“One Lifetime Too Much”
Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 08:55 From: http://www.heartland.it/
1. If the Balkans did not exist, it would not need to be invented. On this particular issue the consent is vast throughout the world even for those that reside in the Balkans.
The removal of arms held tightly in fists, always new frontiers of miscarriaged states: this is our idea of the Balkans today. Not truly states but the souls of states. Geopolitical neurosis – Balkanization, exactly – that is a crazed eating machine that we never really wanted to touch.
A play in which we participate fully, shoveling with both hands trying to feed the hellish machine and not only that
It will be for this reason that when Kosovo was proclaimed to be an independent state, this past February 17th, by the state’s new. Pristina is the last of the stations of the cross of post-Yugoslavia beginning in 1991 with the secession of Slovenia and Croatia. Finally, the title of “state” has been given to one of the two autonomous provinces of Serbia, Kosovo to be exact, while the other, Vojvodina, is still not on the waiting list.
But enough now. Acta est fibula. “To conclude the last episode of the dissolution of ex-Yugoslavia, it will allow the region to start a new period in its history, based on peace, stability and prosperity for everyone” promised Martti Ahtisaari, United Nation’s negotiator for Kosovo’s status and the author of the homonym Plan that designs the frame of “supervised independence”.
It is thanks to the Finish strategist that created the molecular structure of Yugoslavia, composted of seven atoms: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo. The “Ahtisaari’s law”, that puts him at the same level as Leucippo and Democrito in philosophy, Dalton and Cannizzaro in chemistry, that awaits its experimental verification. If it passes, this little magazine will be glad to have promoted a campaign for the attribution to Ahtisaari for the distinguished Nobel Prize for geopolitics.
While waiting for history to decide, the italic recognition of the state is able to arouse doubts about Ahtisaari’s prediction. We will leave be the internal pause that is Bosnia-Herzegovina and the ethnic-geopolitical tensions that blow through the other republics, Slovenia is not excluded. We will concentrate ourselves on independent Kosovo. How much of it is Kosovo and how much of it is independent?
A distracted look at global politics causes the belief that the new state, admitted that it can be characterized as so, is as large as the Italian region, Abruzzi - rising within the borders that Belgrade continues to consider "the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija” with the capital Pristina (Prishtina in Albanian), where they have the seat of parliament and the government.
Jumping to scale, and analyzing the regional map so that it transmits in principle an idea to us of the territory in question, we soon discover that the Kosovo is noticeably distant from the one that was formalized February 17th 2008 in the declaration of independence read by Premier Hashim Thaçi.
Looking closer, "Independent Kosovo" appears Kosovar in its appearance. For example:
The new state is not Kosovar at all in its identity because the nation of Kosovars does not exist because Albanian-Kosovars (more than 92% of the population) feel that they are, in a way, a part of a great shqiptare family and Serbia-Kosovars (4% approximately) are hyper-Serbs. The other small minorities associated themselves as Roma or Balkan, while others associated themselves with other national states (Turkish, Croatian). Moreover, according to Minority Rights Groups International, their condition is "the worst in Europe” and that "Kosovo is a segregated society."
It is not completely Kosovar. The three municipalities of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac in southern Serbia are areas of strong shqiptare takeover. A strategic exclave along the highway that connects Belgrade to Salonicco, which is an outlet to the sea for Serbia after the loss of Montenegro. No Serbian government would clear such an area without fighting.
