A rchive Date
[ 14-06-2006 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Yugoslavia ]
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[http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2006/05/28/1602220-sun.html
Final act in the death of Yugoslavia
By ERIC MARGOLIS, TORONTO SUN
Sun, May 28, 2006
GENEVA - One of the most brilliant statesmen I have met, Pakistan's former foreign minister Shabzada Yacoub Khan, predicted to me in 1991 that the coming 20 years would be marked by worldwide political fragmentation as the 20th Century's nation states broke up into smaller entities.
How right he was. The latest example: The dramatic re-Balkanization of the Balkans, which reached its next-to-final act last week as tiny Montenegro voted to secede from its union with Serbia and become an independent micro-state.
The multi-ethnic geopolitical monstrosity called Yugoslavia, created by the victorious Allies at the end of World War I, was supposed to impose stability under French "guidance" on the chronically unruly Balkans. Instead, Yugoslavia quickly became a cauldron of ethnic, religious and tribal tensions between Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnian Muslims, Albanians, Montenegrins, Magyars, and Macedonians.
Yugoslavia was Europe's version of Iraq, another unnatural, inherently unstable multi-ethnic state created by Britain's imperialists to control the Fertile Crescent's oil.
Only iron-fisted rulers could make these fractured nations work: Tito in Yugoslavia, Saddam in Iraq. When they were gone, disintegration and civil war ensued.
Montenegrins, a nation of fierce mountain warriors, wanted out of their marriage to Serbia. Even though virtually identical in culture, race and religion to Serbs, a majority of Montenegrins sought to escape being tarred with the brush of Serbia's crimes in Bosnia and Kosovo, and subjected to European Union sanctions over Belgrade's hiding of mass murderers Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic.
We wish Montenegro well and applaud Serbia for peacefully accepting this inevitable divorce. Once Serbia settles the bitter Kosovo question and purges itself of its war criminals, it, like the other states that emerged from Yugoslavia's wreckage, will prosper in peace under the EU umbrella.
Hopefully, the EU has learned the lesson of its disastrous failure to manage Yugoslavia's break-up and its shameful resumption of Europe's traditional national rivalries in the Balkans during the 1990's. Were it not for reluctant but ultimately decisive American intervention, the Balkans would still be plunged into ethnic terrorism and political chaos.
All Balkan peoples owe the U.S. thanks for kicking out the criminal Milosevic regime, preventing a general Balkan war, and fostering democracy. This was America at its best. Luckily for the Balkans, it had no oil, and Bill Clinton, for all his domestic problems, was then president.
The final act in the death of Yugoslavia may come before year's end. The former Serb-ruled province of Kosovo, now an EU-run protectorate, is 95% ethnic Albanian and clamouring for independence. The EU has long sought to thwart or delay both Montenegrin and Kosovar independence.
LOGICAL AND INEVITABLE
With Montenegro's secession from the former Yugoslavia, independence for Kosovo's oppressed Albanians is logical and likely inevitable. If independence for 630,000 Montenegrins is acceptable, why not for two million Kosovar Albanians?
The Kosovars have run out of patience with EU stalling tactics and are muttering about renewed fighting to gain independence. Unfortunately, neither the EU nor Kosovar Albanians have come up with a workable solution to the problem of Kosovo's 75,000-100,000 remaining embattled Serbs. Serbia refuses to grant independence to Kosovo, which it has ruled, and tried to ethnically cleanse.
For long-suffering Kosovars, independence will at least bring them the right to misrule themselves. So a great historic drama of our time is almost ended. Yugoslavia, evil child of WWI's rapacious victors, is nearly gone.
Good riddance. Now, let's turn to that other monstrous offspring of post-World War I imperialism, the modern Mideast.
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