Serbianna
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/borojevic/027.shtml
Colonized Kosovo: Muslim demands and Western servitude
By Boba Borojevic
Ottawa, November 14, 2005 - The violence that started Oct. 27 among
Muslim youths in the dreary industrial suburbs northeast of Paris soon
grew into a nationwide insurrection in the banlieus, of arson and
clashes with police. Prime Minister de Villepin said the nation faced
a "moment of truth" over its failure to integrate Arab and African
immigrants and their children into its mainstream.
A thousand miles away and 16 months ago, on March 17, 2004, Albanian
mobs burned down hundreds of Serbian houses and some thirty Serbian
Orthodox churches. They also expelled over 2000 non-Albanians from
Kosovo. Some voices in the "international community" tried to explain
this violence as the result of Albanian frustration for not getting
independence from Serbia. Is there any significant similarity between
demands and actions of Albanian Muslims in Kosovo and Muslim "youths"
in France?
Dr Srdja Trifkovic, director of the Institute for International
Affairs at The Rockford Institute in Illinois says that the difference
is two-folded.
The riots in Kosovo in 1981, 1989, in the 1990s and than on several
occasions following the NATO occupation but most notably on March 17,
2004, are based in a combination of nationalist and Islamic motives.
It would be inappropriate to ascribe them completely to the influence
of religious teaching, just as it would be wrong to exclude Islam from
the mix of emotions that drive the Albanian political mainstream.
Significant segments of the Albanian Kosovo youths active in the KLA
and associated groups are primarily driven by the desire to declare
independence from Serbia, to expel the remaining Serbs and other
non-Albanians, and to have a mono-ethnic Kosovo. Their murderous
antagonism is not fully explicable, however, without some reference to
the gap that Islam breeds between Muslims and non-Muslims, in the
Balkans and elsewhere.
In France by contrast, many of the North African youths of Arabic
origin, most of them of an Algerian, Moroccan or Tunisian parentage,
want their self-rule within France, rather than independence from
France. For at least some of them the ultimate objective is to take
over France and the rest of Europe altogether, but for now they have
one key political demand that is not sufficiently publicized in the
Western media: the acceptance of no-go areas for the police in certain
"difficult" areas with a Muslim majority, and de facto autonomy for
those areas. Young Muslims want their turf to be governed by
themselves, within the boundaries of the French state but definitely
outside the French society. Their community leaders, imams and
sheikhs, hope that eventually the application of the Sharia law within
their communities will be only a matter of time.
The exclusion for the French state, its police forces, judicial and
administrative authorities from the areas in which the Muslims
comprise a majority would be only the first step. What they are asking
for is reminiscent of the Turkish millet system of local authority
exercised by different religious and ethnic units within the Ottoman
Empire. "It presupposes the right of the Muslims in Europe to be
treated as a separate community, guided by its own rules and not
subject to the prevailing laws and mores of the secular host society,"
explains Trifkovic.
Although many rioters in France have rather vague notions of what they
reallt want, Trifkovic cautions that we need to look at the statements
by their community leaders, by people who are demanding "negotiations"
with the French government. "What we are witnessing is the first step
of the intifada that will seek to gradually establish pockets of
Muslim-ruled areas that will be inhabited solely by Muslims. We have
seen the same progression in North Africa and the Middle East in the
early stages of Muslim expansion in the 7th and 8th centuries."
The reason why western governments and the mainstream media have
failed to address the issue of intifada in Europe, Trifkovic says, is
that it would imply the recognition that integration and assimilation
have failed miserably.
"What we have witnessed in the past 40 years is a massive influx of
Muslim immigrants into Europe. We are talking about 20-plus million
people – the greatest migration of people ever recorded in history! It
far exceeds the European emigration into North America. Even in the
late 19th century, in no single year had more than half a million
Europeans migrated to the rest of the world, including North and South
America, Australia, South Africa etc. This massive migratory onslaught
has been accompanied by the demand of the European elite class for the
newcomers' "inclusion," for the host-nations' "tolerance" of alien
practices and cultural assumptions, for multiculturalism, for an
irreversible welcoming mat for the newcomers who have never intended
to be integrated. They have compact communities, which can function on
their own terms and in their own right without ever learning the
language of the host society and without ever accepting any of its
cultural assumptions and values," concludes Trifkovic.
Colonial Attitudes
According to Finish newspapers the appointment of Martti Ahtisaari as
an UN Special Envoy authorized by the United Nations and the great
powers to lead the talks on the future status of Kosovo is another
impressive demonstration of the authority and confidence the former
President enjoys among the international community in such matters.
Trifkovic sees Martti Ahtisaari as the one of ever-present faceless
bureaucrats picked up by the so-called international community when
they want a process with the preordained outcome to get underway.
"He was already involved in 1999 in negotiating the agreement in
Kumanovo that persuaded the withdrawal of Serbian police and military
units from Kosovo before NATO came in. The interregnum assured that
most of the Serbian and other non-Albanian population would be
expelled by Albanians. His subsequent association with the so-called
International Crisis Group (ICG), an organization implacably committed
to the concept of the Albanian independence, is not promising at all.
The Serbian authorities would have been well advised to declare that
his services are not welcome for that reason. The Serbs should have
demanded someone more evenhanded, less compromised by bias and by
prior political activities. There is no doubt that, had the
international community appointed someone who has said that Kosovo
should stay within Serbia, the Albanians and their cohorts would have
cried murder and demanded that person's replacement."
Brelgrade's negotiating team consisting of the prime minister of
Serbia Vojislav Kostunica, president of Serbia Boris Tadic and
president of the state union Serbia and Montenegro, Svetozar Marovic,
includes vastly different and mutually incompatible personalities and
views on how to conduct the negotiations and how the future status of
Kosovo should look like, says Trifkovic.
"It is enough to look at the well exploited phrase 'more than autonomy
and less than independence'. Professor Kosta Cavoski, one of the
leading Serbian jurists, has explained that there is nothing in
between those two terms. You either have autonomy, which means
self-rule that falls short of independence, or you have more than
that, which means full sovereignty without even a resemblance or
pretence of institutional link between Belgrade and Pristina.
"The phrase more than autonomy and less than independence is very
damaging for the Serbian side. It implicitly recognizes that whatever
Kosovo gets it will be de facto independence, under whatever name. For
as long as Belgrade does not have a specific plan, the one that will
be based upon already existing models elsewhere in the world, such as
the autonomy for Swedes in Finland, the models of coexistence or, to
be more precise, the methods of separation of Greeks and Turks of
Cypress, the models of territorial autonomy that the Vatican's
institutions enjoy in the Italian republic, for as long as we are
always inventing some new models – of which the world remains unaware
to this day – we are following one-way street to de facto independence
of Kosovo under whatever name," says Trifkovic.
Constant Pressure on Serbs by Foreign Powers
Belgrade newspaper "Politika' reported that the American senator
Joesph Biden had said at the meeting of the Foreign policy committee
of American Senate on November 9, that: "If we do the right thing in
Kosovo, it'll remind Muslims round the world the US helped Kosovo
Muslim population to build a strong, independent, multi ethnic
democracy."
Biden's opinion does not surprise Trifkovic who said that we had
witnessed that attitude in the past decade. "Joe Biden was
consistently wrong on every Balkan issue and remains wrong to this
day. The senator from Delaware does not understand the Balkans or
Islam. Giving Muslims a few morsels in the Balkans in the hope that
the US will justify itself for the policy in Iraq and the policy of
supporting Israel has been proven false under the Clinton
administration. People who still maintain the same cause today are
either politically very na�ve, or deliberately mendacious, or just
plain stupid.
"As for the issue of substance the declaration of either the House of
Representatives or the Senate that has no legal binding value, that
has no character of policy declaration that the administration has to
follow is symbolic and should not be treated by the Serbs as a tool of
heavy pressure," says Trifkovic.
When push comes to shove, without Serbia's agreement an independent
Kosovo cannot function. If the Serbs declare that they will not accept
Kosovo's travel documents, customs forms, passports, license plates,
etc. it would be impossible for an independent Kosovo to function. The
only functional link between Kosovo and the heartland of Europe goes
through Serbia to the north and west. And if the Serbs are determined
in the defense of their concept of sovereignty, no "independent"
Kosovo would be able to function."
According to Trifkovic, the Serbian side strategy at the moment should
be defensive. "The Serbs have no need to accept the deadline of 2006,
or any other year. There are crisie in the world such as Middle East
crisis that has been subjected to many deadlines in the past. We've
had Madrid, we've had Camp David I, Camp David II, and Oslo and yet it
remains unresolved. Why should the Kosovo crisis be subject to any
cut-off date? And why should the Serbs negotiate today if the UNSC
Resolution 1244 from 1999 remains unfulfilled? Those two issues have
not been answered in satisfactory manner," Trifkovic says. The Serbs
can insist on 1244 as the preconditions for negotiations. Belgrade has
strong arguments, and that is why the implicit intention of those who
want an independent Kosovo is to make Belgrade give up on UNSC 1244,"
concluded Trifkovic his interview for "Monday's Encounter" on CKCU
93.1 FM in Ottawa.
Serbian News Network - SNN
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