Serbia digs in over Kosovo

Rioters in Belgrade set fire to the U.S. Embassy last week, and demonstrations broke out throughout Serbia after Kosovo declared its independence and won recognition from the U.S. and other Western states. Striking a militant pose, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica refused to cede authority over Kosovo. “We will put up resistance every day until the United States is convinced that the rule of international law must be re-established in the Balkans and the illegal declaration of the fake state is annulled,” Kostunica said.

While most European countries also moved to recognize Kosovo’s independence, Russia took Serbia’s side. Dmitri Medvedev, Russia’s presumptive next president, flew to Belgrade and announced that “Serbia is a single state with its jurisdiction spanning its entire territory.”

Western countries may have “underestimated this cultural attachment” that Serbs feel for Kosovo, said Nicholas Kulish in The New York Times. Kosovo is now mostly Muslim, but it is the ancestral heartland of Serbia and the site of many medieval Orthodox churches. Belgrade already lost Bosnia, Croatia, and the other states of the former Yugoslavia during the Slobodan Milosevic era in the 1990s. Now, though Serbs finally have embraced democracy, they feel they are again being punished. The West must hope that the burning of the U.S. Embassy was “the final spasm of anger in Serbia,” and not “the first tremor in a new Balkan earthquake.”

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The Serbs are angry? Too bad, said The Washington Post in an editorial. Prime Minister Kostunica is trying to revive the “ugly strain of Serbian nationalism” that Milosevic used to spark the Balkan wars. And for what? Serbia is no match for NATO, and it will not use force to keep Kosovo. The “only consequence” of Kostunica’s actions “will be to isolate Serbia again from the rest of Europe.”

There may not be war in Serbia, but there could be serious repercussions elsewhere, said Tracy Wilkinson in the Los Angeles Times. Already, Kosovo’s move has spurred the Serbian portion of Bosnia to threaten to sever ties with the Muslim-Croat portion and declare independence. And the large Albanian minority in Macedonia “may find similar inspiration.” This could be the start of “a tumultuous domino of secessions.”