Elections

As Condy Rice met with European leaders in London on Friday to discuss the deployment of a European mission to the Serb-populated areas of Kosovo, May 11th continues to creep up on us, the day where Serbia will hold parliamentary elections nationwide, including local elections in the Serb areas of Kosovo.

Defiant against the UN and the West, and backed by Moscow, the Serbs have not retreated from their decision to hold these elections in Serb Kosovo.

Great Britain will send 600 troops to bolster the roughly 16,000 NATO troops already in Kosovo to help keep the peace during and after the May 11th elections, and during the time that Kosovo’s new constitution comes into effect on June 15th.

According to recent polls, the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) holds a slim lead and is likely to be a part of a coalition government. Tomislav Nikolic, leader of the SRS, has declared he will not pander to the West and has no interest in joining the European Union. He claims he is no Slobodan Milosevic, but states that Slobo’s biggest mistake was not finishing what he started. Not long ago, Europe would not allow this man to be a prominent figure in Serbian politics, and now there may be no way for Europe to deny his influence in Serbian politics.

As tensions between East and West rise once again over a Balkan issue, Nikolic has ruled out any form of war regarding Kosovo. Physical war, he means, but the war of words is rising. A ‘Cold’ War of words.

According to Nikolic, his country is being prodded towards Russia, China and India; Towards the East.

The Serb nationalists continue to attempt to make waves in Beograd, recently claiming via posters that pro-Western politicians are ‘Enemies of the State’.

It’s safe to say the Kosovo incident has raised some simmering Serb nationalism, but It’s also safe to assume that the nationalism that ravaged the Balkans in the 1990s will not repeat itself.

On the other hand, the results of the upcoming elections could push Serbia back towards the East, where it’s fiercest ally, Russia, waits with open arms. And Russia will unwaveringly back it’s fellow Slavic state.

Just as the Ottoman Turks and Austro-Hungarian Empire drew their lines in Bosnia not-so-many-years-ago, The Balkans looks again to be the line between East and West. Russia and China are two countries looking to become World Powers that confront the influence of the United States, and where better to confront the West but in the Balkans, where that line has been drawn before.

For the Serbs in Kosovo, is it so wrong for them to want to be a part of Serbia?

Didn’t foreign powers just dictate that their historic homeland become an independent country in favor of another ethnicity? And aren’t those same foreign powers now dictating that the Serbs cannot independently decide they want their independent allegiance to fall with their ethnic brothers in Serbia, not under the powers of the newfound state? Isn’t that what the Albanian argument was when Kosovo was under Serbian rule?

The issues are deep, divided and tough.

The United Nations should not be in the business of dividing lands, but at the same time, weren’t they dividing lands when they created safe havens (that weren’t so safe) during the Bosnian War?

They chose that route because they refused to take a stance. Now the Western Powers are taking a stance, but it’s fairly easy to find contradiction in that stance. Granting Kosovo it’s independence seems a fair act after the devastation that the Serbs put on that place in the late 1990s, but now we’re in the post-war era.

What is the argument for not backing the Kurds or the Basques or the Chechnyans when they ask for independence? Will the West not support them also?

It’s no wonder Spain is hesitant to recognize Kosovar independence.

And where will the West stand when the Serbs in the Republika Srpska portion of Bosnia want their independence? Is it fair to deny them after just allowing Kosovar Independence?

Granted, the situations are somewhat different, Kosovo was, for the most part, an autonomous region under Serbia and Yugoslavia before Slobodan Milosevic stripped them of that autonomy, but it’s safe to say that the Bosnian Serbs run themselves in a pretty autonomous manner.

In a world that is becoming more divided every day between East and West over the War in Iraq, little (but potentially large) standoffs like the one in Kosovo can go almost completely unnoticed by the media.

Russia has already defied the West by bringing shipments of aid to the Kosovar Serbs by way of Beograd, and will almost undoubtedly continue to do so in defiance of Western Powers. This at a time when the United States is beginning arms shipments to Kosovo, to arm many of the same force that made up the bulk of the Kosovo Liberation Army in the late 1990s.

As the May 11th date approaches, and the rest of the World concentrates on Iraq, these eyes, VFC’s eyes, will be watching the proceedings in Serbia….and in Kosovo.

Hard questions will be answered that day….and many more will be asked.

But who will be there to answer?