In 1999, Napster was launched, Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan played their final games, some guy named George W. Bush decided to run for president, and 10,000 Kosovars were massacred in what George Robertson, then the UK’s defence secretary, called genocide. Three thousand more were declared missing and never found, and nearly half of Kosovo’s two million people were forced from their homes. Nine years later, Kosovo has declared its independence, and hundreds of thousands of Serbs have taken to the streets in violent protest.
Says the CBC:
“the protesters attacked police with stones, glass bottles and firecrackers as they tried to keep the demonstrators — protesting Kosovo’s declaration of independence — off the bridge that separates the Serb and ethnic Albanian sides of the city […]”
Protesters then turned on NATO and UN troops, attacking them with rocks and whatever else they could find. According to the New York Times, “one person died and more than 150 people were injured in the unrest, in which opponents of Kosovo’s independence set fire to the United States Embassy and attacked those belonging to Britain, Germany, Croatia, Belgium and Turkey. Several hundred protesters stormed the American Embassy. On Friday afternoon, it remained barricaded.”
None of this is helping Serbia make the case that it’s fit to govern Kosovo, and with “hundreds of thousands” of Belgrade’s 1.6 million residents taking part in the chaos, the world is wondering if the rioters have the government’s tacit - or not-so-tacit - approval. At the very least, there are some serious questions about how an angry mob was allowed to loot and torch the U.S. embassy while “police officers stood by.”
Of course, the rioting has no real bearing on Serbia’s right to govern - except as a violent reminder that ethnic tensions run deep here and are unlikely to disappear soon. With that in mind - and given a recent history of concerted mass murder against Kosovars - most of the world seems to have agreed that Belgrade has lost its right to Kosovo.
That opinion is not universally held though, and the dissenting nations all have something in common: separatist movements within their borders. Russia, China and Spain are condemning Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence, fearing a precedent that could inspire their own Chechen, Tibetan and Basque nationalists. And Canada, disappointingly, is so far withholding judgment, mindful of Quebec’s secessionist leanings. Ottawa should move quickly to recognize Kosovars’ right to secede from the government that tried to wipe them off the map.
Even as looters and arsonists run amok in his capital, Serbian president Boris Tadic says the violence must “never happen again,” while government officials are insisting that “Kosovo is Serbia and we will never surrender, despite blackmail by the European Union.” But the most poignant quote may be from Toma Rajcic, a Belgrade lawyer interviewed by the Guardian:
“It is disgusting. It is all coming back, the fighting, darkness.”
“It’s time to leave this country.”
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