>Briefly, what I'm suggesting is that a very different ultimatum should
>be given to the Serbs: Stop Killing or We Recognize Kosovo as
>Independent.
>
>It is a matter of principle: Nations do NOT shell their own county --
>so if the Serbs continue shelling Kosovo villages it PROVES that Kosovo
>is NOT a part of Yugoslavia, and the world community should therefore
>recognize Kosovo.
There are ever so many examples of nations shelling their own country, and
besides, as the Serbs see it, they're shelling ethnic Albanians, not their
own country. They see it as cleansing their country in much the same manner
as they cleansed Bosnia. They are, of course, not alone in this. In
Rwanda, the Hutus cleansed Tutsis; in Ireland, the pro-Brit Protestants
cleansed Irish Catholics; In Iraq, the Iraquis cleansed Kurds; in Indian,
the Hindus cleansed Moslems (and v.v.); in Turkey, the Turks cleansed
Armenians; the Germans cleansed Jews throughout Europe; Europeans cleansed
the Indians of the New World; etc. etc. etc. It's a very old and very
widespread game which won't change until we've undergone one more step in
evolution -- from the human to the angelic.
There are a couple of other points that need to be made. One is that Kosovo
is the latest stage in the disintegration of Yugoslavia, which used to
pretend to be a country, but which was never really together except under
the iron hand of Tito. During the past decade or so Yugoslavia has lost
Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and, for all practical purposes, Bosnia. Now
Kosovo threatens to go, leaving only Serbia itself (and perhaps Montenegro,
though I'm a little hazy here). Think of it as being a little like Canada
if Quebec went, then British Columbia, then Alberta, etc. The other point
is that I suspect there is a larger geopolitical game at work in all this -
it's not only the dirty old Serbs against defenceless ethnic Albanian women
and children. The Russians have long been allies of the Serbs, and I
suspect they are involved somewhere in the background. To what purpose? I
don't really know, but I would speculate that at least some powerful or
potentially powerful Russians are looking for an excuse to get back into the
arms race. Russia was a force to be reckoned with during the Cold. The
arms race made the country work far better than anything that has come
along. You need an enemy to convince your people to be in an arms race.
How better to acquire an enemy than to have a full scale war on your
borders -- a war between NATO (really the US) and the poor little Serbs.
I recognize that this is pure speculation, but might it not be so?
Ed Weick
