Kosovo

Kosovo is a small landlocked country in the Balkans. Yes, it’s a country. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on February 17 2008, and was immediately recognized by a number of countries who had not had to deal with serious separatist movements in many years.

Kosovo was part of the Roman empire, later overtaken by the Byzantine empire, lost, and retaken again. It was then conquered by the Serbian Empire, and finally by the Ottoman Empire.

This is where our modern drama really begins, way back in the 15th century. We take an ethnic group that, after all that conquering, has developed a pretty cohesive racial identity, and proceed to force them to convert to a new religion through political sanctions against the Orthodox Christian faith. The stage is set for a long and troubling tragedy, and it will be played out.

Pockets of Christianity survived throughout this time, mostly those willing to pay the extortionately high taxes on Christian organizations, and the restricted rights of Christians. When the Turkish Empire effectively fell, losing ground on all fronts, things in Balkans just got out of hand. Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria rushed in to fill the power vacuum, and Kosovo ultimately ended up under the control of Serbia once again

In the early 20th century hell broke loose. Bulgaria secured independence, Kosovar Albanians began their revolutionary trend, and Montenegro obtained its own independence. Serbia just happened to be the top dog in the region before this all went down, and so instead of being yet another revolutionary power, it was the standing government that was broken away from.

During and after World War I Kosovo was freed from Serbia and brought into the yoke of Bulgaria and Austria, only to be lost again with World War II. As a part of Yugoslavia Kosovo became a political province and gained some small degree of self-determination.

What seems like a happy ending was broken up by race and religion. Interference from Islamic religious interests and Armenian racial interests sparked the Kosovo war. Ceasefires didn’t hold, and the process continues today as a region of religious and cultural diversity splits itself apart at the seams, seeking some stable sate of cultural or racial hegemony.

UN intervention turned what might have been just one more episode in the sordid history of the Balkans into a full-blown political crisis, and demonstrates the Western world’s willingness to interfere in political conflicts not directly affecting them.

The world has to decide who does and does not deserve sovereignty before situations like this can be viewed in anything even remotely resembling perspective. The world is split between support for ethnic identity as a source of sovereignty (ironically backed primarily by countries not fighting their own separatist movements), and between the authority of existing governments to retain their territory (coincidentally supported by a number of nations with long histories of internal conflict).

Where are things going in Kosovo? Exactly where they have been going since the beginning.

Photo by ianturton