Last week, nearly ten years after NATO put a stop to Serbia's ethnic cleansing of the majority Albanian Muslim population of Kosovo and ended the de facto control of Kosovo by the government of Yugoslavia, Kosovo declared its formal independence. So far, seventeen other nations, including the strategic heavyweights like the US, the UK, Germany, and France have recognized Kosovo as an independent state. Jewcy hereby adds its imprimatur to that list.

Not counting Serbia or Russia, whose motives are fairly transparent, most other countries have demurred on recognition of Kosovo. Israel, for example, objects to Kosovo independence "in principle," most likely out of fear that ratifying such a process could eventually lead to a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence.

Therein lies the catch for the rest of the world as well. Regional and ethnic secessionist movements trade on a wide variety of agendas, some benign, someFreedom on the march: Kosovo declares independence decidedly malign. Thus the United States, Kosovo's most prominent backer, takes the official line that Kosovo independence owes its legitimacy to the unique circumstances of the Milosevic campaign of mass-murder and deportation, and does not establish a precedent in international law. Why? In the immediate-term, Russia is already beginning to step up its backing of pro-Putin separatist causes in Georgia, and perhaps in Transnistria too. (The latter is a de facto autonomous region of eastern Moldova, itself originally a chunk of Bessarabia carved out of Romania in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and permanently separated from Romania, along with more territory, after the Second World War.)

These difficulties notwithstanding (and others, like the burning of the US embassy in Belgrade), Jewcy welcomes Kosovo to the community of free and independent nations. In that spirit, we present Stephen Schwartz on the Serbian lies regarding Kosovo, Adam LeBor on the strategic opportunity Kosovo independence offers to Israel, and Steven Rybicki on the strategic challenges of Kosovo's independence.

[Editor's note: Earlier today, a mass anti-American and anti-Kosovar protest broke out in Belgrade. Protesters set fire to the US embassy.]

Remember when Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol (there they are again) condemned the majority party in Congress for not supporting the President’s war? Remember when Zbigniew Brzezinski and John McCain both agreed about the utility and necessity of American military intervention on behalf of a Muslim population to protect (and, yes, liberate) them from a murderous tyrant? Yes, who could forget those halcyon days: the Clinton administration’s adventure in the Balkans. You forgot? Well, here’s Richard Holbrooke (more on him later) to refresh your memory about what’s been going on since the United States’ last military “Victory.”

Kosovars march for independence Now recall a few weeks ago when President Bush described the current state of the union. During the “foreign policy” segment he warned how, given our extensive involvement in Iraq, the United States is in an awkward and painful position regarding the status of certain ethnic groups and their right to create their own nation-states. For instance, he talked about the irony of the US helping Turkey attack the Kurds (our allies in Iraq). And he also mentioned the fact that Russia’s attempt to reassert itself as a great power presents a troublesome predicament for the current (and next) administration.

Oh, wait. He didn’t talk about any of that.

Nonetheless, reality still refuses to bend to the president's will. This week, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. Thousands of Albanians celebrated in Pristina.

Is this an opportunity to breathe a sigh of relief, applaud the birth of a nation-state, and watch an oppressed minority manifest its right to self-determination? Is it okay to be a neoliberal (or, for that matter, neoconservative) again? No.

While these developments seem nice and The Economist plays it cute with a graph that shows the national football team rankings for small, budding countries, this is the Balkans.

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[Editor's note: Earlier today, a mass anti-American and anti-Kosovar protest broke out in Belgrade. Protesters set fire to the US embassy.]

Now that Kosovo has declared independence and returned to the center of world news, it is instructive, if also astonishing, to see how the lies propagated by theUS embassy torched: Serbians protest Kosovo independence fascist Milosevic regime and its Serbian imperialist predecessors have been recycled and have even become widely accepted, anew, by global media. Serbs have yet again manifested their uncanny capacity to reinvent themselves as victims where they have acted as murderous criminals.

Let us examine the 10 most commonly-heard Serbian lies about Kosovo. The truth about each of these spurious claims can be easily confirmed.

1. Lie: “Kosovar Albanians are all Muslims.” Truth: Kosovar Albanians, like Albanians in general, include a significant Catholic community. There are Catholic churches in almost every major Kosovo town. Historically, Catholics were in the forefront of Albanian resistance to Serbian aggression. Catholics were therefore among the most significant victims of Serbian terrorism in 1998-99. The single worst Serbian atrocity against Kosovar Albanians mainly took the lives of Catholics: this was the massacre at Korenica on April 27, 1999, in which 377 people were killed, including infants.
2. Lie: “Kosovar Muslims are Islamists.” Truth: Kosovar Muslims despise radical Islam. Although Saudi Arabia maintains a relief office in Prishtina, and built a small number of mosques in Kosovo, their presence is resented. Kosovars disliked the Saudi Wahhabis, who defaced cemeteries on the argument that grave markers are idols, and who sought to replace historic Ottoman and modern Albanian mosques, which are also built in the Ottoman style, with new, Gulf-style mosques. More than a third of the mosques in the republic were completely destroyed by the Serbs.
3. Lie: “The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was aligned with Al-Qaida.” Truth: Unlike the army of the Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina, the KLA did not permit foreign Muslims to join its ranks. The KLA was founded on a national struggle, rather than defense of a religious-based identity. The KLAScene from a Bosnian death camp included Catholic commanders and many Sufis (since, as Bernard Lewis has pointed out, Sufis are peaceful but not pacifist) as well as numerous non-religious people Also, radical Muslims outside the Albanian lands may have contributed money to the relief of Kosovo, but they played no role in the struggle of the KLA. This is one of the most bizarre Serb lies because no evidence of Arab or Islamist involvement with the KLA was sustained in mainstream media during the Kosovo intervention; the lie emerged, writ large, long after the war.
4. Lie: “Kosovar Muslims hate Orthodox Christians.” Truth: Albanians include some 20 percent believers in the Albanian Orthodox Church, which was founded as an autocephalous (religiously-autonomous) entity in the United States, against Greek Orthodox opposition. Its head was an outstanding Albanian patriot named Theofan Stilian Noli (1882-1965). Perhaps the greatest 20th century Albanian poet was Lasgush Poradeci (1899-1987), who came from an Orthodox family. Another renowned and popular poet was Millosh Gjergj Nikolla (Migjeni – 1872-1924), born of a Slav Orthodox family but author of verse in Albanian, and the first modernist writer in the language.
5. Lie: “Kosovo is the ‘Serb heartland.’ ” Truth: The Serb heartland in the Balkans was located in Raska, north of Kosovo. Serbia today speaks a variant of the South Slavic language originating in Vojvodina, which is relatively far to the north of Kosovo, and was part of Hungary until 1918.
6. Lie: “Serbs built the Orthodox monasteries in Kosovo.” Truth: The origin of most of the Orthodox monasteries remains unclear; they may have been established by Albanian, Byzantine, Romanian (Vlach), Macedonian, or Bulgarian Orthodox Christians. A wall fresco in the famous monastery at Peja in Kosovo portrays the Orthodox St. Sava in the company of Albanian believers, identifiable by their distinctive white felt hats, or plisat. The likeliest theory is that the monasteries were built by Bulgarians, who ruled Kosovo in the 9th and 10th centuries. The first council of Christian bishops from the west Balkan region of Dioclea, which was centered in today’s Montenegrin capital of Podgorica, met in 1199 in Antivari (Tivat), and was totally Albanian in composition, without Slav participation.
7. Lie: “Serbs fought the Ottoman Turks for centuries.” Truth: After the Ottoman victory at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, Turkish Sultan Bayazet I married a Serbian princess, Despina, and Serbia became a Turkish ally. Serbia did not rebel against the Ottomans until 1804.
8. Lie: “Serbs saved Jews in World War II.” Truth: Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, was officially designated “the first judenrein city in Europe” by the Serbian pro-Nazi regime of Gen. Milan Nedic. Statistics published by theUnmarked graves from the massacres in Kosovo Federation of Jewish Communities in then-Yugoslavia, in 1989, showed the highest rate of liquidation of Jews in Banat, ruled by Serb collaborationists (93 percent killed) and Serbia proper (88 percent killed). The lowest rate of genocide of Jews was in Albanian-ruled Kosovo (38 percent killed). Albania itself, which drew many Jewish refugees from Central Europe, did not turn a single Jew over to the Nazis; it was the only Axis-occupied nation to come out of the war with more Jews than lived on its soil before the conflict began. The role of Albanians as Righteous Gentiles was recently recognized by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Heroes’ and Martyrs’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. Most of the Albanians who saved Jews were Muslim. The figure for Jewish deaths in Kosovo during the Holocaust has recently been challenged. The disclosure of the original German roster of individuals deported to death camps from Kosovo, as well as other documents, preserved by Sinan Shabani, former director of the Albanian National Archives, and distributed by Claire Lavoine, a disinterested Frenchwoman of high ethics, is of exceptional importance. These sources show that no more than 40 Jews or offspring of mixed marriages were deported by the Nazis from Kosovo. That figure would render a Jewish liquidation rate of only eight percent.
9. Lie: “Albanians became a majority by immigrating to Kosovo after World War II, and now seek a union with other Albanian-speaking territories in a Greater Albania.” Truth: The first Yugoslav census, taken in 1921, showed an overwhelming Albanian majority in Kosovo, even though they were systematically undercounted. Kosovo and Albania proper have much less in common than foreigners think. Kosovars speak the northern variant of Albanian, known as Gheg. Albanians in south and central Albania speak another variant, Tosk. Although Kosovo is still poor, thanks to the obstructionist policies of the United Nations on privatization and other issues, it has a higher standard of living than Albania. Kosovo has removed the remnants of Communism from its political life, while there has yet to be a reform of the judiciary and other institutions in Albania, aside from the holding of free elections and a proliferation of mediocre, politically-corrupt newspapers. No serious political leader in either country calls for a Greater Albania.
10. Lie: “Kosovo is a center of Albanian drug-smuggling.” Truth: Kosovo is the most heavily-policed region in Europe. Serbs and their supporters who make this charge cannot cite indictments, trials, or sentences, much less any other serious data about alleged drug-dealing in Kosovo, aside from an occasional petty seizure of marijuana. The republic’s foreign supervisors have no incentive to ignore such activities, if they existed.
    

Kosovar Albanians are not stupid or crazy. They owe their freedom to U.S.-led intervention and they will not forget it. They are entrepreneurial, moral, traditional people who are anxious to take their place as a responsible European nation. The U.S. has been correct in supporting the freedom of Kosovars, who will repay American help honorably and fully.

There are no good wars, as Bart Simpson once famously advised us, with the exception of the American Revolution, World War II, and the Star Wars trilogy. If recent Western military adventures have tended to reinforce the theory, the NATO campaign to protect the people of Kosovo at the end of the last century has generally been considered another exception to Bart's rather doctrinaire rule of thumb. (I'd say the jury's still out on the first one as well.) Strict isolationists and fringe "anti-imperialists" notwithstanding, most people saw military action against Milosevic's aggressive Serbian state as a necessary evil that delivered the people of Kosovo from a potentially grim fate, despite some wobbles in the prosecution of the war itself.

The best part of a decade has gone by since then but, quietly and almost unnoticed, the situation in Kosovo is once again giving serious cause for concern. Months of negotiations have failed to find a solution to the vexed question of Kosovo's "final status": the Albanian majority, who constitute 90% of the population, are strongly in favour of independence, but this would be utterly unacceptable both to Serbia and their patrons, the Russians, who have threatened a Security Council veto.

The international community's preferred option had been what was referred to as "supervised independence"; Kosovo would in effect become a sort of EU Mandate, with guarantees for the Serb minority, including self-government. This, too, was rejected by Serbia, and may no longer be on the table. Talks have stalled and there appears little realistic chance of progress.

However, two factors have now combined to shift the situation from merely intractable to downright urgent. The first is the UN's December 10^th deadline for a resolution to the talks on Kosovo's future; the second, last Saturday's parliamentary elections in the province, which were won by the Democratic Party of Kosovo, led by a former leader of the KLA guerrillas, Hashim Thaci. Thaci's victory has been compared to the electoral success of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland; the moderates have been pushed to one side as ethnic Albanians grow tired of the protracted wrangling, and the Serb minority boycotted the polls altogether. Thaci now says that he will immediately and unilaterally declare independence if there is no agreement by December 10^th - which there ain't going to be. Western diplomats are trying to stave that off, but no-one knows if they'll succeed.

A UDI could set off a terrible chain reaction, with the prospect of a revolt by Kosovan Serbs which would surely draw support from Belgrade, possible knock-on effects in Bosnia (where the EU's peacekeeping mandate expires this week) and the 16,000 NATO troops of K-FOR sitting in the middle of the powder keg. Moreover, the crisis comes at a time when Russia shows absolutely no interest in playing nice with the West on a whole range of issues, let alone one as emotive for Slavs as this one, and the arm-flexing is not ending any time soon. The US, for its part, has said that it will recognise an independent Kosovo, but some EU members might not follow suit. The situation has all the makings - not to put too fine a point on it - of a gigantic clusterfuck.

The prospect of a fresh outbreak of violence in the middle of a harsh Balkan winter is very real, and causing a lot of sleepless nights. For the European Union, which has an almost pathological aversion to military conflict, this is shaping up as a foreign policy nightmare - memories of our utter inability to prevent bloodshed in the 1990's without American help are still very fresh.

Is it realistic to expect America to back European words with US boots on the ground? I doubt it, in an election year with a president focused on Iraq and Iran, but Bush may have no choice. It may be Pristina, not the Persian Gulf, where events force our hand - and soon.

French FM Bernard Kouchner gets a taste back of the Balkans this week as the Russians, apparently intent on reviving the Cold War, are also blocking the latest UN effort on Kosovo. But it’s in the Middle East that he finds out another Balkans, as his efforts at renewing dialogue in Lebanon “did not fail but did not yet succeed.”

Although he admits that “faced with a crisis, one has to talk to all protagonists” when asked whether France will bring Iran and Syria to the negotiating table, his pragmatism doesn’t obscure his opinions overall when he corrects his Italian counterpart by refusing the self-loathing appreciation that Hamas’s involvement with Al-Qaeda is the West’s own fault.

Gramoz Prestreshi, left, was accepted as a legal refugee in the United States, and Korab Zuka awaits an asylum hearing. Both were abused in Kosovo for being homosexual. The Washington Post reports today on persecuted gay refugees.

Despite his reliance on media coverage to advance humanitarian causes, Bernard Kouchner’s work still remains mostly unacknowledged outside of the places were it was performed. It is very difficult to find a detailed c.v. for the co-founder of Doctors Without Borders and Doctors of the World on the internet. Most people know Kouchner for stints as Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General and head of the U.N. Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, and for the famous photo of him toting a bag of rice on the beach of Mogadishu during Somalia’s 1992 famine and civil war—in other words, they know him as a caricature of the border-hopping hero to the wretched of the earth.

But how many bags of rice has Kouchner carried when the cameras weren’t around? This is a question that does not seem to preoccupy his critics, whose latest tactic is to attribute his nomination as France’s Foreign Affairs Minister to the ever-powerful Jewish lobby.

Upon his acceptance of the government job, Kouchner was immediately excluded from the Socialist Party, to which he had been loyal longer than Segolene Royal has been its favorite pin-up politician. The Socialists, despite—or perhaps because of—his popularity, have always confined him to second-rate roles. French commentators who chide Kouchner’s most “undiplomatic” attitude pay him a compliment unwittingly. Kouchner and his roving medical team managed to get themselves into Iraq multiple times to care for the Kurds while most of the world was oblivious to their extermination under Saddam Hussein. In a speech delivered a few years ago before the Carnegie Council, Kouchner defined his undiplomatic approach in the following terms: He’d first ask, "’Mr. Dictator, will you allow us to care for your patients?’ If they said ‘Yes, okay,’ we'd come. If they refused, we'd say, ‘Sorry, but we're coming anyway’—and would cross the border. It was physically difficult, and some of our people died. Others have been imprisoned for years.” These days, by Kouchner’s estimation, threatening Mr. Dictator with embargoes, travel restrictions, frozen bank assets and, yes, military force are handy concomitants to forcing him to either admit humanitarian aid workers or admit he’s up to no good.

So what will Kouchner’s presence in the government mean for France, the United States and the rest of the world?

Sarkozy is the first really media-conscious French politician, and contrary to the Socialists’ opinion that recruiting Kouchner along with other members of their party into his government was a Machiavellian power play, the truth is more likely that he was smart enough to recognize and use popularity and talent where he saw them. Kouchner was one of the few French intellectuals to outwardly and unequivocally condemn Saddam when it looked as if his regime was operating on borrowed time: Kouchner wasn’t pro-war but he was opposed to the French Security Council veto against all attempts to remove the Iraqi dictator from power. He is also predisposed to humanitarian intervention, a concept he helped elucidate and develop under the French name of droit d’ingérence. With the Bush and outgoing Blair administrations too politically enervated to interfere in other blighted areas of the globe, how can having Kouchner as an Old European spokesman for human rights be a bad thing? He is better traveled than most of his predecessors, and familiar with plenty of third world leaders, including those in Africa, where another genocide is now taking place.

So will he in fact become foreign affairs minister? Probably—if Sarkozy is serious about prioritizing human rights, and if he gets his way. France has always relied on the prestige of its “ideas” to affirm its place in the world. Usually this has meant getting its share of energy resources, be it uranium or oil, and ensuring the continuation of its tourism industry.  But it has lost quite a bit of respect and influence after a decade of Chirac’s cynical ultra-conservatism. A bold left-wing foreign minister advocating an internationally mediated solution to the crisis in Darfur, for instance, could prove an invaluable asset to the defective French P.R. machine.

In The Weekly Standard dated May 14, I published an article titled “The Balkan Front” in which I described my recent visit to Europe and discussions with Turkish, Kurdish, Albanian, and Bosnian Muslims about the resurgence of radical Islam in the eastern Mediterranean countries.

The story, its background, and its relevance became, in my view, imperative to Americans, with news of the arrest of six members of an alleged radical-Islamist conspiracy to attack U.S. service personnel at Fort Dix, New Jersey. The two ringleaders in the plot were Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, aged 22, from Jordan, and Serdar Tatar, 23, who was born in Turkey.

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