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| Europe | |
| The Serbs' Self-Inflicted Wounds | |
| 2008-02-24 | |
Someone with a good memory of the conversation once told me how Lord Carrington, then one of the "mediators" of the incipient post-Yugoslavia war, came to the conclusion that Slobodan Milosevic was a highly dangerous man. Well-disposed toward Serbia (as the British establishment has always been), Carrington told the late dictator that he understood Serb concerns about significant Serbian minorities in Bosnia and Croatia. But why did Milosevic also insist on exclusive control over Kosovo, where the Albanian population was approximately 90 percent? "That," replied Milosevic coldly, "is for historical reasons." It's a shame, in retrospect, that it took us so long to diagnose the pathology of Serbia's combination of arrogance and self-pity, in which what is theirs is theirs and what is anybody else's is negotiable. We used to read this same atavistic proclamation by the hellish light of burning Sarajevo, and now we glimpse it again through the flames of the blazing U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, and by the glare of similar but less dramatic arsons set by Serbs in ski masks in northern Kosovo itself. But it needs to be understood that "Serbia" itself has lost nothing and has nothing to complain about. With the independence of Kosovo, the Yugoslav idea is finally and completely dead, but it was Serbian irredentism that killed the last vestige of that idea, and it is to that account that the whole cost ought to be charged. Forget all the nonsense that you may have heard about Kosovo being "the Jerusalem" of Serbia. It may contain some beautiful and ancient Serbian and Serbian Orthodox cultural sites, but it is much more like Serbia's West Bank or Gaza, with a sweltering, penned-up, subject population who were for generations treated as if they were human refuse in the land of their own birth. Nobody who has spent any time in the territory, as I did during and after the eviction of the Serb militias, can believe for a single second that any Kosovar would ever again submit to rule from Belgrade. It's over. But how did it begin? In fact, Kosovo has never been recognized internationally as part of Serbia. It was only ever recognized as part of Yugoslavia, and with the liquidation of that state Serbian claims upon its territory became null and void. A little history here is necessary. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #7 I shall summerize: Hitchens misses Tito and Yugoslavia. Don't we all? HAhaHahaahaHahhahaha |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2008-02-24 22:50 |
| #6 it was a 4 way fight... nobody right |
| Posted by: 3dc 2008-02-24 17:34 |
| #5 But then, I also favor the return of English lands on the continent illegally stolen by the Capets. I were you I wuld claim all of France: in the Hundred Years War, the right was with England: the Salic Law was artificially applied to the throne of France (1) by the French nobility who feared an English king would hold them much tighter and would pay less respect to their feudal privileges than what they were used to. Tha Valois "ran" on an agenda of preserving the feudal system. (1) The Francs of France descended from the Ripuarian Francs not from the Salians and the Ripurians had no rule against banning women from the throne. |
| Posted by: JFM 2008-02-24 10:55 |
| #4 But then, I also favor the return of English lands on the continent illegally stolen by the Capets. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2008-02-24 10:18 |
| #3 Albanian's are mmajority in Kosovo (Sebia's historical heartland) due to: 1) Expropriations during Ottoman occupation when thanks to the unfairness of shariah and Ottoman courts Muslims stole teh lands from the Christains who had no choice but to migrate to mainland Serbia. 2) Genocide during the Nazi occupation. 3) The silent ethnic purification just after Tito's death where Serrbs where routinely arsoned or raped. Anyone wonders that the Serbs at one point decided to push backa dn that they are unhappy wbout NATO rewarding centuries of constant agression? |
| Posted by: JFM 2008-02-24 10:03 |
| #2 Word, McZoid. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2008-02-24 08:49 |
| #1 Hitchens is way off base. Kosovo was a Tito stronghold. What sickens me is Muslim intolerance of the presence of Christians and Jews in the Middle East, while they insist on creating Euro states for Ottoman spawn. I trust Serbs more than I trust Muslims. I seem to recall a certain UN resolution that ended NATO's 1999 campaign. The document recognized Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo. |
| Posted by: McZoid 2008-02-24 06:46 |