Pristine Glory!

Pristine Glory!


The time has come for minnows to prove the case for whales. The case in point being the old game of “divide and rule” being taken out for a new turn in the sun. This exercise may suit the whale and the minnow but will probably jeopardise the future of many a mid-sized carp! Otherwise, the audacity of Kosovo, just 10, 887 square kilometres of land-locked territory, would not be as significant as it is. Kosovo is also dirt poor by European standards, with a population of just 2.2 million, and a sweet sounding capital called Pristina. Since 1999, Kosovo has been under UN administration and NATO protection, following on from a couple of years of alleged persecution of its Albanian Muslim populace by brutal ethnic-cleaning Serb overmasters.

But, by the time the paint dries, this unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo on February 17th 2008 may end up owing a great deal to years of self-fulfilling public relations and media overkill. Because, under the UN umbrella, when the world got a chance to sift through the evidence, no more than a couple or three thousand shallow graves came to light; not exactly genocide proportion attrition during two or more years of “civil war”.

The logic being advanced by America to justify its support, may be predictably overblown; even reminiscent of the outright falsehood of the infamous Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) argument applied to beleaguered Iraq. But even this would begin to make sense if the liberation of Kosovo from Serbia offered a strategic gain on par with control over the oil fields of Iraq.

But the gains in Kosovo seem more diffuse and political in nature. One objective on America’s part may be to poke one in the eye of erstwhile overlord Russia and put the stump of the USSR in her 21st century place. Another may be to ensure the permanence of its geographical perch in the Balkans via an invitation in perpetuity from Kosovo. Or is a free Kosovo a form of American atonement, a kind of back-handed apology to Muslims, very much the enemy elsewhere, in a tiny, laboratory experiment sized place, on the wrong side of Europe?

But what is India thinking? Because she has chosen to duck the recognition question and play for more time. With her large Muslim population, second only to Indonesia, India, may be loathe to condemn the unilateral breakaway in no uncertain terms. On the other hand, the government might be fearful of upsetting Indian Muslims by not finding for Kosovo. But the UPA government seems equally afraid of upholding the principle with an eye on restive, Muslim majority Kashmir. And one fear probably outweighs another because otherwise India would have liked to have agreed with America.

Meanwhile, independent Kosovo has been quick to declare itself moderate, eschewing jihadi violence and any truck with terrorists. This has already garnered recognition from some 21 countries for her.

But, even though Kosovo’s survival in her independence is a foregone conclusion, thanks to her powerful friends, India still needs to raise an eyebrow in its own best interests. Let us recognise America and her best friends have moved on from unilateral invasions to supporting, if not engineering, unilateral secession.

To Indian contemporary history buffs, it brings back the spectre of balkanisation in the early days after the British finally quit India, leaving us to amalgamate 565 nominally independent princely states into the Indian Union. We succeeded in this, thanks to Sardar Patel and VP Menon, but, since we know where the shoe pinches, we should have denounced secessionism in Kosovo; also since we have excellent relations with Yugoslavia/Serbia from the Nehru-Nasser-Tito days of early Non-Alignment.

Further, let us note that support for Kosovo is coming, not just from the US and the Western Alliance, pushing their own neo-colonial agenda, but also from the breakaway Tamils of Jaffna in our immediate vicinity, and the republican Chinese in Taiwan.

The question now is, who’s next on the “credible” unilateral path? Unhappily for us mid-size carp, if it is possible to secure independence with the support of powerful friends from half a world away in one instance, it will be equally possible in another.

(700 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Thursday, 28th February 2008

Also published in The Sunday Pioneer on 2nd March 2008 as "What Kosovo? It's Serbia" in the AGENDA Section DIALOGUE column www.dailypioneer.com