They call it balkanization for a reason. Yugoslavia is the only former communist country that disintegrated violently. It started with the rise of Serbian nationalism and Milosevic coming to power. The motto was “Serbia all the way to Tokyo”. Serbia started a war with Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. The entire Serbian leadership was indicted for war crimes by the International Tribunal. Yet, the West acted tentatively and hesitantly. They left Bosnia in limbo by creating a Serbian entity that is biting their time to try and split again. It has major veto powers over the entire country, preventing it from joining Nato or EU (favors Russian interests). Kosovo was forced to provide same concessions so the Serbian minority (~5%) can accept the country and integrate. This minority now has veto powers on joining Nato, and other key reforms. This led to an illusion by Serbs in Kosovo that they do not have to accept or integrate. The West rightly acted to stop the bloodshed, but it did not decisively tell Serbia it started wars and lost those wars, so nationalism lingers to this day. This has allowed all countries in the region to play the nationalistic card at the detriment of serving their citizens. Corruption & sluggish economy are secondary because of the ongoing political instability. This is used as an excuse to cover all the ills of leadership. As long as EU allows ambiguity and does not put nationalistic dreams to rest, the instability will be right under the surface.
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Sure, changing borders causes problems.But carving new states out of existing ones is changing borders too. Unfortunately the US and the EU have thought nother of doing such dastardly acts to Yugoslavia. What made their crimes worse was that they didn't even have the decency to allow the local population a voice in it. Once you have decided to change borders the best way to do it is by extensive negotiations. Such negotiations can lead to border changes - there is nothing sacred in provincial borders. The wars in Yugoslavia were the direct result of the West's unilateral actions.
The idea of a partition of Kosovo is a good one. Don't be fooled by voices claiming otherwise. Those Serbs south of the Ibar who are against partition still hope that the independence of Kosovo will be undone. And just a little bit of tension will be enough for Kosovo's Albanians to become a lot less friendly towards their Serb neighbors.
The real problem with partition is the question what Serbia will give up in return. Quite a lot of Serbs are living in the Presevo Valley and it contains also the railroad connecting Serbia to Greece. I haven't seen any map yet that addresses these questions.
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If Greece and the Republic of Macedonia can agree on a name change for an entire nation, hopefully Serbia and Kosovo will be able to agree on minor adjustments of their borders to suit both sides and thus to mutual recognition of each other. Such a move could pave the way for acceptance of both nations into the EU and might even earn both of their leaders a Nobel Peace Prize.
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How about we stop worrying about the problems of Eastern European countries. We need to stop playing the game of World Police and only intervene when America is at stake. We have the UN to Deal with stuff like this.
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When politicians partition a country along ethnic lines they condemn thousands to a miserable existace of loss and displacement. It’s as if the years of war and death in the region has taught us nothing. Hardening the tribal hatred is wrong and corrosive.
My heart bleeds for the people of Kosovo.
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There are no Kosovo people. There are Serbs and Albanians and Bill Clinton’s meddling.
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Unfortunately the Balkans have a very long history of enmity among the various ethnic groups that resulted in centuries of war and ethnic cleansing. The Serbs suffered terribly at the hands of the pro-German Croats and Bosnian Muslims during WWII. The Kosovars, who are ethnic Albanians certainly have no record of good government if the nation of Albania is an example and most Muslim majority nations (if not all) have a long history of oppressing non-Muslim minorities so partition may be the best solution.
I realize this flies in the face of European elites who preach diversity but if they can get past this unrealistic thinking, they might also accept partition.
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Partition just kicks a can down the road, perhaps not unlike other partitions or state formations that have been done with other Muslim-majority countries (e.g. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia). You still end up with underdeveloped countries with backward and anti-modern cultural norms that the people the country was created for don't want to live in.
If a partition is created, it shouldn't be just the Serbs moving out of the other side. And the Albanians will need to be constantly reminded to stay in the state they just had to have.
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These groups have hated and killed each other for centuries. The basic problem is the Serb concept of a Greater Serbia where all peoples of that region will be vassals to Serbia. Until the Serbs wise up to the fact that there will be no such thing as Greater Serbia matters will not change for the better. I have friends from Macedonia and Croatia and they have contempt for the Serbs. Just look what the Serbs tried to do after Tito died
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In a united Europe (eu) with no borders, drawing lines so that locals of the same ethnic group can form a political unit that would end hostilities seems like a better option than decades more hatred and animosity. Who would gain? The common people who can go about their daily lives. Who would lose? Those who benefit by turmoil.
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A better economy on both side would help. If international policy is to impose forced integration of cultures, religions and races it seems the creation of Kosovo was a mistake. The Muslims should have been forced to integrate as best they could into the dominant Serbian society. If we want Muslim empowerment, which makes sense given the high Muslim birthrates, perhaps we need to wait until demographics makes it inevitable. We are seeing that in Germany, for example. And how do sub Saharan Africans, Afghans, Pakistanis, and Iraqis fare in Serbia?
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In the words of Chris Hedges, "War is a force that gives us meaning."
I was in Kosovo and Serbia as a tourist in July. From what I saw and heard, the Serbians hate the Kosovans and are doing everything they can to dissuade the EU from allowing Kosovo to join that organization. By contrast, the Kosovan do not protest against the Serbs and in fact are currently building a superhighway between Pristinha, their capital, and Belgrade to bring the countries closer together.
The Kosovans proudly fly the American flag because the US saved them from ethnic cleansing by the Serbian when Bill Clinton was president. The people I spoke with in Kosovo say the ethnic Albanians and ethnic Serbians get along well enough. I saw no tension in Kosovo, but real tension in Serbia. Serbs had placed a block-long banner in front of the parliament building in Belgrade against the possibility of Kosovo joining the EU. I definitely got the impression that the Kosovans were inclined to leave the situation as it is and just try to get along.
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"...the Serbians hate the Kosovans..."
That's your take? A blanket statement that sums up everything you saw/felt about the Serbs and how they're full of hate? Regardless, only Serbia, as a state, in modern memory, has been forced, through war, by outside intervention, to give up a chunk of its sovereign territory to an ethnic minority that simply did not want to be in it. Then what about Spain, Iraq, Turkey, Russia, and many, many others that have minorities who just aren't happy with their current political situation goes as far as borders is concerned, but are somehow not receiving Western military action or other support to grant them their wish? Serbs are not happy with the partition, as they have been singled out from all others to accept it, and you point out that they "hate" the benefactors of that partition? Considering the circumstances, that kind of seems natural-Serbia simply does not look at the partition as fair, and are doing what they can to convince everyone else of the same.
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@Dino C.: History is replete with states which have "been forced, through war, by outside intervention, to give up a chunk of its sovereign territory to an ethnic minority that simply did not want to be in it". The British seizure of Palestine from the defeated Ottoman Empire at the end of WW1 and their subsequently handing part of it over to the Jewish minority for the formation of Israel is a prime example. According to Ottoman statistics studied by Prof. Justin McCarthy, in 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and only 59,000 Jews (source [see "Late Ottoman Period" section]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)#... ).
If the Serbs are not happy with the partition, they shouldn't have tried to ethnically cleanse the Muslims who had lived in Kosovo for centuries.
@Dino C. Serbs are those kind of people with a victim complex while in truth, they victimize others. Their lowly status among Slavic peoples only feeds that inferiority complex. If the Serbs would just grow up, it would save the world so much trouble.
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A map would have been nice, to visualize the potential land exchange.
Courtesy of google:
https://www.nationalia.info/img/600/600/27107
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After annexation of Kosovo, concerns about holiness of the borders sound very much hypocritical.
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What did the West expect when they handed Kosovo to Albanian nationalists? Peace, harmony and democracy? The West is alarmed by the rise of nationalism in the World , and yet happily supported Albanian nationalism in Serbia, now they are complaining that their support worked too well.
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There's not a lot of mileage in forcing two peoples to live together if they don't want to. Re-education to make them live together? Let's not forget they've been there and have endured more than we in the West can possibly imagine. I'm not a supporter of of population transfers and the casual violence and brutality it engenders- on the other hand, who really wants a return to war? Any peace is better than none; we should remember the casus belli hasn't just up and disappeared.
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Serbia, Kosovo, the EU and the US should pay close attention to the lessons of Bosnia before embarking on land swap talks, The division of Bosnia into two entities at Dayton in 1995 may have ended the war but it has never brought political stability. Rather it has nourished repeated calls for the independence of the Republika Sprska (and its possible eventual incorporation into Serbia) by Bosnian Serb nationalists and for the creation of a third entity by Bosnian Croat nationalists. So why does anyone imagine that a land deal between Kosovo and Serbia, two historically hostile states, will achieve an improvement in relations that has not occurred in Bosnia? An exchange of territories would only work if it resolved the main causes of the tension between Belgrade and Prishtina and could be effectively enforced. But neither of these conditions apply. Serbs will continue to live in Kosovo and Serbia will continue to assert its obligation to safeguard their interests. It is also difficult to see how both sides will ever come to agreement over a land swap. The solution for Serbia and Kosovo does not lie in deciding who controls which portion of the earth along their borderlands but in the way in which they each advance justice and equal rights for their own citizens, whatever their ethnicity.
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@R. Bruce Hitchner was a member of the negotiating team for the 2005 April Package of Constitutional Reforms in Bosnia The reason Bosnia's division didn't work was that none of the parties wasn't happy with. You mention the Serbs and Croats but the fact that the Muslims - with US support - kept pressuring for "repairing Dayton" was at least as important: it basically told the Serbs that they never would be safe as long as they were in the union.
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@R. Bruce Hitchner was a member of the negotiating team for the 2005 April Package of Constitutional Reforms in Bosnia
Someone did mention it here that Yugoslavia was broken into pieces without having their own people being asked about new borders.
That said, your point about Bosnia is pretty much irrelevant.
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Sometimes groups of people can't live together, especially when there's a long history of violence between them. In these cases the best thing to do is to make sure everyone has their own space, not try and force them to kiss and make up. Redrawing the boundaries to represent the ethnicities of the populations actually living there makes perfect sense, that was why Kosovo was detached in the first place. This is just a refinement of that process and should have happened long ago.
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@KM
It's not so simple in practice. The attempt to create ethnostates in the Balkans is not new, and it has lead in the past to episodes of ethnic cleansing and subsequent wars. Maybe they can do a better job of it this time around, but I can't shake the feeling that land swaps risk seriously inflaming a situation which while not ideal currently, is at least stable.
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Except that 200,000 Serbs lived throughout Kosovo at the time of the end of the war. So how is excising Kosovo, with a considerable number of Serbs living in it, offer a solution to the problem of redrawing borders along ethnic lines? The problem persists, and not everyone will go along with the finalized border adjustment if implemented, so the problem will continue to persist. A minority of towns and regions in former Yugoslavia are ethnically pure. Are we to continually grant border adjustments every time neighbors complain about each other's habits? Are you not familiar with the problems that currently plague Bosnia? Not yet familiar with the term "Balkanization"?
1
@KM: Agreed. The former Yugoslavia had been home to a very diverse population of over 20 ethnic groups and many religions, Islam, Roman Catholicism, Judaism and Protestantism, as well as various Eastern Orthodox faiths. Yet, despite having lived together under a socialist federation from 1945 onward, within ten years of Yugoslavia's President for Life Marshal Josip Broz Tito's death in 1980 it all fell apart and bloody wars filled with ethnic cleansing broke out. Therefore idealist concepts of different groups living together in peace and harmony given enough time don't always work. Especially considering facts such as a 1948 census which showed 99% of the Yugoslav population to be deeply involved with their religion and practices, and a 1964 survey which showed that just over 70% of the total population of Yugoslavia considered themselves to be religious believers. With the places of highest religious concentration being Kosovo with 91% and Bosnia Herzegovina with 83.8%.
I remember reading in news reports following the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide of over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys by the Serb Army, some Serbs gloating that they had finally exacted revenge for the defeat suffered at the hands of the Ottomans in the 1389 Battle of Kosovo which had resulted in the collapse of Serbia - over six centuries earlier!
Expecting people to set aside such deeply held hostilities is unrealistic. They say good fences make for good neighbors, the Ibar river would be even better.
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