Recognition Without Power

...The list of countries establishing relations with the new nation (the roster can be found at kosovothanksyou.com) grows longer almost daily...

...police even placed a Serbian fl ag on a U.N...

...When Serbia conquered Kosovo in 1912, Slav armies poured into the territory through Llap, and thousands of Albanians were slaughtered, their villages burned and possessions looted...

...But many Kosovars also understand that their country stands between two fires—revived Slavic imperialism and the threat of Islamist aggression...

...To my surprise, little was said in Dumnica about Serbia...

...Physical clashes between Wahhabi agitators and indigenous Muslims have become a common feature of life everywhere except in Kosovo...

...In the south Serbian town of Tutin, for instance, the beginning of March saw fi ghting between the moderate, traditional Muslims led by local mufti Muamer Zukorlic, and a Wahhabi group calling itself “the Islamic Community of Serbia” and run by an unknown named Adem Zilkic, openly aligned with Kostunica’s Serb nationalists...

...Villagers there are hard workers, good savers, and boast such amenities as camera cellphones and portable computers...

...Austria is only now talking about donations to upgrade Kosovo’s schools...

...The other separates the old world of massacres, totalitarianism, Russian imperialism, and what Secretary Rice has criticized as the Serbian fi xation with the past, from the new world of security, investment, democracy, and friendship with America...

...a Ukrainian member of the U.N...

...Finally, thanks to the ubiquity of cellphones, we were taken to a large house where the elders of the village were crowded into the special room reserved for guests...

...It is a concept the country folk in Dumnica would understand...

...But Serb soldiers and irregulars continuously poke and prod at Kosovo’s northern frontiers...

...One divides Serbia from Kosovo...

...Whether Belgrade will actually throw itself into a full-scale provocation against Kosovo statehood is debatable...

...Kosovo has been granted a status best described as “recognition without sovereignty...

...There, the regime has given free rein to Arab governments and foundations to build new mosques that spread jihadist doctrines...

...Kosovars themselves are rarely demonstrative about their Muslim faith—I saw only six young women in head coverings during a week in the country (though the hijab is more common among rural grandmothers), and Islamic literature is diffi cult to fi nd...

...What unfolded was a scene of traditional village democracy...

...and EU have not permitted the establishment of secure local economic institutions, the growth of an uncontrolled economy was inevitable...

...U.N...

...Kosovar Albanians are more concerned that the European Union will simply divide the country and hand the north over to Serbia...

...And the news then on the front pages prompted this further refl ection: Even as Kurti was speaking, on the other side of the world China— Russia’s partner in U.N...

...During a riot on March 7, an Albanian supporter of the moderates, Enver Shkreli, was shot in both legs, apparently by Serbian police supporting the radicals...

...The Kosovar Albanian political leadership is widely seen as corrupt, and the existence of an underground economy in Kosovo is undeniable, although it has little or nothing to do with lurid tales about drug dealing put forward by Serbian advocates...

...Serbian army reservists threatened to cross the frontier to tear down the marker, but were prevented from doing so by Serbian authorities, who appeared suddenly cautious after the worldwide public relations disaster represented by the mob attacks on the American and other foreign embassies in Belgrade late in February...

...At the level of daily life, recognition without sovereignty could also be called recognition without power—a pun of sorts, since after eight years of foreign administration Kosovo still sees its electrical system crash into darkness on a nightly and often daily basis...

...But notwithstanding wild claims by Serbia and its supporters that Kosovo would become an Islamic republic, the Arab states and Iran are notably absent from the inventory...

...Kosovo and Tibet, on the front lines between liberty and tyranny, make the case for a new international League of Democracies, from which Russia and China would perforce be excluded...

...So what have the internationals accomplished since 1999, aside from accumulating exorbitant salaries, taking over the best neighborhoods, denying the Kosovars economic and political reform, and expressing a general contempt for the local inhabitants...

...On March 14, having already seized control of railroad and customs facilities north of Mitrovica, a mob of Serbs occupied the U.N...

...Now the Wahhabis, mobilizing what appear to be street vagabonds recruited and paid to fi ll up the Harabatis’ spacious Ottoman complex, have taken over most of it...

...vehicle, for which the offi cer was suspended...

...court there, tearing down the blue banner of the international organization and replacing it with an extremist banner...

...Put simply, the Tadic faction wants to continue to press for Serbia’s entry into the European Union, even if it means giving up its historic claim to Kosovo...

...Kurti had come to Dumnica to explain his criticism of the Kosovo political class and its acceptance of paper independence...

...On the night of March 12, I traveled with Albin Kurti, the popular leader of Kosovo’s Self-Determination movement, and a group of his colleagues to Dumnica, a tiny village on the northeastern frontier with Serbia...

...One of the most moderate speakers was an imam who had come to the meeting from Kacanik, at the other end of Kosovo...

...Its benevolent policy toward Wahhabism parallels a similar one in south Serbia...

...Nevertheless, even on the Serbian border, the Kosovars betray no fear...

...He was answered, always respectfully but nonetheless critically, by some who said that at least Kosovo now has its own standing in the world, and that the Albanians must be patient in waiting for complete freedom...

...The area that includes Merdare and Dumnica is called Llap and has long been a center of Albanian patriotism...

...Marines are among the contingents from the Kosovo Force (KFOR) that have Stephen Schwartz writes frequently about the Balkans...

...Over the weekend of March 16 and in the week that followed, Lhasa and other places would still be defying Chinese “order,” and stone-throwing Tibetans would repeatedly be answered with rifl e fi re...

...But there is a greater corruption in the rise of politicians and functionaries who owe their prosperity to their accommodation to and employment by the internationals...

...The village is not shown on maps, and with the border unmarked, we joked about what might happen if we drove too far up the road and found ourselves in Serbian hands...

...Kosovars have yet to be issued passports, and the post offices have no stamps representing the new state—travel documents and the mail are still under the authority of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK...

...The U.N...

...police withdrew and were replaced by KFOR troops...

...The meltdown, or something close to it, has come instead in Serbia proper, where on March 13 President Boris Tadic dissolved parliament and called for new elections on May 11...

...Informed opinion in Arab circles holds that recognizing Kosovo would be viewed by Islamists as support for American policies rather than solidarity with a Muslim-majority country...

...Dumnica is close to Merdare, where a Kosovo Republic border sign was installed early in March...

...Strikingly, Kosovars have a clearsighted view of global politics: Vladimir Putin’s Russia is the big threat, and Serbia is a pawn in Russia’s bid to turn back the expansion of NATO and assert Russian infl uence over the whole of Europe...

...The stars were brilliant in the deep, rural night...

...Patriotic verses were recited and the names of past heroes invoked...

...Back in Kosovo, a trip around the republic discloses further evidence that recognition does not mean sovereignty...

...But the Tibetans in Lhasa, led by Buddhist monks even tougher than the martyrs of freedom in Burma not long ago, would come back to defy Communist bullets and tear gas...

...Kurti presented his case for full independence, a real ministry of defense and an army and police, fi rm borders, a new constitution written by the Kosovars themselves rather than by foreign experts, and all the other institutions needed to prove that independence is real...

...Wahhabi aggression against the long-established Sufi presence in the western Macedonian city of Tetovo has reached a real crisis point...

...Outside, guards were posted while Kurti spoke...

...Given that the U.N...

...But the situation is dire in neighboring Macedonia...

...But the Albanian members of the U.N.-EU bureaucracy, while often the most robust defenders of Kosovo’s “paper independence,” would doubtless suffer loss of income and status if the internationals left...

...More grating to many Kosovar Albanians has been the imposition of a denationalized Kosovo flag, blue with a gold map of the country and six white stars, in place of the traditional Albanian red and black double-eagle standard...

...Later, another Kosovar who disagrees with Kurti admitted that he is an exceptional speaker, calling him “the human laser, whose words go straight to people’s hearts...

...Serbian prime minister Vojislav Kostunica, the nationalist sold to the West in 2000 as a clean alternative to the late Slobodan Milosevic, precipitated the collapse of the Serbian administration...

...been deployed to the divided city of Mitrovica, where Serbians continue to patrol, as they have since 1999, at the northern end of the bridge over the river Ibar, which runs through the town...

...By contrast, Kostunica and his supporters are ready to turn their backs on Europe in rage over Kosovar independence, and put all their hopes on support from Russia...

...police declined to confront the mob...

...Bangladesh, the Ivory Coast, Kuwait, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia have indicated that they will probably recognize the government in Pristina, but they seem to be in no hurry...

...Still, diplomatic recognition of Kosovo, while viscerally satisfying for Kosovar Albanians and their friends, means little without the normal institutions of a free republic: clearly defi ned borders, a new constitution, an army, police, and an independent judiciary...

...Finally, all Kosovars are grateful to America, but many are worried because American diplomatic representatives in Pristina too often call on the Albanians to stay silent, contradicting the strong stands of George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice, whom the Kosovars admire...

...Indeed, it occurred to me, watching the faces and listening to the sharp words of Albin Kurti, that there are two borders in Dumnica...

...To emphasize: The villagers, with their long collective memory, see Russia as the main enemy, standing behind and using Serbia...

...India, anxious to keep the torturers of Tiananmen Square happy, had arrested and beaten Tibetan demonstrators, and Nepal had surrendered to a Chinese demand to close its border and prevent protestors from heading to Mount Everest for a pro-Tibetan action...

...NATO and especially the United States have given fairly clear assurances that a Serbian attack on Kosovo, or attempt to annex the northern corner of the country, will be met with military force, and U.S...

...The Macedonian government appears eager to sow discord in the large Albanian community within its borders...

...Such powers are to remain in the hands of Europe for nine months or longer, under the Ahtisaari Plan, yet another of those tatty “road maps” promised to people at risk around the world...

...Llap was also a major theater of fi ghting in the 1998-99 war...

...After more dithering, international police took the building back from the crowd, but on March 17 the Serbs, allegedly coordinated from Belgrade, struck again, heaving grenades and gasoline bombs and shooting at the “internationals,” killing a Ukrainian offi - cer and wounding many...

...Only four months ago, two buildings at the Harabati Sufi center in Tetovo were occupied by Saudi-supported Wahhabis with their scruffy beards and automatic weapons...

...For a foreign observer, nothing was more fascinating than the faces of the villagers— strong, intelligent, intent as they listened to Kurti, a man who can discuss Heidegger and postmodernism with facility, but who addressed this gathering simply and directly...

...In the coming Serbian elections, the “liberal” Kostunica may form a bloc with the Serbian Radical party, the most violent nationalist entity west of the Russian fever swamp...

...obstruction of Kosovo’s full liberation—had sent troops to the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, where dozens of demonstrators were shot dead...

...The only Muslim countries that had recognized Kosovo by March 20 were Afghanistan, Senegal, and Malaysia...

...Nearly all the Albanians in Dumnica are Muslims, yet they act as if the war with radical Islam will be no more than an episode, while the danger of confrontation with Putin’s neo-czarist expansionism has returned to bedevil the world...

...Kosovars have a large diaspora sending money home from the United States, Germany, and Switzerland, and without fi nancial stability inside the new republic the funds have to go somewhere...

...They scream insults and threats at the Sufi s and fi re their weapons into the air at night...

...Cynics had predicted the meltdown of Kosovar Albanian society, accompanied by atrocities against Serbs and other minorities, but this has not taken place...

...Well, they have created a new class of prosperous local employees, who have learned English (because the internationals seldom study the Albanian language) and built their own upscale homes and districts...

...Ordinary Kosovar Albanians, however—farmers and urban workers and tradesmen—have gotten over their immediate exultation and returned to a hard-headed wariness about Europe and its promises to help defend, democratize, and develop the new republic...