When
the outcome of a tragedy is known in advance, it
finds ways of occurring earlier than expected. In
this case, the fate of 100,000 Serbian Christians
who remain in Kosovo may pre-empt the debate over
Europe's eventual absorption into the Muslim
world.
A new book on the Islamification of
Europe appears almost weekly, adding to the
efforts of Ben Wattenberg, Oriana Fallaci, Bat
Ye'or, George Weigel, Mark Steyn, Philip Jenkins
and a host of others. Scholars debate whether the
decline and fall of Europe
will
occur by mid-century, or might be postponed until
2100. The inconvenient Serbs may force the issue
on Europe a great deal sooner.
If Serbia
and Russia draw a line in the sand over the
independence of Kosovo, we may observe the second
occasion in history when a Muslim advance on
Europe halted on Serbian soil. The first occurred
in 1456, three years after the fall of
Constantinople, when Sultan Mehmed II was thrown
back from the walls of Belgrade, "The White City",
by Hungarian and Serb defenders. The Siege of
Belgrade "decided the fate of Christendom", wrote
the then Pope Calixtus III. Not for nothing did J
R R Tolkien name his fictional stronghold of Minas
Tirith "The White City".
While America's
attention is riveted on Iraq, Russia is outraged
at the American-backed plan for Kosovo's
independence, proposed by UN special envoy Martti
Ahtisaari. Kosovo comprised the historic Serbian
heartland, Christian Serbs comprise less than a
tenth of the present population. Perhaps 200,000
Serbs have left the province since the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) made Kosovo a
protectorate in 2000.
The Bill Clinton
administration, in this writer's considered view,
provoked NATO's 1999 bombing war against Serbia
with malice of forethought, as a gesture to the
Muslim world. The United States in effect was
willing to bomb Christians in order to protect
Muslims, in this case the Albanian Kosovo majority
whom it accused the Serbs of mistreating. That is
precisely what the Democrats say. In a January 3
article in the Financial Times, Democratic Senator
Joseph Biden contended that Kosovo independence
would constitute a "victory for Muslim democracy",
and "a much-need example of US-Muslim
partnership".
Contrary to American
propaganda at the time, no massacres had occurred;
the Serbs had shot a few thousand Muslim militants
in their efforts to pacify the province. Clinton,
then secretary of state Madeleine Albright and UN
ambassador Richard Holbrooke deluded themselves
that they could cash in the chips earned in Kosovo
at the negotiating table in the Middle East. The
neo-conservatives cheered the Clinton bombing
campaign, believing perhaps that any American show
of force was better than no show of force.
Once again Washington's attention is
directed toward the Middle East. Washington
proposes to sacrifice the remaining Christians in
Kosovo in order to earn Muslim support. Serbia has
earned little sympathy; its brutality against
Bosnian Muslims during the 1990s left an image of
Serbian barbarity etched on the mind of the
Western public.
Without apologizing for
past Serbian misbehavior, I believe that Serbia
and Russia are correct to offer partition rather
than independence for Kosovo, that is, breaking
off the Christian-majority municipalities of the
north and attaching them to Serbia proper, while
permitting the Muslim majority to determine its
own fate.
This is the obvious, humane and
commonsense solution; the fact that the State
Department refuses to consider it inflames
Russia's worst fears about America's intent. To
broad Russian opinion, the sacrifice of the Kosovo
Serbs seems like yet another prospective
humiliation, on top of the deployment of
anti-missile systems on Russia's border and the
buildup of American forces in the former Soviet
republics of Central Asia.
I cannot
penetrate the cloud of confusion at Foggy Bottom
(aka the State Department) , but I suspect that
American policy in
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