|
Iraqi factions moving closer to civil war
By Scott Taylor
October 3, 2005
IN ANTICIPATION of the fledgling Iraqi government holding a nationwide referendum on its contentious proposed constitution later this month, the Pentagon has already begun increasing U.S. troop strength to cope with more violence before the vote.
The stakes are high because many Iraqi factions fear the present wording of the draft constitution is simply a stepping stone to a future division of the nation.
As a result of the Sunni Arab tribes in central Iraq having boycotted last January’s elections, the present parliament consists primarily of Kurd and Shiite Arab leaders. The agreement hammered out between them allows both groups to seek additional autonomy from the same central Baghdad authority that they now represent.
For the Shiite Arab majority in southern Iraq, a breakaway republic would allow it solitary control of the rich oil fields around the city of Basra. For the Kurds in the north, any real hope they have of declaring an independent state hinges on their ability to seize control of the oil resources near the strategic city of Kirkuk.
Should that transpire, the Sunni Arabs in central Iraq, including Baghdad, would be isolated in a landlocked, rump republic with no oil assets whatsoever. For that reason, Kirkuk is now viewed as either a lynchpin in the political process or as a powder keg set to blow up into civil war.
Historically, Kirkuk has been considered a Turkmen city as these Turkish-speaking, indigenous Iraqis represented about 60 per cent of the region’s pre-war inhabitants. However, since the American intervention in March, 2003, a wave of Kurdish settlers, estimated at some 300,000, has caused Kirkuk’s population to balloon to about 1,100,000.
The Kurds claim this massive resettlement is simply a repatriation of families who had been forced to flee Saddam Hussein’s brutality. However, the Turkmen and Sunni Arab tribes fear this sudden shift in Kirkuk’s ethnic demography is a deliberate Kurdish ploy to lay claim to the oil fields.
At a shish kebab restaurant in Ankara, Turkey, last week, I met with two Sunni Arab tribal leaders from Kirkuk. Mohammad Khalil Al-Jabouri and Shirq Abdullah Sami Al-Assi were in the Turkish capital to express their fears about the future of northern Iraq. Between them, they represent approximately 68,000 clansmen in the Kirkuk region.
Despite the fact they are Sunni Arabs, neither of these men were Baath Party members and, because of their tribal status, they claim they were persecuted by Saddam. Al-Assi nevertheless achieved the rank of colonel in the Iraqi army and still retains a martial bearing.
To date, Kirkuk has not been considered a hotbed of insurgency. U.S. forces maintain a large airfield outside the city but since Saddam was deposed, Kurdish Peshmerga (militiamen) who accompanied the American forces down from the north have conducted the majority of the security operations. Al-Assi acknowledged that, although the presence of U.S. heavy weaponry was intimidating, his fighters have no such fear of the Kurds.
“Give us just one hour and my men will drive the Peshmerga from all of Kirkuk,” he said. Al-Jabouri, who is not a soldier, had a more reserved opinion about the result of such a clash.
“Many more people will die, on all sides, and that is a tragedy,” he said. “But we must fight for our principles and we will not live under Kurdish control.” When asked about the likelihood of the current tensions escalating into a full civil war, both leaders laughed at my naivety.
“It has already started,” they replied.
One of the main objectives of this delegation to Ankara was to shore up alliances with the Iraq Turkmen Front (ITF). The ITF is a coalition of ethnic Turkmen organizations, both Shiite and Sunni, which represents nearly two million Iraqis. As a minority, the Turkmen also feel the proposed constitution will marginalize their rights and freedoms. As a result, the ITF has decided to join the Sunni Arabs in a no vote in the referendum.
The Turkmen decision can only be viewed as another major blow to the U.S. timetable for reconstructing Iraq. Without widespread support for the constitution, it will be pointless to proceed with the general election planned for December. Should the present Iraqi parliament pass the constitution regardless, the battle lines are already established for catastrophic violence.
By Scott Taylor
October 3, 2005
IN ANTICIPATION of the fledgling Iraqi government holding a nationwide referendum on its contentious proposed constitution later this month, the Pentagon has already begun increasing U.S. troop strength to cope with more violence before the vote.
The stakes are high because many Iraqi factions fear the present wording of the draft constitution is simply a stepping stone to a future division of the nation.
As a result of the Sunni Arab tribes in central Iraq having boycotted last January’s elections, the present parliament consists primarily of Kurd and Shiite Arab leaders. The agreement hammered out between them allows both groups to seek additional autonomy from the same central Baghdad authority that they now represent.
For the Shiite Arab majority in southern Iraq, a breakaway republic would allow it solitary control of the rich oil fields around the city of Basra. For the Kurds in the north, any real hope they have of declaring an independent state hinges on their ability to seize control of the oil resources near the strategic city of Kirkuk.
Should that transpire, the Sunni Arabs in central Iraq, including Baghdad, would be isolated in a landlocked, rump republic with no oil assets whatsoever. For that reason, Kirkuk is now viewed as either a lynchpin in the political process or as a powder keg set to blow up into civil war.
Historically, Kirkuk has been considered a Turkmen city as these Turkish-speaking, indigenous Iraqis represented about 60 per cent of the region’s pre-war inhabitants. However, since the American intervention in March, 2003, a wave of Kurdish settlers, estimated at some 300,000, has caused Kirkuk’s population to balloon to about 1,100,000.
The Kurds claim this massive resettlement is simply a repatriation of families who had been forced to flee Saddam Hussein’s brutality. However, the Turkmen and Sunni Arab tribes fear this sudden shift in Kirkuk’s ethnic demography is a deliberate Kurdish ploy to lay claim to the oil fields.
At a shish kebab restaurant in Ankara, Turkey, last week, I met with two Sunni Arab tribal leaders from Kirkuk. Mohammad Khalil Al-Jabouri and Shirq Abdullah Sami Al-Assi were in the Turkish capital to express their fears about the future of northern Iraq. Between them, they represent approximately 68,000 clansmen in the Kirkuk region.
Despite the fact they are Sunni Arabs, neither of these men were Baath Party members and, because of their tribal status, they claim they were persecuted by Saddam. Al-Assi nevertheless achieved the rank of colonel in the Iraqi army and still retains a martial bearing.
To date, Kirkuk has not been considered a hotbed of insurgency. U.S. forces maintain a large airfield outside the city but since Saddam was deposed, Kurdish Peshmerga (militiamen) who accompanied the American forces down from the north have conducted the majority of the security operations. Al-Assi acknowledged that, although the presence of U.S. heavy weaponry was intimidating, his fighters have no such fear of the Kurds.
“Give us just one hour and my men will drive the Peshmerga from all of Kirkuk,” he said. Al-Jabouri, who is not a soldier, had a more reserved opinion about the result of such a clash.
“Many more people will die, on all sides, and that is a tragedy,” he said. “But we must fight for our principles and we will not live under Kurdish control.” When asked about the likelihood of the current tensions escalating into a full civil war, both leaders laughed at my naivety.
“It has already started,” they replied.
One of the main objectives of this delegation to Ankara was to shore up alliances with the Iraq Turkmen Front (ITF). The ITF is a coalition of ethnic Turkmen organizations, both Shiite and Sunni, which represents nearly two million Iraqis. As a minority, the Turkmen also feel the proposed constitution will marginalize their rights and freedoms. As a result, the ITF has decided to join the Sunni Arabs in a no vote in the referendum.
The Turkmen decision can only be viewed as another major blow to the U.S. timetable for reconstructing Iraq. Without widespread support for the constitution, it will be pointless to proceed with the general election planned for December. Should the present Iraqi parliament pass the constitution regardless, the battle lines are already established for catastrophic violence.
|
|
Man on a Mission
By Scott Taylor
June 30, 2005
CHRISTOPHER JAMES finds out why a Canadian army veteran is now a leading campaigner for the truth about Kosovo
SCOTT Taylor is a man on a mission. The Canadian army veteran, turned writer
and peace campaigner, is fighting to expose how Kosovo's fabled "mass graves" containing victims of "Serbian genocide" are a manufactured myth as phoney as Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction.
As an eyewitness to the 1999 Kosovo war, Taylor's message is an uncompromising rebuttal of everyday Western misrepresentations of the conflict - a conflict which culminated in the annexation by NATO of Serbia's southern province six year's ago this month.
"Was Kosovo a messy, inter-ethnic civil war? Absolutely. Was it a planned, organised genocide? No," Taylor tells speaking tour audiences with a calm, quiet authority acquired from time in the frontline as soldier and war correspondent.
Taylor is editor and founder of Esprit de Corps - an independent journal for rank-and-file Canadian military, acclaimed for its exposure of corruption within army top brass, its campaigning on issues such as Gulf War syndrome and its countering of official spin surrounding the "war on terror."
By his own admission Taylor launched the magazine in 1988 as a cheerleading pro-army publication, funded by defence contractors who he today derides as "the evil military-industrial complex."
His experiences reporting from the 1991 Gulf War, witnessing unspeakable carnage inflicted on defenceless Iraqi conscripts, was the turning point for both Taylor and for Esprit de Corps, which has since transformed, he says, into "the conscience of the Canadian Defence Department."
Reporting from war-torn Bosnia in 1992, Taylor's experiences alongside Canadian troops again contrasted with mainstream media spin, which he saw as obsessed with demonising the Serbian population of the disintegrating Yugoslav federation.
He returned to the Balkans in 1999 as one of the few Western journalists to report from within Kosovo during the 78-day aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia by NATO - which was then acting as a de facto airforce for the ethnic Albanian supremacists and separatists of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
This provided "an incredible vantage point to see what was taking place," says Taylor, whose eyewitness experience contrasted sharply with that of thousands of NATO-accredited journalists reporting from refugee camps in Macedonia and elsewhere, "getting second and third-hand stories, many of
which later turned out to be fabricated."
It is worthwhile recalling the extreme wartime hysteria that gripped Britain and the West at the time. So complete was the demonisation of Serbia and its political leadership that few, even on the anti-war left, opposed the barbarism deployed by NATO on the Yugoslav people and the violation of their national sovereignty.
Daily press conferences saw NATO spindoctors announce spiralling death tolls that rapidly reached upwards of 100,000 murdered Albanians, guaranteeing worldwide banner headlines that screamed of genocide and holocaust revisited on Europe. Countless other horror stories included the claim that a further
40,000 Albanians were detained in Pristina's sports stadium awaiting a grisly fate. All this proved to be false.
One Spanish forensic team sent into Kosovo after the conflict was told to expect to conduct 2,000 autopsies. After just 187 bodies were produced, it returned home early.
"All the bodies were buried in individual graves, oriented for the most part toward Mecca out of respect for the religious beliefs of the Albanian Kosovars and without sign of torture," reported the Spanish daily El Pais, one of the few, if not the only, papers to carry the story.
The parallels between Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" and Kosovo's "mass graves" are obvious, says Taylor. Both were dreamed up by politicians to sell otherwise unpopular wars to their people, although the former claim was clearly met with greater scepticism.
"These are all becoming information wars now," says Taylor. "It has become such a game for them. Spin machines manipulate the media and the media in turn manipulates the population."
When Yugoslav troops withdrew from Kosovo, to be replaced by NATO occupiers, Taylor watched the inevitable media circus "roll in" with editorial orders to find mass graves and "the shattered remnants of the Serbian army," he says.
"But they couldn't find the mass graves because they didn't exist. There were bodies of course - there had been a civil war."
Despite the unprecedented pounding that Kosovo, and Serbia as a whole, took from NATO, the Yugoslav army escaped almost completely unscathed.
"Some $13 billion of weaponry had been dropped on Kosovo to destroy 13 tanks, two or three of which were museum pieces used as decoys," says Taylor.
The brunt of the assault was inflicted on the country's civilian population - hospitals, factories, bridges, the electricity grid, water supplies, Serb TV and other targets were reduced to rubble while the republic's environment suffered deadly contamination through the use of depleted uranium weapons.
According to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the new world order's phoney court where former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic continues to face down genocide and war crimes charges, the total body count from Kosovo stands at 2,788.
Contrast this with wartime claims of 100,000 murdered Albanian civilians and Taylor's message comes sharply into focus, particularly when one considers that the ICTY death toll includes combatants from both sides as well as victims of NATO bombing.
Following the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces Albanian separatists immediately set about clearing the province of its minority populations. Some 200,000 Serbs, Jews, Roma, Turks and ethnic Albanians loyal to Yugoslavia have fled Kosovo since 1999, all under the nose of 18,000 NATO "peacekeepers" (actually occupiers), many based at Camp Bondsteel, a gargantuan US base sprawling over 750 acres in the south-east of the province.
Presented as simple "revenge attacks," these were in fact the start of a final push to ethnically cleanse the province of non-Albanians - a process which began with anti-Serb pogroms following the 1980 death of Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito, whose towering leadership had hitherto helped hold the federation together since the end of World War II.
As far back as 1982, long before the development of a "Washington line" on Kosovo for obedient journalists to follow, the New York Times reported that: "[Kosovo] Albanian nationalists have a two-point platform.first to establish what they call an ethnically clean Albanian republic and then the merger with Albania to form a greater Albania."
In 1987 the same paper quoted a Kosovo Albanian nationalist leader's demand for an "ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself."
Last year's "Kosovo Kristallnacht", as it was dubbed by one UN official, where Albanian supremacists rampaged through the province leaving dozens dead, hundreds wounded and 35 ancient Christian Orthodox churches, some dating from the 13th Century, razed to the ground, was merely the latest violent manifestation of this racist doctrine.
* Christopher James wishes to thank Filmmakers Against War for their assistance in producing this article. Scott Taylor is the subject of a Filmmakers Against War production due for release this year.
CHRISTOPHER JAMES finds out why a Canadian army veteran is now a leading campaigner for the truth about Kosovo
SCOTT Taylor is a man on a mission. The Canadian army veteran, turned writer and peace campaigner, is fighting to expose how Kosovo's fabled "mass graves" containing victims of "Serbian genocide" are a manufactured myth as phoney as Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction. As an eyewitness to the 1999 Kosovo war, Taylor's message is an uncompromising rebuttal of everyday Western misrepresentations of the conflict - a conflict which culminated in the annexation by NATO of Serbia's southern province six year's ago this month. "Was Kosovo a messy, inter-ethnic civil war? Absolutely. Was it a planned, organised genocide? No," Taylor tells speaking tour audiences with a calm, quiet authority acquired from time in the frontline as soldier and war correspondent. Taylor is editor and founder of Esprit de Corps - an independent journal for rank-and-file Canadian military, acclaimed for its exposure of corruption within army top brass, its campaigning on issues such as Gulf War syndrome and its countering of official spin surrounding the "war on terror." By his own admission Taylor launched the magazine in 1988 as a cheerleading pro-army publication, funded by defence contractors who he today derides as "the evil military-industrial complex."
|
|
Looking for peace in forgotten Kosovo
By Scott Taylor
June 23, 2005
Can Kosovo really be independent? Lost in the headlines of the ongoing insurgency in Iraq and the continued instability in Afghanistan, the Balkans have become a forgotten battleground. Despite the surface calm, the ethnic divisions remain deeply entrenched, and the violent dissolution of the former Yugoslavia still serves to re-ignite long-simmering factional hatreds.
In Croatia, the situation was defined by the almost total forced expulsion of ethnic Serbs, while in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia the imposed peace agreements have been enforced by the large-scale presence of international troops patrolling between the encampments of the erstwhile combatants.
Although responsibility for the Bosnian peacekeeping mission has been transferred from NATO to the European Union and the military commitment to Kosovo has been slightly reduced, these standing forces still demand a substantial contribution of military resources.
With the Iraq occupation chewing up the equivalent of a battalion a month (an average of 71 killed and 560 wounded every 10 days) and U.S. recruiting efforts falling 40 per cent below attrition rates, the Pentagon is naturally keen to reduce overseas commitments wherever possible.
With that objective in mind George W. Bush's administration has begun to push for a final solution to the Kosovo situation by the end of this year. It is the intention of the U.S. State Department to recognize Kosovo as an independent country within its existing boundaries and to sever all formal ties this province has to Serbia and Montenegro.
While this sounds rather simple - and would result in several badly needed U.S. military units being freed up for deployment to Iraq - in reality it will do little to bring long-term stability to the region.
The Albanian majority population, which would be charged with governing this newly created country, has never relinquished with each territory its claim on containing neighbouring Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro, large Albanian populations.
Without redrawing the map, the new Kosovo government will also be left with the issue of the remaining Serbian minority living in protected enclaves.
In March 2004, Albanian Kosovars sent a clear message to these Serbian villages when they launched a three-day, provincewide pogrom, killing 28, burning more than 800 houses and destroying numerous centuries-old monasteries. This wave of violence took place despite the presence of some 25,000 NATO soldiers and UN police.
Most of those Serbs still living in Kosovo believe that last year's pogrom was a forewarning of what they can expect from the Albanians should NATO withdraw after a declaration of independence.
While it was claimed in 1999 that NATO's intervention was to prevent human rights abuses perpetrated against ethnic Albanians, in the six years of occupation the international community has been unable to protect the rights of the Serbian minority.
Beyond the philosophical questions, historical patterns of ethnic demographics and the rhetoric of nationalists on both sides, the practical independence of Kosovo remains an impossibility.
Landlocked in the central Balkans, the mountainous region of Kosovo consists largely of two river valleys. The entire population is just over two million, with 500,000 residents living in Pristina, the capital. Even in the economic heyday of the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo was always considered a poor cousin.
Administratively, this autonomous province was attached to the Republic of Serbia, but all Yugoslavs paid an annual Kosovo tax to offset the annual economic shortfalls. It was partly resentment over this financial burden that led to the secession of the more prosperous republics of Slovenia and Croatia from the Yugoslav federation.
Since the international community took over the administration of Kosovo in 1999, it has pumped billions of dollars worth of relief funds into the impoverished province.
"Unfortunately, they have created an entirely false short-term economy," says Caslov Ocic, a professor of economics at Belgrade University who chaired a special task force on Kosovo in the early 1990s. "That region cannot ever be economically independent, as they simply don't have the resources, the workforce or the necessary transportation arteries."
According to Ocic, Kosovo's main assets are an abundant deposit of low-grade coal and some excellent vineyards.
"However, the coal is too high in pollutants for European standards, and you cannot export enough wine to feed two million inhabitants," he said. "If there was any possible way to make Kosovo economically viable (the Yugoslav government) would have explored it."
So while the U.S. government may continue to press for immediate statehood in Kosovo, the reality of independence will remain a long-term and possibly unachievable goal. The question is: Who will pay the Kosovo tax in the interim?
Can Kosovo really be independent? Lost in the headlines of the ongoing insurgency in Iraq and the continued instability in Afghanistan, the Balkans have become a forgotten battleground. Despite the surface calm, the ethnic divisions remain deeply entrenched, and the violent dissolution of the former Yugoslavia still serves to re-ignite long-simmering factional hatreds.
In Croatia, the situation was defined by the almost total forced expulsion of ethnic Serbs, while in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia the imposed peace agreements have been enforced by the large-scale presence of international troops patrolling between the encampments of the erstwhile combatants.
Although responsibility for the Bosnian peacekeeping mission has been transferred from NATO to the European Union and the military commitment to Kosovo has been slightly reduced, these standing forces still demand a substantial contribution of military resources.
With the Iraq occupation chewing up the equivalent of a battalion a month (an average of 71 killed and 560 wounded every 10 days) and U.S. recruiting efforts falling 40 per cent below attrition rates, the Pentagon is naturally keen to reduce overseas commitments wherever possible.
With that objective in mind George W. Bush's administration has begun to push for a final solution to the Kosovo situation by the end of this year. It is the intention of the U.S. State Department to recognize Kosovo as an independent country within its existing boundaries and to sever all formal ties this province has to Serbia and Montenegro.
While this sounds rather simple - and would result in several badly needed U.S. military units being freed up for deployment to Iraq - in reality it will do little to bring long-term stability to the region.
The Albanian majority population, which would be charged with governing this newly created country, has never relinquished with each territory its claim on containing neighbouring Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro, large Albanian populations.
Without redrawing the map, the new Kosovo government will also be left with the issue of the remaining Serbian minority living in protected enclaves.
In March 2004, Albanian Kosovars sent a clear message to these Serbian villages when they launched a three-day, provincewide pogrom, killing 28, burning more than 800 houses and destroying numerous centuries-old monasteries. This wave of violence took place despite the presence of some 25,000 NATO soldiers and UN police.
Most of those Serbs still living in Kosovo believe that last year's pogrom was a forewarning of what they can expect from the Albanians should NATO withdraw after a declaration of independence.
While it was claimed in 1999 that NATO's intervention was to prevent human rights abuses perpetrated against ethnic Albanians, in the six years of occupation the international community has been unable to protect the rights of the Serbian minority.
Beyond the philosophical questions, historical patterns of ethnic demographics and the rhetoric of nationalists on both sides, the practical independence of Kosovo remains an impossibility.
Landlocked in the central Balkans, the mountainous region of Kosovo consists largely of two river valleys. The entire population is just over two million, with 500,000 residents living in Pristina, the capital. Even in the economic heyday of the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo was always considered a poor cousin.
Administratively, this autonomous province was attached to the Republic of Serbia, but all Yugoslavs paid an annual Kosovo tax to offset the annual economic shortfalls. It was partly resentment over this financial burden that led to the secession of the more prosperous republics of Slovenia and Croatia from the Yugoslav federation.
Since the international community took over the administration of Kosovo in 1999, it has pumped billions of dollars worth of relief funds into the impoverished province.
"Unfortunately, they have created an entirely false short-term economy," says Caslov Ocic, a professor of economics at Belgrade University who chaired a special task force on Kosovo in the early 1990s. "That region cannot ever be economically independent, as they simply don't have the resources, the workforce or the necessary transportation arteries."
According to Ocic, Kosovo's main assets are an abundant deposit of low-grade coal and some excellent vineyards.
"However, the coal is too high in pollutants for European standards, and you cannot export enough wine to feed two million inhabitants," he said. "If there was any possible way to make Kosovo economically viable (the Yugoslav government) would have explored it."
So while the U.S. government may continue to press for immediate statehood in Kosovo, the reality of independence will remain a long-term and possibly unachievable goal. The question is: Who will pay the Kosovo tax in the interim?
|
|
Looking for peace in forgotten Kosovo
By Scott Taylor
June 23, 2005
Can Kosovo really be independent? Lost in the headlines of the ongoing insurgency in Iraq and the continued instability in Afghanistan, the Balkans have become a forgotten battleground. Despite the surface calm, the ethnic divisions remain deeply entrenched, and the violent dissolution of the former Yugoslavia still serves to re-ignite long-simmering factional hatreds.
In Croatia, the situation was defined by the almost total forced expulsion of ethnic Serbs, while in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia the imposed peace agreements have been enforced by the large-scale presence of international troops patrolling between the encampments of the erstwhile combatants.
Although responsibility for the Bosnian peacekeeping mission has been transferred from NATO to the European Union and the military commitment to Kosovo has been slightly reduced, these standing forces still demand a substantial contribution of military resources.
With the Iraq occupation chewing up the equivalent of a battalion a month (an average of 71 killed and 560 wounded every 10 days) and U.S. recruiting efforts falling 40 per cent below attrition rates, the Pentagon is naturally keen to reduce overseas commitments wherever possible.
With that objective in mind George W. Bush's administration has begun to push for a final solution to the Kosovo situation by the end of this year. It is the intention of the U.S. State Department to recognize Kosovo as an independent country within its existing boundaries and to sever all formal ties this province has to Serbia and Montenegro.
While this sounds rather simple - and would result in several badly needed U.S. military units being freed up for deployment to Iraq - in reality it will do little to bring long-term stability to the region.
The Albanian majority population, which would be charged with governing this newly created country, has never relinquished with each territory its claim on containing neighbouring Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro, large Albanian populations.
Without redrawing the map, the new Kosovo government will also be left with the issue of the remaining Serbian minority living in protected enclaves.
In March 2004, Albanian Kosovars sent a clear message to these Serbian villages when they launched a three-day, provincewide pogrom, killing 28, burning more than 800 houses and destroying numerous centuries-old monasteries. This wave of violence took place despite the presence of some 25,000 NATO soldiers and UN police.
Most of those Serbs still living in Kosovo believe that last year's pogrom was a forewarning of what they can expect from the Albanians should NATO withdraw after a declaration of independence.
While it was claimed in 1999 that NATO's intervention was to prevent human rights abuses perpetrated against ethnic Albanians, in the six years of occupation the international community has been unable to protect the rights of the Serbian minority.
Beyond the philosophical questions, historical patterns of ethnic demographics and the rhetoric of nationalists on both sides, the practical independence of Kosovo remains an impossibility.
Landlocked in the central Balkans, the mountainous region of Kosovo consists largely of two river valleys. The entire population is just over two million, with 500,000 residents living in Pristina, the capital. Even in the economic heyday of the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo was always considered a poor cousin.
Administratively, this autonomous province was attached to the Republic of Serbia, but all Yugoslavs paid an annual Kosovo tax to offset the annual economic shortfalls. It was partly resentment over this financial burden that led to the secession of the more prosperous republics of Slovenia and Croatia from the Yugoslav federation.
Since the international community took over the administration of Kosovo in 1999, it has pumped billions of dollars worth of relief funds into the impoverished province.
"Unfortunately, they have created an entirely false short-term economy," says Caslov Ocic, a professor of economics at Belgrade University who chaired a special task force on Kosovo in the early 1990s. "That region cannot ever be economically independent, as they simply don't have the resources, the workforce or the necessary transportation arteries."
According to Ocic, Kosovo's main assets are an abundant deposit of low-grade coal and some excellent vineyards.
"However, the coal is too high in pollutants for European standards, and you cannot export enough wine to feed two million inhabitants," he said. "If there was any possible way to make Kosovo economically viable (the Yugoslav government) would have explored it."
So while the U.S. government may continue to press for immediate statehood in Kosovo, the reality of independence will remain a long-term and possibly unachievable goal. The question is: Who will pay the Kosovo tax in the interim?
Can Kosovo really be independent? Lost in the headlines of the ongoing insurgency in Iraq and the continued instability in Afghanistan, the Balkans have become a forgotten battleground. Despite the surface calm, the ethnic divisions remain deeply entrenched, and the violent dissolution of the former Yugoslavia still serves to re-ignite long-simmering factional hatreds.
In Croatia, the situation was defined by the almost total forced expulsion of ethnic Serbs, while in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia the imposed peace agreements have been enforced by the large-scale presence of international troops patrolling between the encampments of the erstwhile combatants.
Although responsibility for the Bosnian peacekeeping mission has been transferred from NATO to the European Union and the military commitment to Kosovo has been slightly reduced, these standing forces still demand a substantial contribution of military resources. With the Iraq occupation chewing up the equivalent of a battalion a month (an average of 71 killed and 560 wounded every 10 days) and U.S. recruiting efforts falling 40 per cent below attrition rates, the Pentagon is naturally keen to reduce overseas commitments wherever possible.
|
|
|
On Target 
