Freedom’s unfreedom

Will independence for Kosovo unleash another round of bloodshed in the Balkans?

Mehru Jaffer Vienna

Kosovo, the most troubled spot in Europe, is also the continent's poorest. Out of a population of two million, 90 per cent are ethnic Albanians. They happen to be mostly Muslim and want independence from Orthodox Christian Serbia. Serbs strongly oppose this and have the support of fellow Slavs in Russia in the United Nations Security Council. Serbia maintains its claim on the province and a part of northern Kosovo is now carved into an all-Serb enclave.

Kosovo, which has a per capita income of not more than one-and-a-half euros and an economy that thrives on smuggled petrol, cigarettes and cement, is now headed for independence in the early months of the new year. The recognition of Kosovo's independence, warns Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, will be the most dangerous precedent after World War II. Russia agrees that unilateral recognition of Kosovo's independence could trigger a 'chain reaction' of problems around the world.

Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State, wants Russia to accept the reality that Serbia and Kosovo are never going to be one again, or risk instability there. EU leaders are tired of negotiating Kosovo's future and feel that independence for the province is the only alternative. However, within the EU, only a handful of its 27 member states are prepared to recognise independence for Kosovo. Particularly Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia fear that the move will encourage minorities in their own territories to do the same.

This muscle-flexing on the part of the influential in the world makes it impossible to forget that the Cold War is over. It also questions the motives of the most powerful members of the international community as they exchange threats and counter-threats over Kosovo, instilling fear and insecurity in the region.

An autonomous province of the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo is administered by the UN since 1999. Its future continues to be uncertain. The province shares its borders with Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro. The two million population of Kosovo is largely ethnic Albanian with pockets of Serbs, Turks, Bosniaks and Romani people. Even before Yugoslavia — the non-aligned nation created for southern Slavs after World War II — disintegrated nationalists made the Serbian minority in Kosovo a political issue to whip up popular support. The wound of Kosovo on the southern tip of Serbia was reopened around 1987. In the trouble that followed, Serbs began leaving the province at the rate of about 2,000 a year while the Kosovo Albanians boasted the highest birth rate in Europe.

Nationalists claimed that Serbs were driven out of Kosovo by an organised conspiracy of Albanian terrorists and separatists. Those defending the Albanians in Kosovo said that the Serbs are moving out of ruined Yugoslavia's poorest and least developed region for economic reasons. They said that Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia are subjected to systematic racial discrimination at the hands of Slav Serbs and Macedonians.