Myanmar Recognizes Kosovo? Sounds Too Good to Be True—and It Is

The prime minister of the Republic of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi (above), appears to be aiming to become the Balkan Kanye West when it comes to tweeting and Facebooking before he thinks and then having to apologize for it.  First (as reported a couple days ago in this blog), he announced on his Facebook page that the Kingdom of Tonga had granted the tiny breakaway former province of Serbia diplomatic recognition—then, after a statement from the palace, had to backpedal and admit it had just been a rumor.  His Majesty Tupou VI was not amused.

Then, on January 24th, media began reporting an announcement by Kosovo’s ministry for foreign affairs that the government of Myanmar (a.k.a. Burma) had recognized the country.  The statement from the ministry quoted the missive from Myanmar as reading, “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Union of Myanmar has the honor to inform you that the Government of Myanmar decided to recognize Kosovo as a sovereign and an independent state.”  Details included reports that Kosovo’s deputy prime minister, Behgjet Isa Pacolli, had visited Burma last month and “provided convincing argumentation as to why Kosovo should be independent.”  Seemed pretty straightforward.

Kosovo’s relationship status: It’s Complicated.
(Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi’s Facebook page.)

Within hours, though, further statements, from Pacolli himself and from Kosovo’s foreign minister, Enver Hoxhaj, said no such recognition had in fact taken place.

Kosovars should know better than to expect sympathy from these chaps.

In retrospect, it does seem damn unlikely.  A slight majority of United Nations member states recognize Kosovo’s independence from the Republic of Serbia, which was secured in 1999 under the sponsorship of the United States and western European allies after a NATO bombing campaign and then formally declared in 2008.  But for the foreseeable future its entry to the U.N. General Assembly is effectively blocked by the Security Council veto powers of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China.  Russia is a Serbian ally, and China, like Russia, takes a principled stand against separatism of any kind, facing as it does serious separatist insurgencies in Tibet and in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.  (See a recent article from this blog about Russian laws against supporting separatism.) The Republic of the Union of Myanmar—as the ruling military junta calls the country whose pro-democracy forces call by its original name Burma—is still a strong ally of China’s, even though it is half-heartedly reforming in order to end its diplomatic isolation.  Furthermore, Myanmar faces perhaps more separatist movements than any other country on earth—its only rivals being perhaps Italy, Spain, Nigeria, or Somalia—and easily the most violent, armed separatist insurgencies.  Some of its secessionist ethnic groups, such as the Karen, Karenni, Shan, Chin, Arakanese, Mon, Rohingya, and Wa, have been waging what are some of the longest-running conflicts in the world today.  Other than Russia and China, it is hard to imagine a state less likely to extend diplomatic recognition to Kosovo.

No one quite knows how this particular rumor started.  Kosovars were giddy last month when Facebook recognized their country as separate from Serbia (for purposes, for example, of identifying “check-ins” and hometowns etc.).  Now Prime Minister Thaçi and his foreign minister need to call tech support and have someone come in and show them how to install some bullshit filters.

South Koreans embrace Kosovo.  Burma, not so much.

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it sometime in 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Mauritius Breaks Ties with Western Sahara, Leaving Only 44 Backing SADR; Tongan Recognition of Kosovo in Doubt

The number of countries recognizing the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (S.A.D.R.) continued to dwindle this week as the Republic of Mauritius withdrew its diplomatic recognition.  Mauritius had first extended recognition to the S.A.D.R.—also known as Western Sahara—in 1982.  The Mauritian foreign ministry said it still supports the (largely moribund) efforts of the United Nations (U.N.) to end the conflict.

Western Sahara was known as the Spanish Sahara until Spain withdrew in 1976, leaving the northern two-thirds of the territory to Morocco and the southern third to Mauritania.  Morocco instead invaded the entire country and has since subjected it to brutal occupation while the indigenous, non-Arab Sahrawi people’s Polisario Front rebel group has insisted on the independence of their S.A.D.R., which now governs only a sliver of territory east of huge defensive sand walls built by Morocco.

The Polisario Front still asserts Sahrawi sovereignty.

The move by Mauritius—coming after withdrawals of recognition last year by Panama and Haiti (reported on at the time in this blog) and Paraguay earlier this month (also reported in this blog) now leaves the Sahrawi people with only 44 states—mostly in Africa and Latin America recognizing the legitimacy of their struggle for self-determination.

States which recognize the S.A.D.R. are shown in green.
Dark grey countries have withdrawn previous recognition.

Mauritius, though a tiny country, is, as Haiti was, symbolically significant.  Mauritius, off the coast of eastern Africa in the Indian Ocean is a vocal opponent on the world stage of colonization of sub-Saharan African peoples.  Mauritius still claims the Chagos Archipelago, a.k.a. the British Indian Ocean Territory, as its own (see a recent article from this blog on the Chagossian cause), and in 1982 it unilaterally ended its relationship as a Commonwealth realm of its former colonial master, the United Kingdom, becoming a full republic.

The flag of Mauritius

Meanwhile, Hashim Thaçi, the prime minister of the partially recognized Republic of Kosovo—still technically claimed by the Republic of Serbia after declaring independence in 2008—announced on his Facebook page this week that his country had secured the diplomatic recognition of the Kingdom of Tonga, in the South Pacific.  Later, that was called into doubt and there is as yet no confirmation from the Polynesian monarchy’s foreign ministry in Nuku’alofa.  If true, Tonga would be the 106th independent state to recognize Kosovo, whose membership in the U.N. General Assembly is still effectively blocked by the veto powers of Russia and China on the U.N. Security Council.

A Sahrawi man with the flag of his struggling state.

[You can read more about the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Kosovo, and many other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

Serbs Call Hague Tribunal an Anti-Serb Kangaroo Court (and It Sure Does Look That Way Sometimes): Kosovo Update, 25 November–1 December 2012

From Radio Free Europe, an image of a Serb nationalist protest of Ramush Haradinaj’s acquittal

Serb nationalists—and even Serbs that are not all that terribly nationalist—have long suspected that the United Nations judicial tribunal in the Hague, in the Netherlands, known as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (I.C.T.Y.) is more or less rigged to prosecute Serbs and no one else in its pursuit of war-crimes convictions for the separatist wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo during the 1990s.  There was certainly plenty to support that view this week, as the I.C.T.Y. cleared three co-defendants, including Ramush Haradinaj, the former head of the Kosovo Liberation Army (K.L.A.) and Kosovo’s prime minister for three months in 2004-2005, of all war-crimes charges in a retrial.  The three were charged with torturing and killing Serb, Roma, and even ethnic-Albanian (“collaborator”) civilians in illegal detention camps during the Kosovo War.  Haradinaj was greeted as a hero by jubilant crowds and congratulated by Kosovo’s current prime minister, Hashim Thaçi, and said he planned to return to politics.  The governments of Russia and Serbia reacted vitriolically to the decision, which they—quite reasonably understandably—claim indicates an anti-Serbian bias in international courts’ decisions.

The ruling seemed especially egregious following, as it did, close on the heels of the November 16th overturning of war-crimes and crimes-against-humanity convictions of two Croat generals, Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač, who had been convicted in 2011 of murdering Serb civilians during an invasion of the Serb-dominated and at that time de facto independent Republic of Serbian Krajina (now part of the Republic of Croatia) in 1995.  They were already serving decades-long prison terms, and Gotovina, when he was first arrested, had to be retrieved from the Canary Islands, where he was in hiding.  Even most Croats realize these two guys are as guilty as all get-out, though Croat nationalists still danced in the streets in a very unseemly fashion.

Croats celebrating the acquittal of two Croatian war criminals

The I.C.T.Y. has yet to demonstrate that they truly believe it is a crime to kill a Serb.

In other news from the former Yugoslavia ...

At Skopje Rally, Albanian, Kosovar Premiers Envision “Greater Albania” within E.U.  The prime minister of the Republic of Albania, Sali Berisha, and his counterpart from the partially recognized, ethnic-Albanian-dominated Republic of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi, spoke of a united “greater Albania” in Skopje, Macedonia, on November 25th for the centennial celebration of Albania’s independence from the Ottoman Empire on the eve of the First World War.  Berisha told a crowd of 10,000 chanting, “Greater Albania!” and waving Albanian flags, “Through the European Union, we are going to realize the project of our national unity.”  He and Thaçi also made references to Albanian minorities in Macedonia and in Serbia proper.  Refugees from the Kosovo War in 1998-99 helped swell the Albanian minority in Macedonia to a quarter of the population, and they enjoy a power-sharing agreement which guarantees them government representation, but there are strains between Albanians and Macedonia’s Slav majority.  Albanians declared a brief-lived Republic of Illyrida in western Macedonia in 1990.  Fears of a “greater Albania”—and designs on chunks of Serbia proper—are among the primary rationales of the Republic of Serbia’s opposition to the independence of Kosovo, which it still claims.

“Greater Albania!  Greater Albania!”

Kosovo War Vets Disrupt Highway Opening in Protest over Limaj Retrial.  Two days after the pan-Albanian celebrations in Skopje, Macedonia (see above article), the Republic of Albania’s prime minister, Sali Berisha, was forced to cancel plans to attend an opening ceremony in for a new highway between Tirana, the Albanian capital, and Pristina, the capital of the Republic of Kosovo, because of mass protests by hundreds of Kosovo War veterans.  The veterans, mostly from the Kosovo Liberation Army (K.L.A.), took control of the stage at the ceremonies, which were in Gjurgjica, Kosovo, and demanded the release of Fatmir Limaj, a former K.L.A. commander and deputy chairman of Kosovo’s current ruling party, who was charged anew last week (as reported in this blog) on charges of war crimes.  Kosovo’s prime minister, Hashim Thaçi, cancelled his planned attendance as well.  Thaçi’s retrial was welcomed, however, in the Republic of Serbia, where the government’s Office for Kosovo and Metohija released a statement November 26th, noting “that over 1,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians killed since 1999 to date are still waiting for justice to be served.”

Kosovo War veterans spoiled the party

Shooting, Explosion, Vandalism Mar Quiet in Disputed Kosovo Border Area.  An explosion was reported on November 27th at or near a border crossing between Serbia and Kosovo, alerting authorities on both sides, but its cause was yet to be determined.  There was also, around the same time, an as yet unexplained shooting in the north end of Kosovska Mitrovica, the de facto capital of the Serb-administered North Kosovo enclave within the partially recognized Republic of Kosovo.  Also on the 27th, stones were thrown at a house belonging to a Serb in the village of Suvi Do, in North Kosovo.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Fatmir Limaj to Face War-Crimes Charges (Again); Fiji Recognizes Kosovo; Vojvodina Leader Arrested: Kosovo & Serbia Update, 18-24 November 2012

Fatmir Limaj will now have to face war-crimes charges.

Kosovo Politician Arrested on Corruption Now to Face Retrial on War Crimes.  The supreme court of the partially recognized Republic of Kosovo ordered on November 20th that a former cabinet minister who was arrested last week by NATO police on corruption charges be retried on charges of war crimes, including the murder and torture of Serbian prisoners during the war for independence from Serbia.  The minister, Fatmir Limaj, Kosovo’s former minister of transport and communications and currently a parliamentarian and the deputy chairman of the republic’s ruling Democratic Party of Kosovo (P.D.K.), was a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army (K.L.A.) during the 1998-99 Kosovo War.  Limaj was originally tried in May on the same charges but was acquitted after the former prison guard, Agim Zogaj, who was chief witness against him was found hanging dead from a tree in a park in Germany.  His written testimony was deemed inadmissible, but this week’s ruling reverses that and brings Limaj back to court.  Three other former K.L.A. rebels will be retried with Limaj.

Fiji Becomes 95th Country to Grant Kosovo Diplomatic Recognition.  The Republic of Fiji has become the 95th country to grant diplomatic recognition to the Republic of Kosovo, according to a November 20th announcement by the office of Kosovo’s prime minister, Hashim Thaçi.  This follows closely on the heels of recognition by Timor-Leste (reported on last week in this blog), Burundi, and Papua New Guinea (as reported earlier in this blog).  Now Kosovo is only three short of 98, which would make it recognized by a majority of the world’s 193 generally-recognized sovereign states.  The Republic of Serbia still claims Kosovo as its territory.

Grenade Explodes at Kosovar Administrator’s Home in Serb-Ruled North Kosovo.  Another grenade blast rocked the Serbian-administered sliver of the Republic of Kosovo called North Kosovo on November 19th, according to police.  The grenade went off in the town of Zvečan (spelled Zveçan in Albanian), the residence of Dušan Milisavljević, deputy chief of the Republic of Kosovo’s administrative office for the town.  Zvečan is a Serb-dominated town which is administered through the Republic of Serbia, though officially it is under Kosovar sovereignty.  Police were investigating.  The following day, incidents of stone-throwing between Serb and ethnic-Albanian construction workers in Kosovsko Mitrovica, North Kosovo’s de facto capital, led to gunfire, but no injuries were reported.  At issue in that incident was the controversy over construction of new homes for ethnic Albanians in North Kosovo.  Eight Serb police in North Kosovo were suspended in the wake of that incident.

Serbia’s Ex–Deputy Premier, a Vojvodina Nationalist, Nabbed on Corruption Charges.  A former deputy prime minister and nationalist politician who represents the Republic of Serbia’s ethnic Hungarians was arrested on November 20th on corruption charges.  The politician, József Kasza (that’s is Hungarian name; Serbs call him Jožef Kasa), used to head the Union of Vojvodina Hungarians and was part of the democratic reforms that swept the Serbian nationalist war criminal Slobodan Milošević out of power in 2000.  The province of Vojvodina is home to Serbia’s Hungarians and was part of the Hungarian-aligned Banat Republic after the First World War and, under the name Danube Banovina, an expanded Axis-aligned Hungary during the Second World War.  Kasza is accused of intentionally issuing bad loans while managing a state-run bank.  Critics point out that the Serbian government’s aggressive anti-corruption campaigns, which are part of its attempts to qualify for membership in the European Union (E.U.) seem to focus exclusively on opposition parties.

József Kasza

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Kosovo Recognized by Timor-Leste, K.L.A. War-Crimes Arrests, an E.U. Ultimatum, and Hashim Thaçi’s Underground Sex Slaves: Kosovo Update, 11-17 November 2012

European Parliament Says Serbia Cannot Join without Recognizing Kosovo.  The European Parliament’s rapporteur for Kosovo, Ulrike Lunacek, said this week that the Republic of Serbia will not be allowed to join the European Union (E.U.) unless it grants diplomatic recognition to the Republic of Kosovo, the de facto independent state which most E.U. member states recognize but which Serbia still regards as part of its territory.  She did not express the ultimatum as a punishment for Serbia, saying, “The E.U. will not allow another Cyprus in the E.U.  The E.U. will not accept any country without defined borders.”  Lunacek, who represents Austria in the E.P. for the Green Party, also ruled out any partition of Kosovo.

Timor-Leste Becomes 94th Nation to Recognize Kosovo.  The partially recognized Republic of Kosovo received notice this week from one of the world’s youngest United Nations (U.N.) member states, the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, that it will be extending diplomatic recognition to Kosovo.  Timor-Leste (also known as East Timor), which became independent in 2002 after a U.N.-sponsored plebiscite end military occupation by Indonesia, is, at my count, the 94th nation, out of about 193 recognized sovereign states, to recognize Kosovo, following Papua New Guinea and the Republic of Burundi in October (as reported last month in this blog, at which point I also discussed some discrepancies over how to count Kosovo’s diplomatic partners).

Timor-Leste, a.k.a. East Timor, is Kosovo’s newest diplomatic partner.

E.U. Arrests 3 Former Kosovo Rebels on War-Crimes Charges.  Three former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (K.L.A.), two of them currently serving in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Kosovo Security Force (K.S.F.), were arrested this week by European Union (E.U.) police on war-crimes charges.  Reports indicate that the murder of two ethnic-Albanian supporters of the moderate politician Ibrahim Rugova in 1999.  The arrests were made by the E.U. Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (Eulex).

E.U. Lays Corruption Charges against 7 Kosovars, Including Former Transport Minister.  The European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (Eulex) announced November 16th it had charged the Republic of Kosovo’s former minister of transport and communications and six other Kosovar Albanians with corruption.  The former minister, Fatmir Limaj, is the second-in-command in the Democratic Party (P.D.K.), Kosovo’s ruling party.  Charges against the seven include “manipulating tender procedures, giving and receiving bribes, and obstructing evidence.”

Fatmir Limaj

Slav Media Run Lurid Tales of Kosovo Prime Minister’s Underground Harem.  The organ-harvesting allegations (a hospital in the Netherlands was tapped by Interpol this week to investigate accusations of organ-trafficking by Kosovo rebels in the 1990s) don’t seem to be enough.  Several newspapers in the Balkans this week are running reports on interviews with a woman from Ukraine identified only as “N.M.” who describes escaping from what she calls an underground “hell hole” in which the prime minister of the Republic of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi, operates a “harem” with 52 sex slaves.  “None of the girls were from Kosovo,” N.M. said; “there were few from the Balkans, about ten from Russia, one from Cameroon, two Chinese women, etc.”  Many of the men who visit the harem for “orgies” “are foreign diplomats,” she said, “including officers from Eulex and KFOR.  The girls are not allowed to say, ‘No.’  One of the girls called Dolores from Colombia protested the conditions during our lunch time in the cafeteria.  She was shot dead by Thaci’s bodyguards.”  N.M. says she escaped with the assistance of a bodyguard from Chechnya, whom she had to bribe with sexual favors.  That’s all pretty good, but the lack of any reference to the ceremonial drinking of the blood of Serbian babies represents a disappointing decline in the literary quality of Serbian propaganda.

2 Serbs Ambushed in Kosovo; Grenade Attack on Serb Apartment Building.  Two Serbs were ambushed in their car in a village in western Kosovo’s Istok municipality on November 10th by an unknown gunman in a balaclava.  One of the two men, Momir Pantić, a former local police chief, was wounded in the arm and face.  Pantić owns land on Osojane, a Serb enclave in Istok, which is outside the Serb-governed North Kosovo territory along the republic’s border with the Republic of Serbia.  He said he had been followed all that day by unknown persons.  The mayor of Kosovoska Mitrovica, North Kosovo’s de facto capital, called Pantić an internally displaced person and said that the ambush was evidence that Serbs are not safe in Kosovo.  In the evening of the next day, November 11th, a hand grenade went off in front of a Serb-populated apartment building in Kosovska Mitrovica, which caused damage to the building and nearby vehicles but no injuries.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]