I've been following Kosovo's furtive efforts to achieve independence and battles with internal ethnic division. The spectacle of NATO jets fighting a wily ethnic militias and the later struggle of international stabilization forces to pacify a country stratified along ethnic/religious lines was a harbinger of later struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the public memory, Kosovo is largely seen as a bloodless success. But the reality is far more complex. And we can learn valuable lessons from Kosovo's eventual outcome about the ultimate feasibility of nation-building. If UN and the European Union cannot reconstruct a state within the Core, we may have to rethink the feasibility of the whole enterprise.
A UN/EU protectorate, Kosovo is struggling to build administration, infrastructure, and a viable economy. Most important, the Serbian minority has never accepted the legitimacy of Kosovo's government nor does it feel comfortable as small minority within a largely Muslim ethnic Albanian society. Kosovo's Serbs see themselves as closer to Serbia's Slavic Orthodox Christians, and have resisted government authority.
Today, the AFP reports that Kosovo's Serbs have formed their own parliament. This assembly claims the right to pass laws for the "Republic of Serbia." On its face, this is not surprising--the Serbs have been constructing parallel institutions for some time. Most ominous is the refusal of Serbian policemen and other internal security personnel to take orders from the government.
Anyone who has read William S. Lind, Martin Van Creveld, or Samuel Huntingon has a good idea of where things could go from here. Thankfully, European internal security forces are deploying to the region. But the problem is rooted in the Kosovo Serbs' own primary loyalties, the Kosovar government's legitimacy problems and Serbia proper's desire to regain control of the region. It also should be noted that Russia will use this as an opportunity to roll back NATO influence. These are long-standing problems that must be addressed in order for some form of Balkan stability to emerge.
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