This story is actually somewhat amusing. Thaci, long a US
asset is now president of a nation created by and wholly dependent on
Washington's support. Thaci fears a fall from power because he has a lot of
enemies and potentially faces charges for the war crimes he was involved in.
The US not only knows about his crimes but supported them and
encouraged them.
The Evangelical Church in Kosovo is certainly not one of the
largest in Europe and one can't help but be a little sceptical regarding his
sudden support for the Protestant Reformation... an event which hardly touched
the Balkans, either in terms of its ideals or its sociological transformation.
It would seem that Thaci is trying to earn some good will
among the Evangelical lobby in the United States. He's looking for support and
all the more as the Balkans continue to simmer. The low-heat setting of the
past decade or so is beginning to increase and Thaci knows what most Americans
don't... that Kosovo's position is tenuous. Serbia has been brought to its
knees but this isn't the 1990s and though Americans have forgotten Kosovo, the
Serbs haven't.
The media campaign of the 1990s was pretty fierce. News
reports and a rash of books including Noel Malcolm's 'Kosovo: A Short History'
did the job on the American public... but that was almost a different era. The
support isn't there today for the Balkans or the European project as a whole.
For the Serbs, there is a great deal of bitterness and it's
not hard to imagine a Right-wing regime coming to power... one backed this time
by Moscow. Kosovo is to Serbia like Shenandoah to Virginia or the Rhineland to
Germany... its forced separation and being handed over to Albanians is a
festering wound. To draw an American parallel which doesn't even begin to
explain the history and emotion involved... imagine how Southerners would feel
if the Shenandoah Valley became part of Pennsylvania or if Texas were handed to
Mexico... although in that case there would certainly be some historical
justification!
It's hard to draw American parallels because we don't have
the deep history and culture that the people of Hungary, Armenia and other
places feel so acutely, let alone the legacy of living for hundreds of years
under occupation. Centuries may pass and yet they still feel the bitterness of
having their old lands taken away from them... often unjustly at that. To the victors
go the spoils. It's the way of the world.
But for some the wound is still quite raw... so it is with
the Serbs. Their society is divided between those who want to move on and those
who want to 'set things right' as they see it.
The Kosovar Albanian elite know this and they want to take
every step they can to ensure US support... even to the point of absurdly
wishing to celebrate the Reformation.... something few people in that part of
the world would have even been aware of prior to the 19th or 20th
century.
See also:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.