Link The US embassy has been evacuated.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Yeah, I watched video of the attack. 45 free minutes to go after an embassy, compliments of a lax Belgrade police force, I guess. Ah well.
Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
Not surprising -- Kosovo is a fairly significant part of Serbian national history. Until yesterday the media over here didn't seem to recognize how angry they are about this.
This can't keep up if they want to be part of the the EU.
--j_k
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Ugh, what a mess:
quote: The unrest in the north – including rumours that it will break away from Kosovo – would make the lives of the southern Kosovo Serbs more complicated.
"The real question is whether those communities can be sustained over the long term, and what the EU and the government will do to ensure their future," says Ben Ward, associate director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch.
But the threat of further division in Kosovo shows the difficulty of creating new borders.
"It's another layer of complexity," says Jan Zielonka, professor of European politics at Oxford University, and an expert on Europe's borders.
"You can't just draw a line on the ground where one jurisdiction begins or ends. Putting up walls is outdated thinking, and it doesn't work in practice."
In Bosnia, years of low-level strife followed the creation of a multi-ethnic union under UN administration. As Kosovo's seemed set to declare independence, nationalists in Bosnia's Serb-populated "entity," Republika Srpska, threatened to follow suit.
Looks like we're going even below two million people Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
If the Serbians had managed to treat their Albanian minority in a civilised fashion, back in the nineties, this would not be happening. The current events leave me profoundly unimpressed with the Serbs' ability to learn from their mistakes. They can be as pissed as they like; they haven't a leg to stand on.
Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
While the Serbs, or their past leaders, have done this to themselves with the past genocidal acts, and of course every people have the right to Independence... but I can't help but feel for the Serbians none the less.
The Battle of Kosovo is where they became Serbs, 800 years ago, where they fought back the invasion of Europe by the Arab/Turk hordes who had just destroyed Constantinople. If it wasn't for them we might very likely be speaking Arabic right now. But besides that I can usualy feel what both parties might be feeling...and no one is taking the Serbs' side (except their cousins the Russians).
But there are also larger issues here too. It comes done to numbers. The Albanians out-bred the Serbs. And now, that they have been driven to secede, they have, and can do so because they have the numbers. The same thing has happened throughout time. The key to political control is numbers.
But as KoM said if they had just treated their minorities with civility there would be no problem. And of course these very fears I'm pointing out allowed the Serb leaders to claim power by making the population fearful of the minorities in their old homeland. Opps. A few years in office and what did it get you...loosing the very territory you claimed to wanted to save.
I'm glad for the current people living there to get Independecne, but I still feel sad for the Serbs who have lost the cultural equivalent of London to the English or Paris to the French.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:where they fought back the invasion of Europe by the Arab/Turk hordes who had just destroyed Constantinople.
Well, except for the part where they lose the battle and become an Ottoman vassal state for the next 600 years. It's a lot more like the equivalent of Plassey for the Indians.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Telperion the Silver: ... If it wasn't for them we might very likely be speaking Arabic right now.
Speak for yourself Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
heheh
Posted by Reshpeckobiggle (Member # 8947) on :
I don't think it would have mattered (to the Albanians) how nicely the Serbs treated them, though it might have made a huge difference in worldwide opinion of the situation. The Albanians are Muslims, and Muslims everywhere believe that they are entitled to whatever land they occupy. It's even happening in France and England. They believe this because it is a tenet of their religion.
Hell, maybe they're right. But like Telperion said, you can't expect the Serbians to just resign themselves to this, especially when they were essentially betrayed by the UN. That'll teach them to ever trust that paragon of corruption. The whole world should take it as a lesson.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
I would be inclined to just shrug it off and not care; except that this is the part of the world where World War One started. All of Europe is interconnected, with so many potential tinderboxes of ethnic resentment, seemingly anything could set off strife that could escalate.
Posted by Speed (Member # 5162) on :
quote:Originally posted by Reshpeckobiggle: I don't think it would have mattered (to the Albanians) how nicely the Serbs treated them, though it might have made a huge difference in worldwide opinion of the situation. The Albanians are Muslims, and Muslims everywhere believe that they are entitled to whatever land they occupy.
If you'd ever met an Albanian Muslim, I don't think you'd make that statement. Albanian Muslims have as much in common with Persians and Saudi Arabians as Mexican Catholics have in common with 15th Century Spaniards.
There are sizable Albanian minorities in many countries, most of them are treated pretty poorly, and the only group even considering what you might call "entitlement to the land they occupy" is the one that had stared genocide in the face. And even now that they felt the need to take unilateral action to insure their safety and survival, they're going out of their way to treat the Serbian minority in Kosovo the way they wanted to be treated when they were a minority in Serbia.
A jihad this ain't. And if you think this has anything to do with a religious imperative, you might want to hang out with some of these people before you come to any firm conclusions.
Posted by Reshpeckobiggle (Member # 8947) on :
I'm good friends with a Serbian living in Serbia right now, and so I get different stories. I know there's two sides to every story. I'm making judgments to the best of my ability, to include knowledge of the tenets of Islam.
Posted by Speed (Member # 5162) on :
My wife of 10 years is an Albanian Muslim who moved to America when she was 19. My mother-in-law is an Albanian Muslim who has lived with us for over four years. She speaks very little English, so we speak primarily Albanian in the home.
I have been to Albania several times, and am very close with many of my wife's friends and members of her extended family. We've visited members of her family in Turkey, Greece, Germany and Italy (where there are sizable Albanian minority populations), as well as in many cities in Albania. I speak to many of them frequently on the telephone, and know them very well.
My wife and I did a lot of volunteer work with Kosovar refugees in Salt Lake, and we became very close with many of those families as well.
In all of my experience with the Albanian people and their culture, there's nothing that would make me believe that their religion had anything to do with their decision to declare independence.
I don't want to get into a big debate on the subject, as this is likely to be the sort of thing I'd take too personally. But that's my point of view, for what it's worth.
Posted by Reshpeckobiggle (Member # 8947) on :
POV respected, and worth much. I'm not being specific about Albanians, just Islam in general. The Koran and ahadith have passages that are quite specific about some of these thing. Some Muslim groups and individuals find different ways to interpret them. They're kinda like Christians in that way. Perhaps Albanian Muslims have a more flexible way of interpreting their Holy Books.
Posted by Speed (Member # 5162) on :
Fair enough. And just to be clear, I'm not saying that there isn't blame on both sides. Situations like this don't develop without centuries of mutual racist hatred as a prelude. And like most of these problems all over the world, they could essentially be solved in a couple generations if people could get along well enough to allow a reasonable amount of interracial marriage.
However, it does seem like the Kosovar government is honestly trying to break the eye-for-an-eye cycle in the way they're going about this independence, which is a good first step.
Like I alluded to before, the Albanians' religious practices (based solely upon my own experiences) remind me a lot of how Mexicans practice Catholicism. It's a significant part of their culture and their identities, but they're not overly militant in the enforcement of their beliefs. And when it comes to dealing with people that are different than they are, they're usually relatively tolerant and laid back. It's one of my favorite things about them.
Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
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