who is running our country. I mean... I'm not into conspiracy theories or anything, but the facts are clear- there are some pretty strange things going on that are funded by our government.
It is always so sad when you realized how little "what is right" has to do with what happens pretty much anywhere. Also sad to think of all the people who have died though the centuries and up till now trying not to lose this very land to the expansion of those very people. I wonder where is next.
As long as all international conflicts are not subject to arbitration and the enforcement of decisions arrived at by arbitration is not guaranteed, and as long as war production is not prohibited we may be sure that war will follow upon war. Unless our civilization achieves the moral strength to overcome this evil, it is bound to share the fate of former civilizations: decline and decay.
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