Κυριακή 18 Ιουνίου 2017

An Old Nightmare Returns: The Balkans Simmer Again

One of the problems that emerges when U.S. officials and the news media are focused on a small number of foreign-policy issues is that troubling developments can occur below the radar in other areas. That appears to be happening in the Balkans, a region that was a foreign-policy priority of the Western powers in the 1990s, but which has faded to near invisibility in recent years. While American policymakers and opinion leaders obsess about the Middle East, North Korea and every minutia concerning President Trump and his alleged Russia connections, tensions in the Balkans are simmering and threaten to reach a boil.

The latest worrisome development is the victory of the most hardline factions in Kosovo’s just-completed national elections. An alliance that Kosovo’s media have dubbed the “war wing,” emerged as the largest bloc in parliament, garnering 34 percent of the vote. The principal leaders of that faction, headed by the Democratic Party of Kosovo, are President Hashim Thaci, and another former leader of the infamous Kosovo Liberation Army, Ramush Haradinaj, who is likely to become prime minister. European Union and UN investigators have accused both men of numerous war crimes during Kosovo’s war of secession from Serbia in the late 1990s.

The surge of strength for rabid nationalism was further enhanced by the surprisingly strong showing of the leftist Movement for Self-Determination, which drew 27 percent of the vote. The more moderate, current governing coalition, led by the Democratic League of Kosovo, came in third with barely 25 percent. The movement is even more radical than Thaci’s faction. Members have repeatedly disrupted parliament with fights and tear gas to block conciliatory legislation regarding either Montenegro or Serbia. On one occasion movement thugs even threw firebombs during demonstrations outside the parliament building.

Not only are Thaci’s war wing and the Movement for Self-Determination committed to a hostile, uncompromising stance toward the remaining Serb minority in the north of Kosovo, those radicals have also obstructed the conclusion of a border agreement with Montenegro, and they lay claim to major chunks of territory in that country as well as Serbia and Macedonia. Indeed, many of them are determined to have Kosovo merge with Albania, and add the other territorial claims to create a “Greater Albania.” That is not a new objective for Kosovar hardliners. Almost immediately following NATO’s severing of Kosovo from Serbia following the seventy-eight-day air war in 1999, Greater Albania advocates stirred up secessionist sentiments in majority Albanian areas of Macedonia. The resulting turmoil reached crisis levels in 2001 and 2002 and has flared repeatedly since then, reaching alarming levels again this year.

Neighboring countries are increasingly uneasy about the growing militancy in both Kosovo and Albania. Earlier this year, the Serbian government warned that any Albanian move to annex or merge with Kosovo could well lead to war. Belgrade was responding to a threat from Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama to pursue annexation if the European Union did not approve Albania’s membership application. Serbian officials also pressed both NATO and the EU to rule out any toleration for the creation of a Greater Albania.

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