Apparently, the Canadian government has been having trouble formulating an official position besides silence on Kosovo independence. So I thought I would give Stephen Harper and the Conservatives a hand.
Kosovo has been operating as a defacto independent entity since the NATO intervention – in other words, the horse is out of the barn and sensible people realize it is too late to shut the door now.
We should be asking ourselves why being an ethnic minority under Serbia control is a condition which very diverse ethnicities often choose willingly to fight to death rather than to submit and live. There very well may be valid reasons why all other ethnicities such as Slovenians, Croatians, Bosnians, found rule under the Serbian thumb less palatable. We should be asking ourselves why it is acceptable for Slovenians, Croatians, and Bosnians to leave the Serbian yoke and establish independent states but Kosovo must be forced to submit.
Apparently, Kosovo is the cradle for Serbian culture but we should be asking ourselves if that is so; why do so few Serbs live there (less than 200,000 out of a total population of 2 million)?
I am told Canada’s support of Kosovo independence is problematic owing to the alleged parallels with the separatist movement in Quebec. What we should be asking ourselves is this; if the overwhelming majority of Quebecers voted to leave the union of Canada why the rest of Canada should want to hold a hostile population hostage? And how far, and to what lengths are we willing to go for to keep Quebec in the union? I am certainly not willing to sacrifice my son’s life in the cause of forcing Quebecers to accept rule by Ottawa. Hell, most days I don’t want to accept rule by Ottawa either.
While it is true that the overwhelmingly majority of Kosovars are ethnic Albanians and “Muslims” I fail to understand why this should act as sufficient cause to surpress their aspirations as a people to the right of self-determination. Muslims deserve to live in freedom too. Yes, there were ties to Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda was one of the first forces to offer support in the struggle of independence from Serbia. The drug trade has often been used by national independence movements to finance their acquisition of arms and weapons. Think Iran-Contra and who that worked for and why.
If anything, the intervention of NATO was directly responsible for Al Qaeda not getting a foothold in Kosovar so there was very little opportunity to spread wahhabism among Muslim Kosovars, but by all means, don’t stand on the side of freedom and watch how popular Al Qaeda grows in places like Kosovo. But mostly, when did it become so wrong to stand on the side of freedom?
1 comment:
Oh please...spare me this nonsense. Serbs have been in the minority in Kosovo since long before I was born though Serbs have disportionately held power regardless. The oldest census I have read of (1921) showed clearly the Serb population in a minority position in Kosovo.
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