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Resurrecting Balkan history

VIOLENCE has flared up yet again in Kosovo, the trouble-prone Balkan country. The latest clashes between ethnic Albanians settled in Kosovo and the Serbian minority have claimed more than 31 lives.

At least 16 Serb churches have been torched and over 100 houses levelled as ethnic Albanians sought to settle scores with minority Serbs who remained in the province in the aftermath of the 1998-99 Kosovo war. On the other hand, angered by ethnic clashes in Kosovo nationalists have gone on rampage in Serbia, torching mosques and threatening Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians with “slaughter and death.” Unfortunately, the violent Serb nationalism and the flow of Serbian immigration destroyed a successful multiethnic society, akin to that which once existed in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Many Albanian nationalists are out to pay back the Serbs for their past crimes. The ethnic cleansing against Muslims perpetrated by the Serbs was brought to an end by the Nato in 1999. But economic situation remained dire.

There is no functioning of administration and the authorities have not even begun to grapple with the crime wave that has engulfed the region. The reality is that five years of UN administration and Nato deployment have not really stabilised the region. The Balkan country has largely been peaceful in the last several years but apparently tension between various ethnic groups had always been there - just below the surface. A closer look at the conflict underscores the causes underlying the latest outbreak of violence. The violence has continued to rock the Balkans off-and-on because of the racial superiority complex that continues to haunt the Serbs. This complex has been at the source of all current and past conflicts in the region. It led to the horrific ethnic cleansing that witnessed the killing of thousands of Muslims at the hands of Serbian army and militias in 90s. In fact, right now their former leader Slobodan Milosovic is standing trial in the world court for those terrible war crimes against humanity. Even as Nato yesterday rushed more troops to deal with the latest upsurge in violence, Serbia has threatened to intervene in Kosovo. Apparently it has not learnt anything from its past. The mounting tension calls for greater caution and stepped up vigil on the part of international community against a renewed ethnic conflict that could fast spin out of control and resurrect the carnage and ethnic cleansing that rocked the Balkans in 90s.