Holbrooke: "Kosovo will have to be independent" The Battalion - News March 07, 2005 By Katie Coggins
Not every ethnic group can exist as an independent nation, so a way must be found for ethnic minorities in a nation to live peacefully without giving up their culture and rights, said Richard C. Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Friday at the Annenberg Presidential Conference Center. Separating from a country works sometimes, when small groups of ethnicities in a larger entity are being cheated out of jobs and economic development, but it is not always the best solution to ethnic conflict, said Holbrooke, the keynote speaker for this year's Student Conference on National Affairs (SCONA). "If every ethnicity wants its own country, we are going to have endless wars," he said. Students from around the country met at Texas A&M Thursday through Saturday to discuss the topic "Confronting Ethnic Conflict Through International Diplomacy." Ideas of nationalism and self-determinism were repressed during the Cold War, said Holbrooke. He added that the end of communist control caused repressed ethnicities in nations such as Yugoslavia to rise up and seek independence. Yugoslavia, a single country under communist control, was divided into five countries with the death of communism, and it will soon split into seven, Holbrooke said. "Kosovo will have to be independent (from Serbia and Montenegro) because it is overwhelmingly Albanian, and Serbia and Montenegro are going to get divorced, I would guess, within the next 12-18 months," he said. The self-deterministic drive for independence enabled Yugoslavia to separate, but that is not always the case for ethnicities seeking independence, Holbrooke said. Winston Churchill was a great world leader, Holbrooke said, but he made a great historic mistake after World War I when he helped create the country of Iraq out of three provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Holbrooke said that three distinct ethnicities were forced to coexist in Iraq: the Shiites from Basrah, the Sunnis from Baghdad and the Kurds from Mosul. He explained that the Kurds now want to separate from Iraq, but a Kurdish leader will probably be the next president of Iraq so they know separation is not possible. "The Kurds are the largest group of people in the world without their own nation, and by any definition of ethnicity, by any definition of geographic cohesiveness, the Kurds should have had an independent country, but it's not going to happen," he said. William Berry, a senior political science major, said he agrees that it is necessary for the Kurds to remain Iraqis for now, and he does not think the United States should help them become independent. "We don't want to cause a civil war that will escalate to more conflict with Iraq's surrounding nations," Berry said. Holbrooke said Tibet fits all the criteria for a separate geographic nation. It is geographically set apart from China, has its own language, its own cosmology and its own leader, the Dalai Lama. "But there are only 4-6 million of them," Holbrooke said. "If they were to try to do what Kosovo did to Yugoslavia in the heart of Europe, the Chinese would crush them." Holbrooke said the Dalai Lama is aware of this and has repeatedly said that Tibet accepts that it will always be a part of China. In cases such as these, when separation is not possible, different ethnicities must learn to peacefully coexist and protect their nationalities, Holbrooke said. "This is why we have to find ways that people can live in countries where they're not ethnically dominant, in a way that all their rights - religious, political, cultural, educational - are protected," Holbrooke said. The United States cannot always encourage separatism through foreign diplomacy, he said, but it should help repressed ethnicities when they are in need. "There are times when you simply have to use force to achieve goals," Holbrooke said. Monika Kierewicz, a senior marketing major, said she was interested in hearing the former U.N. ambassador's perspective on ethnic conflict. She agreed with Holbrooke about the responsibility of U.S. foreign diplomacy in worldwide issues of ethnic conflict. "The U.S. has a role and it shouldn't be something (the United States) ignores," Kierewicz said. Holbrooke said race is a cause of conflict, and ethnicity is a nice, sociological term. "As for the United States, we can't solve them all," he said. "But when we can intervene, we should. When we can intervene early to prevent it from escalating to bloodshed, we should do so." Former President George Bush greeted Holbrooke on stage for a handshake at the end of the presentation, and the two received a standing ovation. http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2005/March_07/5.html?w=p Serbian News Network - SNN [email protected] http://www.antic.org/
