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Argument: Northern Kosovo serbs may secede from an independent Kosovo

Issue Report: Kosovo independence

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Kosovo, still officially a province of Serbia, is bitterly divided between Serbian enclaves, including a large chunk of the north, and the rest of the territory, which is overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian. Now, as the United Nations nudges Kosovo toward what it calls “final status” and Belgrade calls independence, many of northern Kosovo’s Serbs are threatening to break away.
‘Northern Kosovo will secede,’ warned Oliver Ivanovic, a moderate Serbian politician here. Mr. Ivanovic says he has been warning the United Nations, NATO, the European Union and the United States that, nearly eight years after a NATO bombing campaign drove the Serbian Army and other security forces out of Kosovo, it is still too early to settle the status of the disputed territory. ‘Kosovo’s independence will leave no space for the moderates to act.’
Secession by northern Serbs could provoke Albanian reprisals against Serbian enclaves elsewhere in Kosovo, warn Serbs and Albanians alike, and could destabilize a still fragile region full of ethnic slivers separated from their homelands.”
I would have thought by now things had calmed down, but I guess not.
Who knows? Most people hate each other, really hate each other, much more than in Bosnia. In Kosovo, there was almost no intermarriage, there are completely different languages, different cultures sitting in the same land—it’s much more like Arabs and Israelis. Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs all spoke the same language, all went to the same schools, all lived together—it wasn’t the kind of apartheid that you’ve got in Kosovo. And there’s so much history there. Even in the Middle East, you will not find people who hate each other as much as these people.”