Halfway down the Danube

Bad News from Kosovo

Six people are dead there today. Or maybe more. Reports are confused, but it looks like a major clash between Serbs and Albanians is under way.

Apparently some Serb boys chased some Albanian children into a river, and two of the children then drowned. Mayhem then ensued, with vengeful Albanians attacking the Serbs, the Serbs counterattacking, and so forth.

This is the worst clash in the province since 2001, when Albanian terrorists killed 30 or so Serbs at one go by blowing up a bus. But there's been a steady background drumbeat of violence, with incidents every few months. Children have been involved in a number of these, unfortunately; for instance, several Serb teenagers swimming at a water hole were shot by a sniper last year. No arrests, of course.

Kosovo is already divided along ethnic lines, and has been since the end of the NATO campaign five years ago. The northern quarter or so of the province is about 90% Serb, the rest of it is about 95% Albanian. Re-integration of the two groups has never seemed particularly likely. The best case scenario was that the two would at least tone down the mutual hatred to the point where a small relict population of Serbs could live in relative peace in Kosovo, and Serbs could travel there safely to visit the many Serbian religious and historical sites -- cathedrals, monasteries, the Kosovo Polje battlefield.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be happening.

What happens now? I don't know. The Serbs and Albanians are limited in their ability to reach and hurt each other, in part because they're mostly physically separated, in part because of the presence of an international peacekeeping force. So larger scale violence is unlikely. But the fact that they're still managing to regularly have "incidents" ranging from sniper attacks to full-scale race riots, even under these circumstances, is depressing. It's like watching two guys who have been handcuffed but are still straining to reach each other with their teeth.

Bad news: for Kosovo, for Serbia, for the region.

More in a bit, probably, unfortunately.

Posted by douglas at March 17, 2004 11:03 PM