http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/26/kosovo.serbia
GUARDIAN (UK) Is Kosovo Serbia? We ask a historian Noel Malcolm Tuesday February 26 2008 "Kosovo is Serbia", "Ask any historian" read the unlikely placards, waved by angry Serb demonstrators in Brussels on Sunday. This is rather flattering for historians: we don't often get asked to adjudicate. It does not, however, follow that any historian would agree, not least because historians do not use this sort of eternal present tense. History, for the Serbs, started in the early 7th century, when they settled in the Balkans. Their power base was outside Kosovo, which they fully conquered in the early 13th, so the claim that Kosovo was the "cradle" of the Serbs is untrue. What is true is that they ruled Kosovo for about 250 years, until the final Ottoman takeover in the mid-15th century. Churches and monasteries remain from that period, but there is no more continuity between the medieval Serbian state and today's Serbia than there is between the Byzantine Empire and Greece. Kosovo remained Ottoman territory until it was conquered by Serbian forces in 1912. Serbs would say "liberated"; but even their own estimates put the Orthodox Serb population at less than 25%. The majority population was Albanian, and did not welcome Serb rule, so "conquered" seems the right word. But legally, Kosovo was not incorporated into the Serbian kingdom in 1912; it remained occupied territory until some time after 1918. Then, finally, it was incorporated, not into a Serbian state, but into a Yugoslav one. And with one big interruption (the second world war) it remained part of some sort of Yugoslav state until June 2006. Until the destruction of the old federal Yugoslavia by Milosevic, Kosovo had a dual status. It was called a part of Serbia; but it was also called a unit of the federation. In all practical ways, the latter sense prevailed: Kosovo had its own parliament and government, and was directly represented at the federal level, alongside Serbia. It was, in fact, one of the eight units of the federal system. Almost all the other units have now become independent states. Historically, the independence of Kosovo just completes that process. Therefore, Kosovo has become an ex-Yugoslav state, as any historian could tell you. * Noel Malcolm is a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He is the author of Kosovo: A Short History [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:letters%40guardian.co.uk> Response to the Guardian by Bill Dorich February 26, 2008 The Guardian Letter to the Editor Dear Editor: I write with contempt about, Is Kosovo Serbian? We Ask an Historian by Noel Malcolm. As the author of the 1992 book, Kosovo, the first book published in the U.S. on this region of the world by 7 Balkan historians exposes this article as nothing more than further demonization of millions of Serbs who cherish Kosovo as their Jerusalem. Malcolm cleverly ignores the more than 1,500 Serbian churches and monasteries built in this area since the 12th century. Immorally he ignores church ruins that date to the 10th century. Arrogantly he conceals the fact that the first Islamic mosque was not built in Kosovo until 150 years after the battle of Kosovo in 1389, because these facts betray his rabid Serbophobia. The ugliest form of racism is to demean an ethnic group's religion, history or culture. This has not stopped Malcolm from revealing his closeted bigotry. He manipulates his access to the media knowing full well that most readers and editors are ignorant of Balkan history. People of Malcolm's ilk have found it easy to paint Serbs with collective guilt by demeaning them in this alleged "historical" context. What we see at play here is the Goebbles concept of "Tell a lie a hundred times and it becomes the truth." Kosovo independence is not about history, it is about equal human rights, and the absurd violation of UN Resolution 1244, the amputation of sovereign territory and in the process the violation of the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, and the Geneva Conventions. Malcolm admits to your readers that "...the Serbs ruled Kosovo for 250 years," but omits the fact that when The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was formed in 1918 the Albanians represented less than 5% of the population—a fact that is historically documented. Saying that the Serbs were "25%" is historical revisionism but taken at his word why has Malcolm looked the other way as Serbs have been reduced to less than 3% in Kosovo over the last decade? The real Serbian Genocide by Albanian Nazis in WWII that liquidated tens of thousands of Serbs or the Genocide that is taking place in Kosovo today is never included in Malcolm's lunatic version of history, not shared by most respected historians. Malcolm ignores the cleansing of 185,000 Serbs in 1690, the 170,000 forced to flee in 1739 or the 150,000 that were forced out of Kosovo after the Congress of Berlin in 1878, when Serbia was internationally recognized as a nation, or the more than 100,000 Serbs forced to flee after Tito granted "Autonomy" in 1974. Malcolm also ignores the more than 300,000 Serbs cleansed in the past 9 years. No reference is made to the fact that 40% of the Albanians in Kosovo are illegal aliens who cross the border into Serbia as easily as Mexicans cross our border each night in San Diego, California. Equally disgraceful, the Guardian grants little to no access to your pages to any Serbian historian or journalists to give opposing views. This is hardly freedom of the press, the press is being used in this case to bludgeon Serbia's cultural aspirations. William Dorich Los Angeles, CA The writer is the author of 5 books on Balkan history.
