Kosovo, The True Quagmire
<font size=4>While the Left continues to carp about the supposed "quagmire" of Iraq, where the US toppled a dictator and then set up the framework for an independent and representative government in less than 15 months, Alissa Rubin writes in today's Los Angeles Times that Kosovo continues to exist in limbo after five years of UN administration:<font size=3>
latimes.com.
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Svinjare was one of 30 towns and villages in Kosovo swept by violence March 17 and 18. Mobs, some armed with heavy weapons, damaged 730 houses in Kosovo — the vast majority owned by Serbs — and 35 religious sites, mostly Serbian Orthodox churches.
It was the worst violence since 1999, when hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians were displaced by Serbian security forces. Kosovo has been under United Nations control since North Atlantic Treaty Organization airstrikes drove out the Serbian forces. But the province remains part of Serbia and Montenegro, the successor state to Yugoslavia. ...
The incidents have precipitated a review by the United
Nations of its policies in the province, which have done
little so far to create either jobs or an effective police
force despite millions of dollars spent. The March
violence showed that neither the local police nor the
international police, brought by the U.N. from member
countries, were able to maintain control. In most cases,
authorities helped Serbs evacuate their homes but then
stood by while ethnic Albanian mobs set the houses ablaze.
Five years after international armed intervention and UN administration, Kosovo doesn't even have an effective police force, and no one wants to speculate on its "final status". This past March, as ethnic violence flared up again and Albanians attacked Serb homes, businesses and churches (a reversal of 1999's violence), UN 'peacekeeping' forces essentially stood by and allowed mobs to continue their destruction. Even though Serbia-Montenegro has sovereignty over Kosovo, for now, the UN will not allow them to exercise any political authority, but the UN provides little of its own. It's a landscape of (mostly) quiet anarchy.
When people demand UN command over places like Iraq,
Kosovo provides the ready-made rebuttal. The UN continues
to display its arrogant incompetence while Kosovars of all
ethnicities pay the price for its aimlessness and lack of
urgency. The US should demand an end to the Kosovo
occupation and a final determination of its status, or
pull out of the Balkans altogether and put the entire mess
back into the hands of the EU. Since France wants to let
the Afghans hang fire rather than send security forces to
support their attempt at democracy, they should have
plenty of assets to use in resolving this centuries-old
civil war on Europe's back porch. |
