Next door, Serbian separatists in the Muslim-Croat Federation have stepped up their threats to secede from Bosnia. Macedonia, which has the misfortune of bordering Kosovo, Albania and Serbia, and has a substantial restive Albanian minority to boot, will wait for at least 15 EU countries to recognise Kosovo first. Biljana Vankovska from the Institute for Peace and Defence Studies in Skopje said, “the perspectives of the Kosovo market are a cold comfort for Macedonia’s economy.” Serbian President Boris Tadic says that Serbia will recall its ambassadors from countries that recognise an independent Kosovo, which already include the US, UK, Germany and France. Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania are not planning to recognise Kosovo any time soon. Even Poland is having doubts.
Kosovo’s independence will inevitably lead to separatist efforts by other dissatisfied territories around the world. The very day of the declaration, presidents of two Georgian breakaway provinces — Abhazia’s President Sergei Begapsh and South Ossetia’s President Eduard Kokoity — met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and received a commitment for continued support. All residents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were granted Russian citizenship after heavy-handed Georgian attempts to cow the independent-minded territories in the 1990s. “We are told all the time: Kosovo is a special case,” Putin said recently. “It is all lies. There is no special case and everybody understands it perfectly well.” After his official meeting with Lavrov, Bagapsh said, “Abkhazia will soon ask the Russian Federal Assembly and the UN Security Council to recognise its independence.”
Despite the tragedy of Chechnya, such enthusiasm to team up with Russia by Muslim border states suggests that religion is really not the issue here at all. There are also Trans-Dniester, sandwiched between Ukraine and Moldova, Nagorno-Karabakh, the breakaway Armenian district in Azerbaijan, and farther afield, Taiwan, Kurdistan, Baluchistan, the Tamil Tigers, and many, many other would-be countries and terrorist groups all of which have gained a new lease on “independence” from this latest Balkan intrigue.
Eric Walberg
For Pravda.ru
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