Ted Galen Carpenter keeps pushing his “realism” that would ethnically partition Balkan states, but, not surprisingly, few listen. His latest critique of Mrs. Merkel and ourselves compels us to do something we have long resisted—to answer the mail.
In response to Carpenter’s attack on Merkel’s Balkan policy, it is worth restating our point: Angela Merkel was informing Belgrade in a very public manner that the era of partitions has ended in the Balkans. If Serbia wants to sustain the pretence of opposing Kosovo’s independence and slicing off a piece of Kosovo territory north of the Ibar River, it can forget about approval later this year to become a candidate member for EU accession. There is nothing wrong per se with Serbia asserting its sovereign right to refuse to accept the independence of Kosovo or trying to hold on to the north. It is also perfectly proper for the German chancellor, as a leading member of the EU community and someone with a profound historical memory of the damage that territorial irredentism can inflict on Europe—and in fact did inflict on Yugoslavia during the 1940s and 1990s—to end any illusions in Belgrade that Serbia can have it both ways by conditioning Serbia’s further integration into the European community of nations on the full acceptance of a core principle of European postwar stability: the abandonment of territorial claims on neighbors. Probably almost everyone in Europe (other than Greeks and Greek Cypriots) admits that letting the Republic of Cyprus into the EU while a major division existed in Cyprus was a mistake. It was also blackmail; Greece threatened to block the acceptance of other countries then ready for admission unless Cyprus was let in.
Carpenter walks on dangerous ground when he asserts the need to preserve “the option of partition to create more cohesive and stable political entities.” That was precisely the rallying cry of Slobodan Milosevic and his supporters who ignited the Balkan violence in the early 1990s in the name of a more cohesive and stable Greater Serbia and which drove every single Yugoslav republic out of Yugoslavia as well as the autonomous republic of Kosovo.
Carpenter’s desire to leave the door open for partition of Kosovo would tempt fate, and further violence, by opening the partition door for the ethnic groups of Serbia. What happens to the Albanians in the Presevo Valley adjacent to Kosovo? We ourselves had considered such a trade for north Kosovo but ruled it out (as all Western countries have) for fear of opening a Pandora’s box. For then there are the unhappy Muslims in Sandzak, whose interest in partition would likely prove unacceptable to Belgrade. Don’t forget the quiescent Hungarians of Vojvodina—the last autonomous republic of Yugoslavia in Serbia. What happens if one day they changed course and decided to seek to join with Hungary? And by the way, the Serbian government did not ”hint” at partition of Kosovo—their current Balkan negotiator told us and numerous others their goal was partition: “Serbia could not leave Kosovo empty-handed.”
Carpenter also wants to open up Bosnia to ethnic partition. Is it reasonable to think that Bosnia’s Muslims would calmly allow the Bosnian Serbs—after creating their Republika Srpska through horrific ethnic cleansing ignored by Carpenter—to depart Bosnia without a fight? And wouldn’t the Bosnian Croats try to emulate the Bosnian Serbs and seek union with neighboring Croatia, thereby obstructing Croatia’s final sprint toward agreed EU membership in 2013? Further, would the US and the EU upend the Dayton accords? If northern Kosovo is hived off to please Belgrade, should the restive ethnic Albanians in Macedonia be compelled to remain in that country rather than unite with kinsmen in Albania and Kosovo?
These are the kinds of untidy and real-world policy implications that Carpenter does not deal with, beyond his suggestion that the Europeans should deal with any problems left by their refusal to accept partition and his insistence that the U.S. “not help bail” Europe out of its “folly” of ignoring the benefits he sees in partitionism. But the Europeans have seen all this before—quite recently in fact—and they know exactly where ethnic-based partitionism leads. This does not mean that there is not a serious problem in north Kosovo that could well produce more violence. That problem must be carefully managed and Serb interests addressed as best as possible—no easy task.
We can all take some comfort in the fact that the German chancellor has absorbed the violent lessons of recent Balkan history and is so outspokenly opposed to ethnic-based partitionism there. Her tough message to Belgrade is firmly supported by Washington, and so far Belgrade appears willing to try and live with it.
Morton Abramowitz is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation and James Hooper is a managing director of the Public International Law & Policy Group.
Comments
Generally, I find the fear of 'Pandora's Box' vastly overexagerrated. It reflects a rather stereotypical, and frankly borderline racist, view of Balkan people as some sort of half-savages who turn to violence at any opportunity. I do not mean to offend the authors, unfortunately, it was greatly due to our own actions that this has become dominant in Western policy discourse, but it is nevertheless incorrect. I am not denying that partition might cause other problems. It very well may, but, althout it may sound like a cliche, the main difference between the wars of the 90s and now is that all countries are democracies. Most people never wanted nor do they want wars. Albeit imperfect, I think, democratic politics are nevertheless far less susceptible to warmongering than in the past.It is conceivable that politicians in Belgrade might eventually accept giving up the northern Kosova (regardless of the increasingly ineffective EU pressure), but it seems far more doubtful that local Serbs will. Certainly not while people in power in Kosova are those whom they view as war criminals (Thaci etc.), or worse yet extreme Albanian nationalists (Vetevendosje!) who are likely to replace them. Under such Albanian leadership, prospects for Serb community seem quite grim.There is always something quasi-imperial in Western politicians determining which boundaries are 'final'. Why, for example, if both parties agree, should Kosovo not be allowed to join Albania? Despite her good intentions, what right has Angela Merkel to determine other nations borders? If both Kosova and Serbia agree on territorial exchange, there is no reason to fear this options.Military occupation of the north by NATO or anyone else definitely won't solve the problem. (Implicitly this article seems to favour this option.) Instead of shooting at the Serbs, and siding with 'mafia boss' Thaci who calls them 'criminals', it would be far more usefull for western diplomacy to pressure Kosova governemnt to solve their problems. Kosova Serbs have right to be angry in this case. Denying people their right to self-determination has never been a good long-term strategy. So, I wouldn't be so afraid of opening 'Pandora's Boxes'. They may not be the best solution, but given the circumstances we need to be pragmatic.
I forgot to say that I am by no means a supporter of 'ethinic-based partitionism'. I really just want us to get on with our lives here, rather than persistently trying to freeze potential conflicts, and force people to accept administration that they are violently opposed to. Belgrade is not the big bad wolf, that Kosova politicans make him out to be. Belgrade politicans have virtually no influence of the local nationalist Serbs who simply don't want to live under Albanian rule. Although I disagree with their stance, I understand their fears. Since, we know that force of arms won't 're-educate' them, it's better to let them go. Let's be realistic.
Re: Partition and a Recipe for Balkan Disaster. I am compelled to respond to Morton Abramowitz and James Hooper. In my lifetime I have been a double victim of Balkan Genocide. In 1941 in the Croatian village of Vojnic where my father was born, Croat Nazis and their Nazi priests gathered up 97 Serbs promising to convert them to Catholicism; locked them inside their church and burned it to the ground. Seventeen of those victims were my relatives. I photographed the ruins of that church in 1972. President Franjo Tudjman bulldozed those church ruins in 1995 when he also bulldozed the Jasenovac Concentration Camp and Memorial Museum where historians agree that at least 700,000 Serbs, 60,000 Jews and 70,000 Roma were liquidated. Tudjman who boasted that he was “Grateful his wife was neither a Serb nor a Jew,” bulldozed these sites to bury these ugly Holocaust crimes. Abramowitz and Hooper remained silent… During Operation Storm in August, 1995 when 230,000 Serbs were “ethnically cleansed” from Croatia, thanks to the U. S. Air Force shutting down the radar to allow Croats to violate the “No-fly Zone,” where they bombed and strafed Serbian refugees, a war crime! This master plan was aided and abetted by a dozen retired American Generals from MPRI in Virginia. During Operation Storm the last 5 relatives of my name were too old and too sick to flee. The Red Cross notified me a month later that they were found with their throats slit and the world turned and looked away as the human rights of 230,000 Serbs was violated as though they deserved it. Not since Hitler has an entire race of people been demonized with such collective guilt. Abramowitz and Hopper continue to remain silent … Abramowitz has proved over the past two decades that he is a rabid Serbophobe who over that time period has denied the Serbian people an ounce of equal rights or equal justice. Kosovo has only reinforced his ugly silence. During these dismemberment wars Serbs were denied an audience in the U.S. House and Senate, on the Foreign Relations Committee and throughout the press. The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times did not print ONE SINGLE ARTICLE in over a decade that was written by a Serbian journalist, author, scholar or political leader, but Abramowitz without a shred of Balkan scholarship got plenty of space in these newspapers. I remind Abramowitz and Hooper that at the height of the American Civil War in 1863 the loyal citizens of Virginia refused to secede from the Union and formed the state of West Virginia where I was born, yet the loyal citizens of Serbia are time and again denied this same right and are expected to stand by and watch as Muslims in former Yugoslavia dismember their nation piece by piece to form independent states? Who is Abramowitz and Hooper hoodwinking? The Albanians have already created a map that shows their territorial ambitions that include parts of northern Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. The Presevo Valley and the Sandzak is already known as part of the master Muslim plan. It is time for Abramowitz and Hooper to stop their historical charade. They want all Serbs on their knees as slaves to a renewed “Ottoman” Empire, one that Serbs suffered under for 400 years. It is time these men have the honesty and integrity to admit that they will never be happy until Serbia is enslaved by foreign powers and governed by foreign dictatorship i.e. the United State and Great Britain. As for Merkel, she is a buffoon who revealed the ugly hatred Germany has had for Serbia since WWI. Of all people and of all nations Germany should never be allowed to voice an opinion on anything Balkan since it was with German hands that we have experienced 3 wars in the Balkans in the past century and the dismemberment of Serbia. Merkel is clearly showing the world how their EU member Greece is being treated. Serbs need to wake up to this reality; the EU needs Serbia far more than Serbia needs the EU. Need I remind Abramowitz and Hooper that Serbia was internationally recognized as a nation at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 and that it was Serbia who after WWI in 1918 agreed to share her nation with her former enemies? How did that work out? Now these two “scholars” on everything Balkan expect Serbs to give up more of her territory, especially their Jerusalem of Kosovo where over the past 1,300 years the Serbs were the majority that built over 1,500 Christian Serbian Churches and Monasteries in an area the size of Rhode Island. If we are supposed to accept Muslim propaganda of their ancient past in Kosovo why are their less than 8 mosques that predate 1900? The oldest is the Ali Efendi mosque built in 1543 some 154 years after the Turkish victory at The Battle of Kosovo in 1389. When The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was formed after WWI the Albanian Muslim population of the entire KINGDOM was less than 5%, mostly in Sarajevo and Kosovo according to the documents that formed that Kingdom. Now we are being led by this media lie that “Albanian Muslims represent 90% of Kosovo” without the media ever disclosing a word that 40% or more of these Albanians are illegal aliens who have crossed the border from Albanian into Former Yugoslavia as easily as Mexicans crossing our border each night in San Diego. Abramowitz and Hooper still remain silent… If Kosovo is allowed to become the model for independence seeking people, then as a citizen of Southern California I can expect that once the Mexican population becomes the majority (about 2020) we can expect California to become an independent Mexican State that will join Mexico in the near future? La Raza an extremist group already has their flag and uniforms in place … and Abramowitz and Hooper remain silent…
After reading the article I have the perception that Morton Ambramowitz clearly has a bias against ethnic Serbians. So much so that if I were Serbian I would take him to court for using his position (albiet as lame as it is) to spread hate speech. There's a clear patten to all his writings on this subject. If partition will bring peace then let the people there decide on this. If Morton is so against this he should buy a house in Kosovo and try living in a Serbian enclave for a year to see how much he likes it.I did. Partition is the best solution to settle this.
Abramovitz and Hooper are wrong on several accounts.First of all, they seem incapable of getting even the most basic facts right. For example, Vojvodina and Kosovo were never autonomous republics but autonomous provinces. Republics in Yugoslavia had a precise meaning and Vojvodina and Kosovo, unlike Macedonia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and Monte Negro, were not one of them. Moreover, in the 1990s it was other republics and their supporters in the West that used the principle of national self-determination to justify breaking Yugoslavia up and not Milosevic. Milosevic, in his egomania, fought for preserving the old fossil of the state so he can be a weak ruler of a larger state. These both are easily verified facts, but they stand in the way of authors' biases so they are conveniently turned on their head and deliberately misrepresented in hope that a casual reader in the US will not notice just how off the mark they are. Second, and more important, authors are a part of an unprincipled and unscrupulous chorus in the West that is completely blind to any suffering by the Serbs and always loud in calls for tough policy towards the Serbs. For example, notice how authors basically rely on the threat of escalation from others should Serbs in northern Kosovo be allowed to join Serbia, to argue that Serbs should not receive the rights of self-determination. Any examination of actual Serbian claims and righteousness of their demands is completely absent from the text, and is subtly dismissed with a platitude about Milosevic's ethnic cleansing, as if others didn't do the same. There is no mention of the fact that Serbian kids in areas controlled by Albanians still have to use KFOR's armored vehicles as school buses or the fact that unpunished attacks on Serbs are a fact of life. Albanian ethnic cleansing is completely ignored. Their argument conveniently oscillates between a normative argument, whenever the Serbs use violence, and a utilitarian argument, whenever others are using violence. When Serbs use violence it is to be condemned and prevented using our tax money and military force, but when others use violence then it ought to be accepted as a fact of life; a force of nature that cannot be examined through the lens of morality, but only adjusted to by forcing the Serbs to accept it. This text is a pathetic piece of propaganda. Nothing less expected from Morton Abramovitz!
Keeping in mind that in 1974 (if I'm not offhand mistaken) a half Croat-half Slovene Communist dictator (Tito) arbitrarily gave Vojvodina and Kosovo an "autonomous" status within the Serb republic. By the late 1980s, a consensus was reached among the then Yugoslav republics that the involved autonomous statuses needed to be changed, which is what occurred. During that autonomy period, Albanian nationalist terrorism in Kosovo was evident, as many Albanians were known to have entered that territory via Albania. The aforementioned terrorism and migration issues were evident before Kosovo was arbitrarily declared an autonomous part of Serbia, as well as after that autonomy status was changed. BTW, the current Serb position on Kosovo isn't against that disputed territory having broad autonomy as a continued part of Serbia. Note that Tito never gave an autonomy status to the then Serb majority (since ethnically cleansed) Krajina region of Croatia's Communist drawn boundaries. The Hungarians in Vojvodina are less than 50% of that area's population. Likewise with the Slavic Muslim population in Sandzak. Fortunately, Vojvodina and Sanzak haven't experienced the same level of violence as Kosovo. If I'm not mistaken, the Albanians answer the partition of Kosovo proposal by bringing up Presevo going to Kosovo. In any event, it comes across as hypocritical to claim being against ethnic partition, while simultaneously supporting Kosovo's independence and denying that right to Republika Srpska.
Some additional information that will help you to understand the reality of things.expression is the literal translation of the Serbian ethnic cleansing appeared in 1860 under the penof the great Serbian writer Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic (1787-1864) in his monograph on thebasic historical "Council of the Serbian government", formed in 1805 by Djordje Petrovic said in Karadjordje Serbian uprising against the Turks. Thus he uses the word ocistiti (clean), to describe the extermination and expulsion of non-Serb populations, "After that, in 1807, the Serbshad been cleaned and Belgrade from the Turks, the Council moved from Smederevo àBelgrade"1.The same term was later adopted by severalSerbian politicians, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century: the Interior Minister of the Principality ofSerbia, Ilija Garasanin in 1844 in his "Načertanije" (Plan), which outlines its plan tocreate "Greater Serbia" thanks to forced displacement.1. Purification of the territory of the state of all elements of national minorities and anational;2. Achieve the immediate borders, shared between Serbia and Montenegro and between Serbia and Slovenia by cleansing the Muslim population of the Sandzak, Bosnia and the Muslim and Croat population.3. In the regions of national minorities and cleaned items anational, make settlement of Montenegrins (...) The use of secondments Chetniks in Montenegro, when the time comes!a. Act, with some of your strengths, from the valley of Lim towards Bijelo Polje-Sjenica with the task of cleaning the Pester and Albanian Muslim population. (...)b. Part of our forces must act in the direction of Kosovo and Metohija, for Cakor with the task of cleaning in that direction, the territory of the Albanians. There is also the term ethnic cleansing in the reports of Major General in the Serbian Pavle Djurisic Draza Mihailovic, Chief of Staff of the Chetniks. Thus he wrote in February 1943:"The action against Muslims in the districts of Pljevlja, in Cajnice and Foca is completed. The operations were carried out exactly according to orders. The attack started on time. (...) The resistance of the enemy was weak from beginning to end. (...) On the night of 7th of this month, our detachments reached the banks of the Drina, and, in general, the fighting was completed that day; Then began cleaning (...) of the liberated territory. All Muslim villages were completely burned, the point is that none of their homes remained intact. (...) During the operation, was carried to the complete annihilation of the Muslim population regardless of gender and age.Victims: our victims amounted to 22 dead, including two by accident and 32 injured. Among Muslims, about 1200 to 8000 combatants and other victims: women, old people and children. "- Very confidential Report 13 February 1943 Major Pav. P. Djurisic, Commander and Chief of Staff of the Chetnik Detachments of Lim and Sandzak, addressed to the Chief of the Supreme Command Staff, Draza Mihailovic4.The term has crossed borders in the Balkans in the 1990s during the wars of Yugoslavia. Thus, in an article entitled "The genesis of ethnic cleansing, the grim doctrine, already advocated during the Second World War, was adapted by the current president of the new Yugoslavia, Mr. Cosic," Florence Hartmann, corresponding to the World Belgrade wrote:"In fact, the Serbs, the main accused in the sentence, called" etnicko ciscenje "literally translates as" ethnic cleansing ". Avoiding advocating this idea and make an official doctrine, they use it in public to accuse the other side. "- "The genesis of" ethnic cleansing ", Florence Hartmann, Le Monde, August 30, 1992The genesis dates in question, in fact, much further in history, and has become a real ideology that has implemented both during the Second World War (during which historians have spoken of "the war in the war "to describe what was happening in the Balkans) during the last war [that?]. This is going in a different context, the party who started the war has turned the argument against aggression, which has led to much confusion and difficulty of understanding that still today, creating a real trauma for people assaulted.Why has killed your people?????1943 January 10: The commander of the unitsčetnici Lim and Sandzak, Pavle I. Djurisic, reports to Chief of Staff Draza Mihailovic,January 10, 1943, that the recent action of his men in the areas of Plevlje, Sjenica, Pec andKolašin covering 33 villages have resulted in the death of "400 Muslim fighters about "and the"1000 women and children. "All the villages in question was burned (and Dedijer Miletić, 1990:299-302 ).***February 7: In a report dated February 13, 1941and addressed to the Chief of Staff Draza Mihailovic, Pavle I. Djurisic, commander of theunits četnici Lim and Sandžak shows that "actionagainst Muslims in the districts of Plevlje, Cajniceand Foca was executed" February 7, 1941. Itstates that "the Muslim population was completely destroyed" during this operation: it mentions 1200 deaths among the Muslim fightersand "8000 victims among women, the elderly andchildren" (Dedijer and Miletić, 1990: 329 - 333).The number of victims of operations by the forces of the Yugoslav Army in the country between January and February 1943 against the Muslimsis estimated at 10,000 (Tomasevich, 1975: 258).1995 June 15, Srebrenica genocide, 10,000Muslims executedwith ethnic cleansing for centuries in Turkey todaythey are 9 million Bosnian and Albanian 8 millionor about 20% of the population in Turkey.
Nothing about the murderous actions of the Croat Ustasha, Bosnian Muslim SS Hanschar, Ottoman and post-Ottoman Turkish occupation actions, as well as Izetbegovic's 1970 Islamic Declaration (which has passages noticeably running counter to the idea of a multiethnically tolerant Bosnia), Franjo Tudjman's bigoted outbursts and Operation Storim (with the support of some Albanian nationalists, the Croat ethnic cleansing of 150,000-200,000 or so Krajina Serbs). FYI, Mihailovic was wanted by the Nazis, as his forces protected around 500 allied airmen shot down over Yugoslavia. There's also the issue of Greater Albania and the terrorist actions related to that advocacy. Put mildly: from a reasoned and fact based perspective, the claim of 7,000 or more Muslim males being rounded up and summarily executed at Srebrenica remains quite questionable. During the Bosnian Civil War of the last decade, Serbs and non-Serbs died in and around the Srebrenica area as "collateral damage", armed combatants, in addition to the war crime of summary execution - the latter which should (for accuracy and justice's sake) be reviewed and prosecuted in as detailed an objective manner as possible. Among nationalist anti-Serbs, there have been instances of trumping up casualty figures for propaganda purposes. That propaganda tactic served to encourage foreign intervention on the side that was militarily losing. Michael Averko - http://www.americanchronicle.com/authors/view/2713 - http://www.eurasiareview.com/author/michael-averko/