Sunday, February 17, 2008

Kosovo Independence, Full text

Check out CiF, some 150 comments and counting, bringing out some of the nastiest, chauvinistic demons on the Web, whose rhetoric really makes the Kosovars' case for them.

Heads in the sand

There may be practical arguments against Kosovo's independence, but citing international law ignores the genocide committed by Belgrade
Ian Williams

About Webfeeds
February 16, 2008 5:00 PM
When John Bolton, Henry Kissinger, Vojislav Kostunica and Vladimir Putin line up with the fossilised relics of the Leninist left on an issue - you can be fairly sure that they are all wrong.

There may be practical arguments against Kosovo's independence, but for this motley assortment of naysayers to cite international law really has to take the biscuit. Along with what passes for leadership in Belgrade they all disregard the Genocide Convention and share an ostrich-like denial that the Serbian state under Milosevic practiced genocide and ethnic cleansing - or that it matters very much.

But all their pomp about sovereignty and the sacredness of boundaries does not change circumstances: Serbia as a state was complicit in what the World Court called "an act of genocide" in Srebrenica and in ethnic cleansing and mass murder in Kosovo. Belgrade, which carried on paying a pension to general Ratko Mladic while claiming it could not find him to hand over to the Hague, has now discovered an expedient attachment to international law over Kosovo.

This week at the international tribunal in the Hague, the judges are considering the refrigerated trucks full of excavated corpses of Kosovars that were driven into Serbia to be buried under police barracks or dumped in the Danube. No one is disputing that it happened. It is just that the Serbian police drivers on the witness stand seem confused about which of their superior officers ordered them to do it.

Even if the leaders in Belgrade had shown any serious measure of contrition for a decade of apartheid culminating in 1998 with the massacre of thousands of Kosovars and driving the bulk of the population over the borders such acts forfeit any duty from the victims to the perpetrating state. Instead of saying sorry, they bluster about precedents in international law.

But there is a very cogent and recent example. Pakistan was originally formed by the voluntary union of what is now Bangladesh and what is now left of the country in the west. You may note that, in contrast, the Kosovars were not asked about their incorporation into Serbia in 1912, or at any time since.

When in 1971 the Pakistani army staged mass killings and rapes of the Bengalis in East Pakistan, and foolishly took on India, it lost, and Bangladesh seceded. Bangladesh became a member of the Commonwealth, recognised by almost 90 countries, and in fact a member of many of the subsidiary bodies. Its first application to join the UN became the occasion off Beijing's first veto, since the PRC and Pakistan were close allies against India and the Soviet Union.

Those who deny the Kosovars the right to secede, then, somewhat contradictorily advance the right of the Serbs in the Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Northern Mitrovica to secede and overlook the circumstances. In fact, the RSK owes its present Serb majority to acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing, and even Northern Mitrovica's present population is based on the refusal of the Serbs there, with the connivance of UN forces on the bridge, to allow Albanians back into their homes.

In contrast, Kosovo owes its present status to an international reaction against ethnic cleansing that Belgrade committed, and in the end the illogic of victims needing the permission of their murderers to quit will become obvious. Bangladesh became a member of the UN in 1974. Kosovo looks set to follow in the same path, with recognition from most countries in the world being followed eventually by admission to the United Nations. Like Pakistan, Belgrade's nationalists can prance on their diminutive stage for a while, but reality will eventually intrude.

Then everyone can join the EU, and the borders will be irrelevant.

No comments: