Kosovo (in fact, Kosovo-Metochia), a disputed territory claimed by Serbia and Kosovo Albanian separatists, which Serbs regard as central to their cultural identity (differently to the Albanians), is going to pose much more unexpected problems for the international community concerning its political status as it became obvious that Belgrade and Prishtina cannot found common language during 22 years of negotiating process. The European Union already in 2007 formally warned the former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army–Hashim Tachi, a winner of the 2007 November parliamentary and local elections to freeze the proclamation of independence as the final solving solution for Kosovo knot mainly due to the Russian strong support of Serbia’s viewpoint that Kosovo is an integral part of her state territory and cannot be internationally recognized as an independent state.
However, with direct support from the US administration, on February 17th, 2008, Kosovo Assembly unilaterally (without a public referendum) declared Kosovo independence as the final political solution to the problem called the Kosovo knot. From that time onward, the Western part of the international community (NATO and the EU) is just expecting that Serbia would confirm such a solution in order to close the Kosovo chapter forever.
Nevertheless, there are three possible political solutions to solve the Kosovo knot followed by the real situation on the ground.
The first solution: State independence
The creation of an independent Kosovo is an option that is not rejected by the Western part of the international community as thoroughly unacceptable but there should be respected the principle that the borders could be changed only by peaceful means and with the agreement of the parties concerned.
However, taking into consideration public opinion as well as the opinion of the most important political factors in Serbia, who decisively reject such a possibility, the realization of this option as the final solution for the Kosovo knot could be possible to be achieved only by a new military conflict what none of the parties, in fact, wants.
Considering this reality, those Albanians who advocated before February 2008 the strategy “step by step” (from the 1990s) supported the modality of achieving the status of the republic or confederate unit under international protection within Serbia, what would in the future open the possibility for a less painful secession, i.e., independence. Nevertheless, the (Western) idea of Kosovo independence already created a boomerang effect like in East Ukraine or South Caucasus.
The second solution: Provincial autonomy
In the case of Kosovo having the administrative status of the highest political and national autonomy (that is a final Serbia’s offer – the “Hong Kong” or “Scandinavian” model), however, could create a precedent that would encourage minority communities in other states which make a compact majority in some territory (Kurds, Catalans, Corsicans, etc.) to follow the same way. Nonetheless, a such political solution would turn the ethnic issue into a global issue of security in many multiethnic countries around the globe.
The danger of the creation of independent Kosovo does not only lie in the fact that the official Belgrade is opposing this idea (likewise, for instance, the Greek Cypriot Government that is opposing the creation of an independent Turkish North Cyprus), but also in the danger that the newly-created state would strive to get united with the neighboring areas populated by ethnic Albanians like South-East Serbia (Medvedja, Bujanovac, and Preshevo municipalities), West North Macedonia, or East Montenegro).
This would, by itself, as it is already, endanger the security and stability in the region (for instance, the Albanian rebellion in North Macedonia in 2001 that was directly supported by the veterans of the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army for the matter of pan-Albanian political unification).
The third solution: Political re-unification with quasi-“the motherland”
The core of the problem starts when the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (the SFRY) broke up but no agreement was achieved in changing the borders. One-sided separation of some federal units–republics was allowed to occur by Western “democracies” and that was the principle that was respected from the beginning till the end of the Yugoslav crisis (from 1990 to 1999).
Since Kosovo enjoyed in the SFRY the status of territorial-national autonomy within Serbia (likewise the region of Vojvodina), the demands for independence have not been supported by the international community. However, encouraged by Slovenian, Croatian, Macedonian, and Bosnian independence (internationally recognized firstly by Western countries followed by the rest of the world) the greatest hard-liners within the Albanian national movement – followers of Redzep Cosja, member of the Kosovo Academy of Arts and Science, championed Kosovo independence with a final task of joining Kosovo to Albania (the wish publicly confirmed in 1997 by Kosovo Albanian leader – Dr. Ibrahim Rugova). Actually, according to the idea and the things, this line pleads for in politics, the mother state of Albania would gather together all “Albanian lands” or the territories populated by the Albanian inhabitants who are there in majority.
However, it has to be clearly noticed that Albania was never the real motherland of Kosovo different from the case of Serbia. Kosovo was never part of Albania except during WWII when B. Mussolini created a Greater Albania together with the biggest portion of multiethnic Kosovo but, nevertheless, without its northern part which is even today exclusively populated by the Serbs. In other words, all of those Albanians advocating the creation of a Greater Albania including Kosovo too are, in fact, supporting the idea of re-creation of the Second World War’s Mussolini’s Greater Albania.
What is reality?
However, after the turmoil in Albania in 1997 caused by the collapse of “the pyramidal system of private banks” in which the Albanian Government was involved too, and when Albania was at the edge of the civil war and threatened by the danger of institutional disintegration, the idea of Kosovo unification with Albania has been pushed aside by many politicians and citizens on both sides of the border as the Albanians in Albania faced up with the struggle for survival and civil war of tribal and regional character. Political and economic circumstances have pushed temporarily Kosovo from Albanian nationalists’ primary political vision at least up to the mid-1999. On other hand, the Albanians in Kosovo have become less enthusiastic to join their poor and divided brothers for the sake of great romantic ideas.
Nevertheless, today, as a matter of fact, there is no strict border between Albania and Kosovo and, therefore, the traffic of people, goods, arms, etc. between these two Albanian national states is free like within the Schengen Zone in Europe. Kosovo is already since mid-June 1999 occupied by NATO forces (redressed into KFOR uniforms) while, in fact, the focal boss of the province is Washington. In conclusion, Kosovo is de facto separated from Serbia, de iure, quasi-independent state but in reality, an American colony.
Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic
Ex University Professor
Research Fellow at Centre for Geostrategic Studies
Personal disclaimer: The author writes for this publication in a private capacity which is unrepresentative of anyone or any organization except for his own personal views. Nothing written by the author should ever be conflated with the editorial views or official positions of any other media outlet or institution.
Originally published on 2022-11-01
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.
Read our Disclaimer/LegalStatement!
DonatetoSupportUs
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.
The Serb holocaust during the WWII in the Independent State of Croatia is not a misnomer, an accusation, and even less a speculation. It is an historical fact. Rabid nationalism and religious dogmatism were its two main ingredients. During the existence of Croatia as an independent Catholic State, over 700,000 men, women and children perished. Many were executed, tortured, died of starvation, buried alive, or were burned to death. Hundreds were forced to become Catholic. Catholic padres ran concentration camps; Catholic priests were officers of the military corps which committed such atrocities. 700,000 in a total population of a few ...
Geopolitical map of the Balkans in 1997The Balkans and GeopoliticsThe peculiar geostrategic position of the Balkan Peninsula gives us an answer to the question of why it has been throughout history both a bridge and the battlefield of different civilizations and cultures. Thus, the history of the region was to a great extent determined by the location of the Balkans. Situated at the meeting point of Europe, Africa, and Asia both the Balkans experienced alternate imperial drives, competing ideologies together with conflicting social, political, and economic systems.[1] For the local people in the region, to live in the area of ...
Twenty-five years commemoration of NATO’s military intervention against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (the FRY) in March−June 1999 once again opened the question of the Western foundation for Kosovo’s secession from Serbia and its unilateral proclamation of a quasi-independence in February 2008. Kosovo became the first and only European state today that is ruled by the terroristic warlords as a party’s possession – the (Albanian) Kosovo Liberation Army (the KLA). This article aims to investigate the nature of NATO’s war on Yugoslavia in 1999 which has as an outcome the creation of the first terroristic state in Europe – the ...
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]SaveSave
Every now and then we are being bombed by some terms in order to get used to them and accept them as something regular, accurate and correct. Such a thing happened with the toponym of Kosovo.The same method was applied in Bosnia and Herzegovina, i.e with the toponym of Bosnia, which once was an Orthodox Christian medieval kingdom, meanwhile global media portrays it as it’s exclusively Bosnian Muslim land regardless the fact that history, old books speak differently. In that sense here are the facts easy to check:Encyclopedia Britannica, Edition 1971Reference: EB, Edition 1971, Volume 3, page 983, Entry: Bosnia, ...
Over the past 50 years the US and European powers have engaged in countless imperial wars throughout the world. The drive for world supremacy has been clothed in the rhetoric of “world leadership”, the consequences have been devastating for the peoples targeted. The biggest, longest and most numerous wars have been carried out by the United States. Presidents from both parties direct and preside over this quest for world power. The ideology which informs imperialism varies from “anti-communism”in the past to “anti-terrorism”today.Washington’s drive for world domination has used and combined many forms of warfare, including military invasions and occupations; proxy ...
After February 2008 when Kosovo Albanian-dominated Parliament proclaimed Kosovo independence (without organizing referendum) with obvious US diplomatic support (unilateral recognition) with the explanation that the Kosovo case is unique in the World (i.e., it will be not repeated again) one can ask the question: is the problem of the southern Serbian province of Kosovo-Metochia really unique and surely unrepeatable in some other parts of the World as the US administration was trying to convince the rest of the international community?[1]Domino effect in international relationsThe consequences of recognition of Kosovo independence by a bigger part of the international community are already ...
Belarus is a land known also as Belorussia (White Russia, Weißrussland) in East Europe which was for centuries occupied by a Polish-Lithuanian common state until it became included in Tsarist Russia in the late 18th century.[1] Belarus is facing many identity problems but the most important is the ethnolinguistic challenge to a separate Belarussian[2] national feature.National identityA common national identity is a focal element for the creation of a national state as without a common identity that is based on a fundamental element of group’s identity a psychological sense of common solidarity cannot be developed. However, such solidarity is a ...
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is calling for an “impartial investigation” into grisly reports by a European investigative commission alleging that Kosovo government officials were involved in the trade of human organs.In an exhaustive report released by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in December, it was alleged that Serbian detainees of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) were kidnapped and murdered by Kosovo Albanians so their organs could be sold on the black market.The report says the crimes occurred after the Kosovo War ended in 1999.These shocking allegations came on the heels of a two-year investigation into a ...
Compare Donald Trump and Barack Obama: Trump bans people from Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Somalia but Obama bombed people from Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Somalia! The question is: Who is a bigger racist?Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]
What constitutes water can be scientifically proven beyond any doubt, now what constitutes a nation-state is a far more organic question than it would seem. Each of us is very used to seeing maps with the same countries and lines on it throughout the years and take their existence as a given. But depending on where a map comes from its borders may actually look very different. One of these countries to some and non-countries to others is Kosovo which gradually continues to lose the support of the states that recognized it into existence. Furthermore, this sheds light on how ...
The real question is not whether the status of Kosovo and Metohija should be negotiated; the actual questions to be asked are: On which basis? About what? Whom with?The sole legitimate basis is that Kosovo and Metohija is an integral part of Serbia currently placed under UN mandate, pending a Security Council decision ending it. In other words, this is mandate cannot be terminated either by the EU, or NATO, the USA, Germany, or France and, should this idea ever occurred to anyone, Serbia cannot end it, either.International law (the UN Charter, the OSCE Final Act) and the Constitution of ...
Part IPart II The policy of language and political parties until the prohibition of the Illyrian name (1843)During the years of 1832–1836 the Hungarian assembly (Dieta) hold several sessions in Pozsony (Bratislava/Pressburg), where Croatia-Slavonia’s deputies, particularly count J. Drašković, fought for the introduction of the national (Croat) language in Croatia-Slavonia instead of the Latin or Hungarian, as well as for the Croatian state-historical rights (the so-called Croatian pravice) as they were claimed as such by the Croat political leadership. At the same time, in 1834 Ljudevit Gaj obtained a permission from the Habsburg Emperor Francis I (1806–1835) to publish the first ...
The Serbs stepped again onto the historical scene in the years of the European wars that swept the continent from the forests of Ireland to the walls of Constantinople in the late 17th century. The Turks finally withdrew from Hungary and Transylvania when their Ottoman hordes were routed outside Vienna in 1683. The disintegration of Ottoman rule in the southwest limbered up the Serbs, arousing in them hope that the moment was ripe for joint effort to break Turkish dominion in the Balkans. The neighboring Christian powers (Austria and Venice) were the only possible allies. The arrival of the Austrian ...
Long live the European court, the most humane court in the world! That is why seven times as many Croat and more than ten times as many (Kosovar) Albanian war crimes suspects, in percentage terms relative to Serbs, were acquitted by the Hague Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, with Radovan Karadzic being just its latest victim. (Source via this recent infographic from Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda).No matter that well before Srebrenica you had Sisak, where 595 Serb civilians of which 120 were women were disappeared by Croatian paramilitaries in 1991-1992. Everyone has heard of Srebrenica; almost nobody has heard heard of Sisak. The largest ethnic cleansing ...
The current Ukrainian crisis and in fact civil war which stared at the very end of 2013 are grounded in for decades lasting internal interethnic antagonisms primarily on the Ukrainian-Russian relations including above all the “Crimean Question” as an apple of discord from 1954 between Ukraine and Russia.[1] The crisis came from Lithuania’s capital Vilnius were in November 2013 an Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine had to be signed. Lithuania at that time (July 1st−December 31st, 2013) presided the European (Union) Council and formally had full political responsibility for the breaking out of the crisis as being the ...
Italian police broke up an alleged jihadist cell in Venice who had celebrated last week’s terrorist attack in London and planned to blow up the city’s famous Rialto Bridge in the hope of killing hundreds of tourists. In a series of overnight raids, anti-terrorism police arrested three suspects, all of them Kosovars who were living in Italy.Fisnik Bekaj, 24, Dake Haziraj, 25, and Arian Babaj, 27, were allegedly admirers of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and were secretly recorded discussing how they were ready to die for the sake of jihad. A fourth person, an unnamed minor ...
PrefaceKosovo (Serb. Kosovo-Metochia, Alb. Kosova) is a square-shaped province of the Republic of Serbia of 10,877 sq. kilometres that is approximately the size of the USA state of Connecticut. The province is situated in the southern interior of the Balkan Peninsula in South-East Europe.[1] For most of the 20th century-history, this province was part of Serbia like in the Middle Ages but from 1455 to 1912 it was occupied by the Ottoman Empire. After the 1998‒1999 Kosovo War the province is an autonomous territory under the formal administration of the UNO but, in fact, USA’s colony. Officially, the province has ...
Trump the Anti-Globalist Champion of the People?Many Americans who’ve been supporting President-elect Trump see him as the populist leader who will save America from ruin. Trump supporters have been unfairly marginalized and pigeonholed by the MSM broad stroke as white supremacy extremists bent on plunging America back into a new Jim Crowism era and a second Civil War along with a growing number of angry, uneducated, disenfranchised blue collar, mostly white male redneck loser types. Despite a spike in racist graffiti and vandalism since the election, this gross overgeneralization is the Hillary/Soros/Rothschild/MSM’s desperate attempt to discredit Trump’s victory while Soros ...
Revelations of fascistic crimes carried out by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) prior to, during and after NATO’s war against the former Yugoslavia should provide a salutary lesson whenever Washington again cites humanitarian concerns to justify its predatory war aims. A new report prepared by Swiss Council of Europe deputy Dick Marty slams Kosovo leader Hachim Thaci for organ trafficking and other abominable crimes, deftly shaded by the U.S. in pursuit of their own self-interests.A report by the Council of Europe describes Kosovo today as a country subject to “mafia-like structures of organised crime”. It accuses KLA commander and current ...