Kosovo Declares Independence (Update)

Didn’t have to wait long for the reactions:

BREAKING NEWS:

Kosovo — An explosion rocked a U.N. building in northern Kosovo, causing slight damage but no injuries, just hours after ethnic Albanian leaders in Pristina proclaimed Kosovo’s independence.

The blast — apparently caused by a hurled hand grenade — damaged a concrete wall of the building housing a courthouse and jail. Another unexploded hand grenade was discovered across the street near a motel that houses European Union officials, said Besim Hoti, spokesman for Kosovo police.

Kosovska Mitrovica, a city of 60,000 in Kosovo’s north divided between Serbs and ethnic Albanians, was tense Sunday after ethnic Albanian leaders in Pristina declared Kosovo’s independence.

Helicopters buzzed overhead and police officers patrolled the streets to prevent violence in one of the few areas of Kosovo populated by minority Serbs, who make less than 10 percent of Kosovo’s 2 million people.

……The Serbian government in Belgrade has assured Kosovo’s defiant Serbs that they will remain Serbian.

Serbia’s red, blue and white flag fluttered in the north of Kosovska Mitrovica, which is dominated by Serbs, while ethnic Albanians across the Ibar River in the south launched fireworks and fired guns to celebrate.

“The Albanians can celebrate all they want but this stillborn baby of theirs will never be an independent country as long as we Serbs are here and alive,” said Djordje Jovanovic as Serbs chanting “This is Serbia” gathered near the bridge separating them from ethnic Albanians.

Serbia’s government minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, said Serbia will increase its control over the 15 percent of the province that is inhabited by the Serbs — an apparent attempt to partition Kosovo.

“It’s a historic day for the Albanians, but not for us,” said Milan Jankovic, sitting in a restaurant sipping plum brandy as Serbian folk music drowned out TV coverage of the declaration.

“Maybe this is good for everyone. At least we’ll split for good. We belong to Serbia, and they belong to Albania,” Jankovic said.

Ethnic Albanians, who are mostly Muslim, saw Sunday’s declaration as a final victory over Serbs in their decades-long struggle over the impoverished territory.

Kosovo’s minority Serbs, mostly Christian Orthodox, vowed to defend the province they consider the heart of their medieval statehood and religion.The Serb attachment to Kosovo dates to 1389, when the province, then the seat of a Serbian state, fell to the Ottoman Turks.

“Serbs have oppressed us, taken our homes, killed our people and downgraded us for decades,” Jashari said. “Now this has formally come to an end. We finally have our country.”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330980,00.html

Look for more widespread violence. The Serbs are not happy campers.

Kosovo Declares Independence

This could get real interesting….

PRISTINA, Serbia — Kosovo declared itself a nation on Sunday, mounting a brash and historic bid to become an “independent and democratic state” backed by the U.S. and key European allies but bitterly contested by Serbia and Russia.

“Kosovo is a republic — an independent, democratic and sovereign state,” parliament speaker Jakup Krasniqi said as the chamber burst into applause after a unanimous vote to approve the document.
Across the capital, Pristina, revelers danced in the streets, fired guns into the air, waved red and black Albanian flags and honked car horns in jubilation at the birth of the world’s newest country.

Krasniqi, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and President Fatmir Sejdiu signed the declaration, which was scripted on parchment, before the unveiling of a new national crest and a flag: a bright blue banner featuring a golden map of Kosovo and six stars, one for each of its main ethnic groups

Sunday’s declaration was carefully orchestrated with the U.S. and key European powers, and Kosovo was counting on swift international recognition that could come as early as Monday, when EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels, Belgium.

By sidestepping the U.N. and appealing directly to the U.S. and other nations for recognition, Kosovo’s independence set up a showdown with Serbia — outraged at the imminent loss of its territory — and Russia, which warned that it would set a dangerous precedent for separatist groups worldwide.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Moscow supported Serbia’s “just demands to restore the country’s territorial integrity.”
And Serbia’s government minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, said Sunday that Serbia would increase its presence in the roughly 15 percent of Kosovo that is Serb-controlled — an apparent attempt to divide the province.

“From today onwards, Kosovo is proud, independent and free,” said Thaci, a former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which battled Serbian troops in a 1998-99 separatist war that claimed 10,000 lives. “We never lost faith in the dream that one day we would stand among the free nations of the world, and today we do.”

“Our hopes have never been higher,” he told the assembly during the ceremony, which was televised live nationwide. “Dreams are infinite, our challenges loom large, but nothing can deter us from moving forward to the greatness that history has reserved for us.”

Thaci pledged that the new nation would be “a democratic, multiethnic state” — an attempt to reach out to Serbs who consider Kosovo the cradle of their medieval culture and religion.

But he also had stern words for the Serbian government, which last week declared secession illegal and invalid, saying in the Serbian language: “Kosovo will never be ruled by Belgrade again.” Thaci also signed 192 separate letters to nations around the world — including Serbia — asking them to recognize Kosovo as a state.

Kosovo has formally remained a part of Serbia even though it has been administered by the U.N. and NATO since 1999, when NATO airstrikes ended former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic’s crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.

The province is still protected by 16,000 NATO-led peacekeepers, and the alliance boosted its patrols over the weekend in hopes of discouraging violence. International police, meanwhile, deployed to back up local forces in the tense north — and the European Union and NATO both called for restraint throughout the Balkans.

U.S. President George W. Bush said on a visit to Africa that the United States “will continue to work with our allies to the very best we can to make sure there’s no violence.”

“We are heartened by the fact that the Kosovo government has clearly proclaimed its willingness and its desire to support Serbian rights in Kosovo,” Bush said. “We also believe it’s in Serbia’s interest to be aligned with Europe and the Serbian people can know that they have a friend in America.”

……Spontaneous street celebrations broke out anew on Sunday, with giddy Kosovars waving Albanian and American flags, and thousands of ethnic Albanians streamed into Pristina from neighboring Macedonia.

In Albania, Prime Minister Sali Berisha said Kosovo’s independence would make the Balkans “freer and fairer” and end “the hegemony of one nation over others.”

Herein lies the ethnic/religious divisions:

Ninety percent of Kosovo’s 2 million people are ethnic Albanian — mostly nominal Muslims who are secular and eschew radical Islam — and they see no reason to stay joined to the rest of Christian Orthodox Serbia.

Croatians, not mentioned here by the way, are Catholic. When the Ottoman Empire extended into the Balkans, some coverted to Islam, and were considered traitors for doing so. The denominational differences caused a lot of tension over the years. The only thing that kept a lid on the pressure cooker was the Yugoslavian dictator Marshal Tito, who ruled with an iron fist. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall and subsequent dissolusion of Eastern Europe for the Soviet empire, all hell broke loose.

With Russia, a staunch Serbian ally, determined to block the bid, Kosovo looked to the U.S. and key European powers for swift recognition of its status as the continent’s newest nation. That recognition was likely to come Monday at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, arguing that independence without U.N. approval would set a dangerous precedent for “frozen conflicts” across the former Soviet Union and around the world, pressured the Security Council to intervene.

Serbia’s government ruled out any military response as part of its secret “action plan” drafted earlier this week as a response, but warned that it would downgrade relations with any foreign government that recognizes Kosovo’s independence.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330951,00.html

NATO currently maintains around 16,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo, and the numbers are dwindling.

Link: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/27/europe/EU-GEN-EU-Bosnia.php

The European Union took over the peacekeeping duties in 2004, when SFOR officially handed over control. There are only a few hundred U.S. troops remaining in Bosnia.

At one time Al Qaeda used Bosnia and Albania as support bases for training, operations, and recruiting. With cooperation from countries across the Balkan region and effective intelligence assests, those operations were shut down.

Link: http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/62663.pdf

Now that Kosovo has declared sovereignty, we’ll have to wait and see how Serbia reacts and if Putin decides to get more involved than just ‘appealing to the U.N.’

Putin’s saber rattling

The latest in Vladimir’s tantrums:

Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, on Wednesday highlighted the tense relations between Moscow and Washington when she hit out at Russia’s “reprehensible” rhetoric and said she would appoint a special energy co-ordinator for central Asia, a region dominated to date by Russian energy interests.

Appearing at the Senate’s foreign relations committee, Ms Rice responded fiercely to questions about recent Russian behaviour, including President Vladimir Putin’s suggestion this week that Ukraine could be targeted with nuclear missiles and his warning of a new arms race with the west.

“The unhelpful and, really, I will use a different word, reprehensible rhetoric that is coming out of Moscow is unacceptable,” Ms Rice said.

Relations between Moscow and Washington have hardened in the wake of disputes over Russia’s objections to proposed US missile defence bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as US concerns about what it sees as Mr Putin’s use of intimidation at home and abroad.

But the US secretary of state emphasised that she believed the principal areas of difficulty related to the post-cold war map of Europe – on issues such as North Korea and Iran, the two countries co-operated much more closely.

“The Soviet Union . . . is gone forever, and I hope that Russia understands that,” she said. “We are absolutely devoted to the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine and of other states that were once a part of the Soviet Union.”

Link: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2a7aeb7e-da6f-11dc-9bb9-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

Putin didn’t get the memo.

Russia, unlike the majority of the former Warsaw Pact, has been slow to let go of the centralized communist form of government.

……between 1999, the year before Mr Putin became president, and 2007, the Russian economy expanded by 69 per cent. But the economies of 11 of the 15 former republics of the Soviet Union expanded by more than Russia’s. Indeed, only Kyrgyzstan did markedly worse. A number of the former Soviet republics did, it is true, benefit from an oil and gas bonanza. But so, too, did Russia: its oil and gas exports jumped from $76bn in 1999 to $350bn last year. Even so, the Russian economy expanded by less than Ukraine’s.

Like all post-communist countries, Russia’s economy suffered a steep initial decline, which reached its trough in 1998. Countries that reformed more decisively, such as Poland, bottomed out more quickly and are now far ahead. Again, Russia’s recovery is in no way exceptional: tiny Estonia has done far better. Maybe this is why the Kremlin hates the Baltic state so much.

……Russia’s neighbours – at least those in which the people may express their opinions – are more hostile. The KGB-state is unable to understand that fear and respect are antitheses, not synonyms. Mr Putin has made no secret of his regrets about the collapse of the Soviet empire and his resentment at the subsequent expansion of the European Union and, even more, of Nato. What seems absent from his discourse is why these countries, so familiar with beneficent Russian rule, should have handed over their futures to bodies whose central powers are Germany and the US, respectively. Why, too, as Edward Lucas of The Economist notes, are Russia’s friends a “rogue’s gallery” of tinpot despotisms?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fec0c678-d98f-11dc-bd4d-0000779fd2ac.html

My previous blogs about Putin’s hissy fits:

http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2007/08/25/the-cold-war-part-ii/

http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2007/09/13/cold-war-part-ii-cont/

http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2007/11/21/putin-to-west-its-your-fault-for-my-soviet-nostalgia/

http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2007/12/12/putins-re-entry-plan-clarified/

http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/putin-sends-political-rival-to-asylum/

We can look forward to more erratic behavior from Russia’s leadership, the more it spirals downward into economic and political chaos. The former Soviet satellites have fulfilled Russia’s worst nightmare: reaching out to NATO for cooperation and becoming part of the capitalist system so reviled by Lenin and Marx.

Russia has two choices; either get itself into the 21st Century or fade into oblivion. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if, for better or worse, there’s another Russian revolution.

Putin sends political rival to asylum

Another foe of the Putin regime comes under Soviet-style oppression:

A Russian opposition activist has been sent to a psychiatric hospital by authorities a day before a planned demonstration.

Artem Basyrov’s detention is the latest in a series of incidents suggesting a punitive Soviet-era practice is being revived under president Vladimir Putin.

Mr Basyrov, 20, was ordered to be held at a hospital in the central region of Mari El on November 23, a day before planned demonstrations, said Alexander Averin of the opposition National Bolshevik Party.

The party is part of the Other Russia coalition which organised the so-called Dissenters’ Marches across the country this year.

Mr Basyrov ran for the local legislature as an Other Russia candidate.

Police who originally detained him claimed he had assaulted a girl.

A local psychiatric board agreed, deciding the activist suffered from a mental illness and he was committed to the psychiatric hospital three weeks ago.

He was only transferred from an isolation ward and allowed to have visitors on Thursday, said Mikhail Klyuzhev, a National Bolshevik member from the city of Yoshkar-Ola.

The allegations against Mr Basyrov were “idiocy” and were “part of the hysteria” before Russia’s parliamentary elections which were held on December 2, Mr Klyuzhev added.

Supporters said Mr Basyrov did not appear to have been mistreated.

A psychiatric board is due to review his case at the end of the month.

His case is the latest example of journalists or opposition activists being involuntarily committed to psychiatric hospitals in Russia.

During the Soviet era, dissidents were frequently committed for protesting against Soviet policies.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=502382&in_page_id=1811

The bad old days of the Soviet Kremlin have returned.

Putin’s re-entry plan clarified

Ah, the old Soviet style system, redux:

President Vladimir Putin’s future political plans looked a little clearer Tuesday when the man he backed to replace him as president indicated that he would in turn offer Putin the post of prime minister.

Analysts here and abroad have long been speculating about how Putin, 55, intends to retain influence after his second term as president ends next May.

His apparent plan unfolded with, first, his appointment last September of a little-known bureaucrat to the prime minister’s post; then Putin had himself placed at the top of the electoral list of the country’s largest party, United Russia, ahead of Dec. 2 parliamentary elections that United Russia easily won; and finally both United Russia and Putin on Monday named Dmitry Medvedev as their favored presidential candidate, making his victory in the election next March a formality.

Medvedev, who is currently first deputy prime minister, on Tuesday in turn announced that if he wins the election, he will ask Putin to assume the post of prime minister and head the next government.

In a televised speech, Medvedev pledged to sustain the Kremlin’s current policies and Putin’s team. In televised remarks marking the start of his presidential bid, Medvedev suggested continued government funding of a variety of social problems.

When Putin in October announced that he would lead the United Russia list - although not become a member of the party - he said he may consider serving as prime minister in the future, on condition the party won the parliament poll, and if a “decent, efficient and modern” man succeeds him as president.

Many expect the presidency may become a more ceremonial position, although Putin has made it clear he does not intend to change the balance of power between the president and premier.

Ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who plans to join the presidential race, questioned the pledge, saying it was “possible [for the president] to pass most powers to the government” without amending any laws, and predicting that a Putin-led cabinet could increase its clout significantly.

The Putin-Medvedev quid-pro-quo scheme did not come as a surprise to Russian politicians and observers.

Sergei Mironov, speaker of the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, called Medvedev’s plan “businesslike,” saying that a partnership between Medvedev as president and Putin as prime minister would be positive for Russia’s development domestically and internationally.

Oleg Morozov, one of the leaders of United Russia, said the plan would allow the party to control both the executive and legislative branches of power, regardless of whether the two were actual party members. Neither of the two are currently members of United Russia.

Sergei Ivanenko, deputy head of the opposition Yabloko, said Medvedev’s offer to Putin was predictable and showed the Kremlin’s intention to maintain the system of power. At the same time, he said Medvedev’s previous liberal stances raise hope that Russian policies may undergo some positive changes.

Medvedev’s initiative could lead to a more pluralistic system of government, said Vyacheslav Nikonov, head of the Politika Foundation, a Moscow-based think-tank.

On the other hand, Nikonov noted that the succession plan could also see Putin return to the presidency in 2012 and extend his power into the 2020s. The Russian constitution prohibits more than two consecutive presidential terms but allows for a former president to run again after a break.

The constitution could also be changed to remove the term restrictions - and United Russia’s parliamentary win gives it enough seats to initiate constitutional amendments - although Putin has said he will not change the constitution to enable him a third consecutive term.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200712/FOR20071211c.html

Pretty slick there, Putin. Help get a lackey into office and use the little sock puppet to pave the way for your return to power.

Then there’s “Mad Vlad” Zhirinovsky, who wants to restore Imperial Russia to include Finland and Alaska.

What a collection of wannabe Czars.

According to the Russian Tass News Agency, Putin’s public approval ratings couldn’t be better:

Opinion polls now show an increased level of public support for President Vladimir Putin. His popularity is at an all-time high, which is completely unprecedented for any elected leader approaching the end of his second term. The public wants and expects Putin to remain in a powerful leadership role. The debate as to exactly what mechanism he will use to achieve that has intensified, with the pros and cons of a role as prime minister being widely discussed. There is also a view that Putin may choose to avoid a formal role but could act as a “president-in-exile” – sort of like Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, but with the option to return.
……A poll conducted by the Russia Public Opinion Center (VTsIOM) over the past two weeks shows support for Putin increasing: 66% of those polled said they would vote for Putin if an election were held this month. This is up from 60% last month. The president’s approval rating is also rising and according to the VTsIOM poll is now at 83% (up from 82%) with approval not only from United Russia supporters (95%) but also from other party supporters. For example, 58% of people who say they will vote Communist also approve of the work of the president.

Link: http://www.prime-tass.com/news/show.asp?topicid=65&id=428307

It’s hard to guage an authentic opinion because the Kremlin still implements a State-controlled media. The murder of an ex-KGB spy for instance, goes unpublished:

Fred Weir, a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, who is based in Moscow, about the Russian public’s reaction to news of Alexander Litvinenko’s death. Weir says most of the Russian public actually doesn’t even know about the case, because the big Russian media outlets are not carrying the story. Weir also points out that although Litvinenko publicly blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for his poisoning, Litvinenko lived in a shady world, and there were plenty of others who might have wanted him dead.

Link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6535353&ft=1&f=2

Litvinenko by the way, was investigating the assassination of a Russian journalist when he was murdered:

Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist, was brought down in a hail of bullets by ‘unknown assailants’ who escaped without a trace.

In her book “Putin’s Russia”, she wrote:

“I have wondered a great deal why I have so got it in for Putin. What is it that makes me dislike him so much as to feel moved to write a book about him? I am not one of his political opponents or rivals, just a woman living in Russia. Quite simply, I am a 45-year-old Muscovite who observed the Soviet Union at its most disgraceful in the 1970s and ’80s. I really don’t want to find myself back there again.”

http://www.pajamasmedia.com/2007/10/politkovskaya.php

Putin also signed into law a government program known as “SORN”, which gives the Kremlin total access to private citizen’s internet server information. This is not for legitimate national security concerns, but to simply squash dissent.

Vladimir Putin is putting all the steps in place for his reascension to power.

Which means Comrade Putin should be ‘president’ again by the next decade.