Alvaro Vargas Llosa: Kosovo's independence could be a very positive development--so long as its leaders remember the perils of nationalism
[Alvaro Vargas Llosa, author of Liberty for Latin America, is the director of the Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent Institute. ]
... The Serbs set foot in Kosovo in the 11th century in the midst of their struggle against the Byzantine Empire. That was long before Albanian nationalism emerged in the province at the end the 19th century. As the Serbs keep reminding us, Kosovo was the scene of a seminal event in the history of their nation: the battle that bears the province's name against the Ottoman Turks. Finally, there were times when Kosovo's Albanians sided with imperialist powers--the Turks, the Bulgarians--bent on oppressing the Serbs and took part in ethnic cleansing, especially in the latter part of the 19th century. That is partly how the Albanians became a majority in the province.
None of this excuses Serbian nationalism--an oppressive factor in the Balkans since Medieval times. It simply goes to say that conflicts between two forms of nationalism often conceal genocides, atrocities and conquests perpetrated by both sides, even if the magnitude and the frequency are greater on one side.
There is no easy solution to Kosovo. But if one delves into historical precedent, one can find certain periods in which the ethnic and tribal instincts among the Yugoslavs, or Slavs of the south, were attenuated by an environment in which people were able to go about their business without too much political intrusion. One such period was during the Austro-Hungarian empire, which was based to a large extent on free trade and decentralization--at least until the peace was shattered after a Serbian nationalist sparked off World War I by assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.
The people who govern Kosovo today, starting with Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, are the same ones who in the second half of the 1990s formed the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), replacing the peaceful methods of leaders such as Ibrahim Rugova with killings and terrorist acts. The fact that the Kosovo war was initiated by Serbian murderers and that 1 million Albanians had to flee Kosovo in the second half of the 1990s should not make us forget the crimes of the KLA.
Since Rugova's death, the Albanian moderates have been overshadowed by the radicals. Those radicals have been contained by the presence of NATO and the United Nations. But, having achieved their cherished ideal, are those politicians going to heed the lessons of history and establish a republic based on tolerance, pluralism and free trade to the detriment of their own nationalist penchant? Or are they going to continue the endless cycle of authoritarianism that is Kosovo's history?
If the Kosovars end up replacing one form of nationalism with another, the recent declaration of independence will prove to be a betrayal of the wishes of ordinary Kosovars who aspire to be free and live in peace with themselves and the rest of Europe.
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... The Serbs set foot in Kosovo in the 11th century in the midst of their struggle against the Byzantine Empire. That was long before Albanian nationalism emerged in the province at the end the 19th century. As the Serbs keep reminding us, Kosovo was the scene of a seminal event in the history of their nation: the battle that bears the province's name against the Ottoman Turks. Finally, there were times when Kosovo's Albanians sided with imperialist powers--the Turks, the Bulgarians--bent on oppressing the Serbs and took part in ethnic cleansing, especially in the latter part of the 19th century. That is partly how the Albanians became a majority in the province.
None of this excuses Serbian nationalism--an oppressive factor in the Balkans since Medieval times. It simply goes to say that conflicts between two forms of nationalism often conceal genocides, atrocities and conquests perpetrated by both sides, even if the magnitude and the frequency are greater on one side.
There is no easy solution to Kosovo. But if one delves into historical precedent, one can find certain periods in which the ethnic and tribal instincts among the Yugoslavs, or Slavs of the south, were attenuated by an environment in which people were able to go about their business without too much political intrusion. One such period was during the Austro-Hungarian empire, which was based to a large extent on free trade and decentralization--at least until the peace was shattered after a Serbian nationalist sparked off World War I by assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.
The people who govern Kosovo today, starting with Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, are the same ones who in the second half of the 1990s formed the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), replacing the peaceful methods of leaders such as Ibrahim Rugova with killings and terrorist acts. The fact that the Kosovo war was initiated by Serbian murderers and that 1 million Albanians had to flee Kosovo in the second half of the 1990s should not make us forget the crimes of the KLA.
Since Rugova's death, the Albanian moderates have been overshadowed by the radicals. Those radicals have been contained by the presence of NATO and the United Nations. But, having achieved their cherished ideal, are those politicians going to heed the lessons of history and establish a republic based on tolerance, pluralism and free trade to the detriment of their own nationalist penchant? Or are they going to continue the endless cycle of authoritarianism that is Kosovo's history?
If the Kosovars end up replacing one form of nationalism with another, the recent declaration of independence will prove to be a betrayal of the wishes of ordinary Kosovars who aspire to be free and live in peace with themselves and the rest of Europe.