Kosovo moves toward independence

Kosovo threatened this week to split unilaterally from Serbia, after international mediators failed to reach an agreement on the status of the province. Diplomats from the U.S., Russia, and the European Union have spent the past year trying either to get ethnic Albanians in Kosovo to accept autonomy within Serbia or to get Serbia to grant Kosovo full independence. But with Russia backing Serbia and the U.S. backing the Kosovar Albanians, neither side budged as the U.N. deadline passed this week. The U.N. has administered Kosovo since 1999, when NATO bombing drove out the Serbian forces which had been slaughtering Albanian separatists.

Kosovar leaders said they would declare independence as soon as they had the open support of the U.S. and E.U., which appears forthcoming. Russia, though, threatened unspecified consequences, saying Kosovar independence could reignite separatist conflicts across the former Soviet Union. “Those making such plans must think very carefully about the consequences,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

The Russians have a point, said Mark Almond in the International Herald Tribune. Kosovo, inhabited by 2 million Albanians and 100,000 Serbs, has always been part of Serbia. Its demographic mix is not much different from that of other ethnic enclaves that have sparked wars since 1991, including the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan and Chechnya in Russia. Few people believe that the Serbs would go to war over Kosovo. But allowing one group to secede is a “recipe for future war and terrorism” elsewhere—particularly across the volatile Caucasus region.

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Still, it’s not fair to punish Kosovars simply to appease other parts of the world, said John Menzies and Marshall Harris in the Baltimore Sun. Kosovo “is unique.” Other ethnic enclaves “have not been subject to the degree of repression” that Kosovars have suffered at Serbian hands. The Kosovars were extraordinarily patient as their international overlords dithered for nearly a decade. We owe it to them to “find the political will” to give them the independence that now is “inevitable.”

There’s one way to make the loss palatable to Serbia, said Timothy Garton Ash in the London Guardian. Grant both Kosovo and Serbia membership in the E.U. That way, both entities will know that their rights and those of their minorities will be guaranteed by all of Europe. Yes, an independent Kosovar could be destabilizing, and would obviously be a blow to Serbia. But it may be “the least worst” outcome to this crisis, and the best way to “avoid the shedding of more blood.”