Kosovo has spent the last 2 decades fighting for its own independence, but with ever-increasing obstacles standing in their way will this mountainous nation ever achieve its lifelong dream? This week we take a look into the Western Balkans, Serbia's geopolitical aspirations, as well as Moscow's re-entry into an area it once viewed as its own backyard; and what it means for the future of the Kosovan people. On this episode Marija Ristic (Balkan Insight) Bodo Weber (Democratization Policy Council) Vessela Tcherneva (European Council on Foreign Relations) More info at www.theredlinepodcast.com Follow the show on @TheRedLinePod Or Michael on @MikeHilliardAus
Showing posts with label Kosovo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kosovo. Show all posts
4 August 2020
16 May 2019
euronews: LGBT rights in Europe: Some countries 'moving backwards on equality for first time in a decade'
An example provided was in Bulgaria, where the means for trans-people to change their names or gender markers in official documents has been removed.
In Serbia and Kosovo, the governments have failed to renew action plans on gender equality, the report said.
Hungary and Turkey had also regressed, with the latter doing so since 2015, due to each governments' "failure to uphold fundamental civil and political rights". [...]
Azerbaijan ranked the worst country in Europe for LGBT equality policies and laws, with Turkey and Armenia scoring second and third last respectively.
10 January 2019
Foreign Policy: The Small War That Wasn’t
At the time, British Prime Minister Tony Blair openly described the intervention in Kosovo as “a battle between good and evil; between civilisation and barbarity; between democracy and dictatorship.” But the story was hardly so pure. The case for humanitarian intervention under international law was based on preventing more Serb atrocities, but in practice that meant supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)—a group that U.S. officials had previously described as terrorist. It was fighting for full independence rather than Washington’s more limited goal of political autonomy. U.S. officials were aware that moralistic rhetoric cloaked political risks: Intelligence agencies privately warned that the KLA was trying to provoke Serbian massacres in hopes of persuading NATO to support its bid for independence. [...]
Milosevic then seized the advantage to ramp up the ethnic cleansing of Albanians. Only when the United States, two months into the war, insisted on a change in strategy—bombing targets deep in Serbian territory—did the momentum shift. Americans also picked up an increasing share of the operational slack, not least because of the wide gap in capabilities between U.S. and other NATO air forces. By the war’s end, the United States had conducted about two-thirds of all sorties while undertaking the majority of reconnaissance, suppression of air defenses, and precision-guided strikes.[...]
Although Russia has traditionally been a Serbian ally, the Kremlin initially positioned itself as the West’s partner in finding a solution to the crisis. The bargain was both instrumental (Russia’s economic troubles made it dependent on foreign assistance) and strategic: President Boris Yeltsin believed Russia could cooperate with Western institutions in maintaining global order. Russian diplomats even communicated to their Western counterparts that, although they would veto any U.N. Security Council resolution approving a war, they had nothing against airstrikes. As Richard Holbrooke, a U.S. diplomat, once said, “For them, it was all about respect.” [...]
When President Bill Clinton and U.S. State Department officials formally apologized for the attack, Chinese state-run media did not broadcast the news for several days as demonstrations continued. It was a strategy of stoking domestic victimization that the Chinese would return to for years afterward, most notably in the 2012 territorial disputes with Japan over islands in the East China Sea.
14 August 2018
Politico: Angela Merkel: No Balkan border changes
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić last month floated the idea of partitioning Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008. The most commonly discussed scenario would involve the north of Kosovo being recognized as part of Serbia. Another often-discussed possibility is that a mainly ethnic Albanian part of southern Serbia could join Kosovo. [...]
For years, international officials have strenuously rejected further border changes in the Western Balkans, which was torn apart by war in 1990s as Yugoslavia collapsed into smaller states. Any change to Kosovo’s borders would prompt secession demands from Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Serb Republic and likely spark calls for other boundary changes in the region. [...]
The United States has so far stayed out of the renewed debate, prompting speculation that U.S. President Donald Trump could be open to brokering a partition deal.
17 June 2018
Al Jazeera: Return to Berkovo, the village where Serbs and Albanians coexist in Kosovo
When I first got to know Berkovo, in 2008, the handful of Serb families had only just returned to the village, having fled during the 1999 war when their homes were set on fire and destroyed. [...]
The result was that Berkovo was one of the very few villages in Kosovo where Serbs and Albanians were living side by side. It was a tentative experiment in ethnic co-existence, and there was no guarantee it would succeed. [...]
"We were starting again from scratch back in 2008," said Savo, "that's not easy when you're 50 years old. But life goes on, we tried, and now we can stand again on our own two feet." He looked about proudly. [...]
Lubinka told me: "I'm not a Serbian, I'm a Kosovar, this is where I was born. I lived here, I'm growing old here. If I visit Serbia for two days, I can't wait to come back here, to my home." [...]
"There's one young girl, eight or nine years old, and my son is 27, and another boy who drives a van, but the rest of us are old, 50 or 60 years or older. We will disappear because we will die, but we'll stay here as long as we're alive," said Savo.
20 May 2018
Politico: 5 takeaways from EU’s big Balkan get-together
But French President Emmanuel Macron struck a skeptical note, insisting the EU should first focus on reforming itself before embarking on any more enlargement adventures. And a boycott by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy over the presence of Kosovo, which Madrid and four other EU capitals do not recognize, was a reminder of other divisions over the region. [...]
Some leaders went further than the official text. Angela Merkel, who has emerged as a champion of the western Balkans, talked about “a clear membership perspective” and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz spoke about progress on the countries’ “path into the European Union.” But Macron preferred to talk about “anchoring” the western Balkans to Europe.[...]
Asked what she thought of the 2025 goal, Merkel was blunt. “I don’t think anything of this target date,” she told a news conference. “Membership must be based on factual progress. It’s not about a time horizon, it’s about what’s been achieved — on rule of law, on fighting corruption and other conditions such as border disputes.”
4 May 2018
The Calvert Journal: Letter from Priština: searching for identity in the capital of Europe’s newest state
When labels get attached to the capitals of former Yugoslavia, Belgrade usually becomes “exciting”, Sarajevo “charming”, and Zagreb “boring” or “relaxing” (depending on the season). Priština’s label is yet to be defined. It is, after all, the capital of the youngest country in Europe: Kosovo celebrated 10 years of independence in February 2018. [...]
No, the charm of Priština is harder to spot. And to understand this charm it helps to know some of the country’s complex history at the crossroads of different cultures. The Romans and Illyrians settled here and it was an important medieval town before becoming a busy trading centre under the Ottomans. Although some of these influences can still be found today, the city is defined by modern construction. When the capital of Kosovo moved from Prizren, in the south of the country, to Priština, in 1947, it was just a small town of 20,000 people. Much of the old centre was lost and the population doubled between 1970 and 1980 as part of transformation under the communist slogan “destroy the old to rebuild the new”. [...]
Strolling through the Kosovan capital, you can read the country’s turbulent past in its monuments and buildings. At the beginning of the main pedestrian road, Mother Teresa Boulevard, a large brown building that looks like an irregular shaped chocolate bar, used to be one of the most prestigious hotels in Yugoslavia. The Grand Hotel opened its doors in 1978, hosting Marshal Tito among other famous guests. This symbol of socialist hotel architecture, formerly a five star hotel, became a no-star hotel when the sign from its rooftop was taken down. It recently featured in a New York Times article, Not the worst hotel in the world, but the world is very big.
18 February 2018
Politico: Kosovo: A young country, being shaped by its youth
With 53 percent of its people under the age of 25, Kosovo also has the youngest population in Europe. In Pristina, the capital, the average age is 28.
Kosovo is one of the continent’s poorest countries. Unemployment is high, at almost 30 percent, with young people disproportionately affected. The young nation is also grappling with radical Islam: some 315 people, including dozens of women and children, joined the Islamic State group in recent years.
In the decade since independence, many Kosovars — young people especially — have lost confidence in the country’s institutions and grown disillusioned with widespread corruption and political cronyism. One in two Kosovars wants to emigrate to Western Europe, a 2016 study found. But some young people are choosing to stay in Kosovo and help to shape its future.
4 November 2017
The New York Review of Books: How to Solve the Catalan Crisis
The reason neither the European Union nor Spain’s neighbors are doing anything to allay the crisis is that we Europeans complacently believe that violent conflict will not return to the continent. Other European leaders do not believe the cost of annoying Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, by intervening and losing his support on EU or bilateral issues is justified since they do not believe the Catalan situation is so serious that it will turn violent or directly affect them. [...]
The conflict in Catalonia over self-determination will not end by itself, either. Although it has so far been a largely peaceful dispute, if both sides persist in escalating the dispute, they could turn it into another bloody conflict inside Europe’s borders—with consequences for all of us. In other similar disputes, it has been a short step from heads being broken in the streets in clashes between protesters and police to young, over-enthusiastic partisans responding with violence of their own. Far better to solve the conflict now, before real violence begins, than allow the blood to flow and then try to stop it. [...]
Canada found perhaps the best answer to the conundrum of self-determination after decades of separatist agitation in Quebec. The question went to the Canadian Supreme Court, which decided in a landmark judgement in 1998 that unilateral secession was not legal; the various international documents that support the existence of a people’s right to self-determination also contain parallel statements that support the conclusion that the exercise of such a right must be sufficiently restricted to prevent threats to an existing state’s territorial integrity. However, the justices ruled that if a referendum found in favor of independence, the rest of Canada “would have no basis to deny the right of the government of Quebec to pursue secession.” Negotiations would have to follow to define the terms under which Quebec would gain independence, should it maintain that goal. [...]
The Rajoy administration’s ostrich-like attitude is in many ways what created the problem in the first place. After lengthy and torturous negotiations, a previous, Socialist government had agreed a Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia that devolved further powers to the region in 2006. This statute was put to a vote in the Spanish and Catalan parliaments and endorsed in a referendum in Catalonia. At that stage, support for Catalan independence stood at just 14 percent. The conservative People’s Party (PP), then in opposition, promised to reverse the statute unilaterally and took the issue to the Constitutional Court. In 2010, the court struck down a large part of the statute. The response in Barcelona was a huge demonstration of more than a million people under the slogan “We are a nation. We decide.” The following year, Rajoy’s PP won an outright majority in the general election.
7 October 2017
Politico: Politics of prayer in Kosovo
An outsize Italianate building at the heart of Pristina’s concrete cityscape — whose consecration was attended by Kosovo’s president, Hashim Thaçi, and an Albanian representative of the Vatican — the building is not just a religious monument; it’s also rich in political symbolism.
The project was championed by the late former President Ibrahim Rugova, who led Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority in a campaign of resistance against Serbian repression in the 1990s.
For Rugova, the cathedral — towering over the corner where a street named for Bill Clinton meets one named for George W. Bush — is a way of signaling to Europe that its newest country, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008, is open and tolerant.
With one of the highest rates per capita of citizens signed up to radical Islamic groups in the Middle East, Kosovo is eager to prove to the rest of Europe that its Muslim-majority population is nothing to worry about, and that it peacefully co-exists alongside its Christian counterpart. [...]
A high school was razed to make space for it, forcing students to relocate to others on the city’s outskirts. The cathedral also received pride of place in the city center, while requests for land to build a new central mosque were initially rejected.
4 October 2017
The Conversation: As Spain represses Catalonia’s show of independence, the rest of Europe watches on nervously
In March 2017, former Catalan leader Artur Mas was banned from holding public office after being found guilty of disobeying the Constitutional Court by holding a symbolic referendum in 2014. Such aggressive responses by Spain to the idea of secession have driven increasing numbers of Catalonians toward the independence movement. [...]
The referendum’s legality is certainly contentious, notably because it did not adhere to democratic conventions like the requirement for a minimum threshold of votes. Regardless, Puigdemont is looking to make a declaration of independence in the coming days. [...]
The UN has criticised Madrid for its disproportionate and violent response to a peaceful attempt at self-determination. Human Rights Watch has condemned the Spanish government for violating Catalans’ civil right to peaceful assembly and free expression.
In contrast, the European Union regards the vote as illegal but has called for unity and peaceful relations between Spain and Catalonia.
1 July 2017
Politico: Bosnia’s Serb Republic leader: No breakaway vote next year
Many politicians, diplomats and analysts believe an independence declaration by the Serb Republic would trigger a new conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina and more violence elsewhere in the Balkans as other ethnic groups attempt to redraw national borders. International officials have repeatedly warned Serb Republic leaders against secession, making clear it would be regarded as illegal and would not be recognized by Western powers. [...]
Dodik made clear, however, that he was not taking the prospect of secession off the table. “Whether some of the forthcoming years will raise that issue, we’ll see, I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m sure that we are following that path — the path to independence.” [...]
The possibility of the Serb Republic seceding is one of several challenges to stability in the Balkans, along with continued disputes between Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority and Serb leaders in Belgrade, disputes over the rights of Albanians in Macedonia, and allegations of Russian attempts to foment trouble in Montenegro. [...]
Surveys suggest that the majority of the entity’s population favors independence, which some see as a precursor to union with Serbia.
Banja Luka already has the feel of the capital city of a small country, with public institutions lining boulevards, monuments to war dead in the parks, and the Serb Republic’s flag — similar in appearance to Serbia’s — widely on display. Bosnian national flags and symbols are far less common.
28 January 2017
Al Jazeera: Roma in Kosovo: The justice that never came
Although Milosevic's army began its withdrawal on June 11, 1999, the violence continued in the months that followed. Despite the presence of NATO troops, members of the KLA and other organised groups launched a series of revenge attacks on the Roma community, who were suspected of siding with Serbia.
These attacks varied from harassment and theft to arson, rape and murder. In 2001, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that up to 1,000 Serbs and Roma were missing or unaccounted for since the end of the conflict. [...]
A 1999 report by the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) also questioned the idea of a community-wide allegiance. The Roma community was caught in the middle of a conflict that allowed no neutrality, the report suggested, as a consequece of which, the community was targeted by both sides. [...]
Last week, thousands of Kosovar Albanians took to the streets of Pristina to protest against the arrest of Ramush Haradinaj - a former KLA commander. Haradinaj, who was briefly prime minister, had been detained in France on a war crimes warrant issued by Serbia.
17 December 2016
Politico: The race for EU membership
While national governments would like to ensure political stability in the EU’s neighborhood, they have no appetite to let those countries join before 2025. For some countries, such as Turkey, there’s almost no chance of ever joining. The European Parliament and countries such as Austria are already trying to suspend membership negotiations with Turkey. [...]
Shada Islam, Europe director at Friends of Europe, is pessimistic. “I think we need to stop pretending and accept that there will be no new enlargement for many years — and that all these countries have a long way to go before they meet any of the key membership criteria,” Islam said, adding that given six to 10 years of continuous effort, the six Balkan nations may have a chance at membership. [...]
All other prospective EU members in the Western Balkans suffer fundamental complications. For Macedonia, it’s as simple as Greece refusing to even recognize its name. Allowing Montenegro and Kosovo to join without Serbia alongside them could create a security risk for both countries. Bosnia and Herzegovina is in the worst position of all and may hold these countries back if the EU insists they join in bloc formation. [...]
No country has even turned around a membership application in less than five years (Finland is the current record holder), and for former Warsaw Pact and Yugoslav states, 10-15 years is typical.
13 October 2016
Jakub Marian: Number of public holidays by country in Europe
A public holiday, also called national holiday or legal holiday, is a special holiday established by each country’s (or autonomous region’s) law. Public holidays are usually non-working but paid, which means that they serve as additional paid holidays with dates fixed by law. Alternatively, workers usually receive a higher hourly wage if they work during a public holiday.
One notable exception is the United Kingdom, where observing public holidays is not obligatory for employers, and employees are not entitled to an enhanced pay rate. This is partially compensated by the fact that British workers are entitled to 28 days of annual leave, which is more than in any other European country, and when an employer observes a public holiday, it counts towards the minimum.
The following map shows the theoretical maximum number of non-working days as defined by law. However, the real number of non-working days changes from year to year depending on the number of holidays falling on a weekend (which, however, may be compensated by an additional non-working day during the workweek in some countries). When a range of numbers is given, the actual number depends on a municipality or religious affiliation.
6 July 2016
Independent: As a Foreign Office Minister, I voted for the invasion of Iraq. I am still trying to understand my failure
The whole world agrees that Iraq, in Talleyrand’s words, was worse than a crime – it was a mistake. The oddest consequence was that, having seen the failure of Iraq, the British state went and made exactly the same blunder in Libya. Nicolas Sarkozy is not George W Bush (more a Napoleon III than the original), but twice in less than a decade a British prime minister tucked in behind a dubious ally and joined in the destruction of a Middle East state with disastrous consequences. [...]
There was no UN authorisation but the military pressure worked and Milosevic withdrew from Kosovo and the people there no longer faced the fear of a new Srebrenica. Soon after Blair’s triumphant re-election in May 2001 came 9/11 and the desire from Washington to hit out and punish someone, anyone for the biggest attack on US territory with more Americans killed than at Pearl Harbour. [...]
We all know that assessment and what followed was disastrously wrong. But all I can report from being in the heart of government at the time was that no official or adviser or “expert” challenged the right of Britain to intervene and protect Kurds and others in Iraq who faced oppression and worse from Saddam.
The fault in the end was Blair’s, as the fault to destroy Libya or send 500 British soldiers to unnecessary deaths in Afghanistan 2010-2015 is Cameron’s. Prime Ministers have the ultimate Yes or No decision and must live with the consequences.
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