Kosovo is still a mess

Excellent piece from The American Spectator:

The fact that Kosovo remains an issue demonstrates the Clinton administration's hubris and surreal view of the Balkan combatants in 1999. The belief that it could impose a mutually acceptable arrangement, one that enshrined minority rights within a multi-ethnic framework, always was a fantasy.

The hatreds on the ground were too strong. America's intervention -- taking the world's greatest military alliance into war against a destitute state suffering through a series of civil wars -- irrevocably changed the geopolitical environment.

Stopping the bitter guerrilla conflict was an obvious benefit, but little good has occurred since the bloodletting ended. America's allies, the Albanian majority, conducted ethnic cleansing on a grand scale, kicking out most Serbs, Jews, Roma, and non-Albanian Muslims.

U.N. rule has done little to prevent endemic violence, crime, and instability, including brutal anti-Serb riots last year. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) says simply: "the human rights situation in Kosovo is still not a good one, particularly for minority communities who live in enclaves and for the displaced."

Oh, and by the way there is no economy except for the money poured in by "aid" organizations.

Update: More here

At the forefront of this push to resolve Kosovo’s status are representatives of two U.S. presidential administrations.

During a July trip to Kosovo as the head of the Washington D.C.-based (and CIA funded) National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright commented, “I know Kosovans have a dream and people are entitled to have their dreams fulfilled.”

This sentiment is backed by Venhar Nushi, a spokesperson for the Pristina-based political think-tank, Kosovo Action for Civic Initiatives, KACI, who said, “We all know what the United States actually did for Kosovo. From my point of view, I think the U.S. came here for a task, and that’s to make Kosovo independent. Definitely.”

And

Few ethnic Albanians question the presence of the U.S. military. The U.S. support of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the same group branded by the U.S. State Department in 1998 as a "terrorist organization," showed clearly to all ethnic groups in the disputed region that the U.S. favors the Albanians.

Political commentator, Dukagjin Gorani, Senior Editor of the Kosovo daily paper, the Express, admits, “Kosovars are not very prompt to understand the geopolitics of conspiracies. To Kosovars the existence of Bondsteel, which is now the biggest U.S. military base in Europe, is and will probably remain a sign of political stability for Albanians. In fact to most of us it is a sign that Kosovo will never again go back under the umbrella of Serbia and Montenegro.”

Gorani also suggests that the average Kosovo Albanian sees "allowing" the U.S. military presence on Kosovo soil as their contribution to the U.S. “war on terror.’

But ordinary Kosovo Serbs see the United States and the international community suggesting the province move towards independence, as stealing, by military force, the cradle of Serbian civilization.