A Shock-Wave Over the Balkans

Nearly 100,000 Albanians live in the Presevo valley in Southern Serbia. They have always recognized a limited legitimacy at best to the Serbian State. The inhabitants of the region call it Eastern Kosovo, or Kosova e lindore. In the coming weeks that region will be kept under close surveillance by the Serb police and army. In 2001, clashes had opposed Albanian guerrilla fighters and Belgrade’s security forces. At the time the liberation army of Presevo, Medvedja, and Bujanovac (UCMP) was claiming more political and social rights for Serbia’s Albanians. As a matter of fact the aim of the Albanian nationalist strategists was really to remind western leaders that the question of Kosovo had not been solved yet and that the Presevo valley was one unknown quantity in the equation. Following the independence of Kosovo, the live embers of resentment may flare up again in a region whose strategic importance to Serbia is greater than ever, lying on the borders of Macedonia and Bulgaria.

In Skopje the Macedonian government declared long ago that it would endorse the new State - so as not to offend the sensibilities of the country’s Albanian parties, without which no coalition is possible. Indeed the 25% ethnic Albanians signed the Orhid agreement on August 13, 2001, by which they accepted to take part in Macedonia’s political institutions and public life. Administrative decentralization and institutional reforms have met part of the cultural and political demands of the ethnic Albanian minority. Ethnic Albanian parties in Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania have therefore been saying over and over again that the setting up of a “great Albania” was not on the agenda. Even if the unification of all the regions where ethnic Albanians live is not a short term prospect, the question of national unity of Albanians across existing borders is still an open question.

Bosnia-Herzegovina also finds itself in a delicate position. Being still under international administration, the country is divided in two “homogeneous ethnic entities”, Republica Srpska and the Croat-Bosnian Federation, which have been politically at odds since the Dayton accord was signed in 1995. The institutional reform of the state has ground to a halt and the unification of the two police forces, officially ratified on paper, has still not been implemented. Worse still, Republica Srpska’s Prime Minister, Milorad Dodik, has declared several times that he would hold a referendum over self-determination in case Kosovo seceded. In Banja Luka last Sunday student demonstrators appealed for the independence of the region, a claim supported by a large majority of Republica Srpska’s population. For the time being Bosnia-Herzegovina is not ready to acknowledge the independence of Kosovo, for fear of aggravating its internal tensions.