By Alessandro RAIMONDI (THE GLOBE)
Kosovo, how many of us knew about this place in the Balkans before the pulverization of Tito�s Yugoslavia? Very little, I bet. How many of us, instead, know about this war torn land nowadays that TV coverage shows it virtually every moment of the day? All of us, I presume. Question #3, for those who believe �to know� about Kosovo now: how many of us really know the history of this country so interconnected with today�s revival of violence and tragedy? N-O-B-O-D-Y, I trust.
So without a cultural background on the issue � that�s the story indeed � everyone in old Europe tends to cast judgements, to declare opinions, to cut impressions with no qualification at all. Plainly enough the only ones really entitled to speak about the problem � their problem � are the actors of the problem itself, Serbs and Kosovars. Trouble is that rather than speaking to each other, they are in� odd terms one another! They know what�s really going on between the two ethnos in their �common� country, nothing unknown in their histories, but �only� a revival of a 6-century-old dispute.
Everybody knows in Kosovo and Serbia � should I say �Yugoslavia�? � what June 28th, 1389 means, nobody else, unless he�s a scholar, does in the West. And in the rest of the world� That fatal date generated the Ottoman Empire�s domination over Serbia or, if you please, the Islamic rule over Christianity in the area. It was also the limit of Islam advancement in the West since the Serbs, even if defeated, made it very clear to the invaders that that was their destination point. 600 years ago, then, Islam introduced itself in the very core of Europe, since then the representatives of the two religions have graciously killed each other as they have pleased. Mind you, killing each other in combat was only the noblest way to get rid of an opponent, from both factions, in fact there were no rules as for eliminating, terminating, exterminating each other. Women, elders and children included, of course.
So from century to century this �mattanza� tradition has been going on up to now, with one side winning once and the other triumphing the next: a pendulum leaking blood.
The actual one, therefore, is apparently only the last page of a timeless tragedy opera. With one exception: NATO. This time one of the sides is being backed � but �helped� seems a more precise term � against the other that, at least for the time being, has got nobody on its side. Frankly speaking it�s hard to imagine someone backing somebody doing the butcher�s job that Mr. Milosevic has ordered his �soldiers� (?) to practice against the Albanian ethnos of Serbia.
Nevertheless this shameful possibility is being surrogated by the �barking� of some oriental leaders whose leadership counts very little both under a personal point of view and under a democratic representativeness standpoint. Europeans are indeed astonished by the fact that an ailing president like Boris Yeltsin with so many physical problems and so many more nationwide problems to take care of, still indulges in playing the role of a superpower leader. With zero credibility Mr. Yeltsin has lost a wonderful opportunity to keep quiet, the Cyrillic alphabet Russia shares with Serbia doesn�t seem to make enough legacy to dare express an opinion on a problem that Russia doesn�t sense a bit.
Remember Argentina just before the Falklands war? Economic crisis, unemployment, and no democracy were the conditions of the country that the �junta� was no longer able to govern, so an unnecessary war was invented to stir people�s attention from the real problems. Europeans think that in Russia�s verbal reaction there are so many analogies�
They say Russia has immediately withdrawn its ambassador from NATO. If you ask about this in Europe they will answer �So what?� The point is that nobody knows what a Russian ambassador ought to do at NATO.
But in the choir of those resenting NATO�s raids over Serbia, i.e. NATO�s support to a people being annihilated, there�s also Mr., I beg your pardon, tovarish Jiang Zemin. This champion of �finesse� recently informed his Swiss hosts of the� sudden loss of a friend. This was in response to being booed a few days ago for China�s role in Tibet. But that was not enough and the� diplomatic Chinese President has addressed the Swiss parliament by accusing it of not being able to manage its own country. Next time they let him out of China, better have him accompanied by his parents. Europeans certainly believe that the concept of democracy must be somewhat exotic to a Chinese, at least an ordinary one. But a President should know something more, especially when visiting Switzerland, perhaps the only country in the world where the institute of direct democracy is still being practised. China�s concern over Yugoslavia�s destiny is therefore seen, in Europe, as a tovarish�s preoccupation for another tovarish, surely not for the sharing of a common border problem!
Another country that has felt the urge of speaking up its mind on the Kosovo issue, that must be so... vital for its life, has been India. Europeans all remember how the Indian government felt about informing the world prior its several nuclear tests in May �98. Now, of course, NATO shouldn�t do whatever it does: that�s certainly India�s business!
I know, as do my fellow Europeans, that the critical point on NATO�s action over Serbia and Kosovo is the missing OK from the U.N.. Purists, they say, might have waited for the Security Council approval before NATO�s start of air raids. This of course, would have meant endless discussions and the possible USSR, I beg your pardon, Russian veto or one by Red China. In the meantime, Kosovo would become less and less of the Albanian Serbs and more and more cleansed to Serbs� satisfaction.
C�mon, when somebody points with a finger to the moon, it�s the moon to be watched, not the finger!
Mr. Milosevic has been given time enough to make up his mind, but Rambouillet I and II have only caused him to buy time, while today even some of the Albanian Kosovar negotiators are dead. This, perhaps, can give the extent of the tragedy which seems, to European eyes, a replica of what already seen up to 1997 in Bosnia-Herzegovina. To many in Europe, Milosevic should have already been condemned by the International Court, together with his companions Mladic and Karadzic for the atrocities committed in that sovereign state. This should be known by Eltsin, Zemin and nice company.
The Serbian problem, or rather their phobia, has, since the splitting of Tito�s creature, become a European problem. Indeed the continent has been forced to absorb hundreds of thousands of Bosnians, Macedonians, Croats, Albanians, Kosovars. Enough is enough, think the vast majority of Europeans. So when the troublemaker continues to create troubles, one needs the troubleshooter: NATO. The very same organization that would have carried out the task even with the U.N.�s consent.
The truth is that the one committing crimes surrenders his own rights, not because he was forced to, but because so he elected to. Once one has chosen that condition, claiming that NATO has no right of doing what it�s doing is no less than ridiculous!
All Over the Globe is published by IPA House.
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