Kosovo Declares Independence

"Kosovo declared itself an independent nation on Sunday, sealing a historic bid for statehood in defiance of the Serbian government and Russia."

"Kosovo is "an independent, sovereign and democratic state," parliament speaker Jakup Krasniqi announced afterwards."

See the full story here: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/02/17/kosovo.html

(Last Updated: Sunday, February 17, 2008 | 10:42 AM ET
CBC News)


Well, what are people's thoughts? If anyone would like a compressed history of Kosovo from the time Slavic tribes first entered the Balkans to the recent war in Kosovo, I'd be glad to inform.

I'm very relieved that I've been researching this part of the world; otherwise I truly would have to take you up on that offer to inform. ^_^ While I'm glad that Kosovo is taking a stand and pursuing its independence, I do worry for its security. This region does not have a reputation for being particularly stable, and Serbia does not have a reputation for letting things easily go. Similarly, I worry for the Serbs living in Kosovo. To quote Crichton: 'These people just wait for the chance to settle old scores, and they have a lot of scores to settle'... For that matter, on a global scale, strife between the United States (pro-Kosovo) and Russia (pro-Serbia) would only serve to create more problems, problems that we desperately don't need at this point in time: Putin has too much support and power and Bush is too rash to effectively handle more than one international crisis at a time.

All in all, though I'm hopeful, I'm unsettled by this. While trying not to be unsettled. Though I am ethnically Slovakian/Ukrainian and have no personal connection whatever to the southern nations, I don't want to see a relapse into civil war in any part of Eastern Europe.


... so. Worry combined with tentative optimism, if that's any way to express it.

This is actually kind of weird. One of the current event seminars was on Kosovo, and then just a few days later, it isn't current anymore. But that is the world? Sadly, I didn't go to that seminar--but I did go to the one on Russia. So I can't really comment because I don't know the history behind it or anything. It's another thing I need to research, haha.

Another country, another day