WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY KOSOVO News Journal Update - (en) Italy, UCADI #172 - La questione Kosovars (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Kosovo explodes again. To understand what is happening and could happen, it is

necessary to reconstruct the memory to remember what the West has forgotten about
its "special operation" with which Kosovo was created. By doing so, we will also
better understand what is happening in Ukraine, why and for what purposes. ----
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 paves the way for the crisis of all Eastern
European countries, already part of the Soviet area of influence. It is the whole
structure of Europe that is being called into question. Germany was reunified and
in 1992 the crisis of the former Yugoslavia reached maturity, a federal state
that brought together the various entities of the Balkan peninsula in a single
institutional and political structure and which had had the merit of managing an
area of the continent without conflicts characterized by strong tensions between
the populations that inhabit it, so much so that the First World War had been
triggered in Sarajevo.
The dissolution of the country is baptized by the reunified Germany and emerging
power which, guiding the process of aggregation of the European Union, identifies
the Balkan area as the one of traditional political and economic expansion of the
Union, as it was once of Germany. After all, the survival of a federal state in
the Balkans represented for the European Union a dangerous alternative to its
development, since it could have acted as a pole of attraction for the former
communist countries of Eastern Europe, or at least for those contiguous to them.
Balkan area, such as Romania and Bulgaria, looking for a new economic, political
and strategic position. It is good to remember, to understand the Yugoslav
potential that Yugoslavia was one of the leaders of the group of "non-aligned
countries" and therefore represented one of the possible reference points of a
strategic framework being redefined. Its dissolution definitively put an end to
this possibility, creating the conditions for a growth of the EU.

The stages of the dissolution of Yugoslavia

With the disappearance of the two blocks, the presence of Yugoslavia was no
longer necessary for geostrategic balances and therefore international
institutions such as the Monetary Fund did not renew funding for the country and
at the same time the economic support of the two blocks was lacking. In a
situation of heavy debt in Yugoslavia, an austerity economic policy was imposed
on the country by the states and monetary authorities, which accentuated the
differences between the richest and poorest areas. The dissolution of the League
of Communists of Yugoslavia in 1990 allowed for the prevalence of nationalist
parties in all Union Republics. Multi-party elections were organized in all
republics and most of the elected governments adopted nationalist political
platforms, promising to separately protect the interests of the peoples. With the
declaration of independence of Croatia on 25 June 1991, the dissolution of the
Yugoslav Federation and the civil war began which will be characterized by
massacres, ethnic cleansing and unspeakable violence which brought war back to
Europe for the first time after the end of the Second World War, anticipating the
Ukrainian war.
The new states born from the dissolution of Yugoslavia, and in particular
Croatia, supported not only by Germany, of which it adopts the mark as a currency
of exchange, is immediately recognized by Vatican diplomacy as an independent
state, on the indication of the reveler and lazzarone reigning father, great
enemy of communism (the pseudo-saint Carol Wojtyla). His secession is viewed with
particular favor by the Holy See, as it allows the area of control of Catholicism
in Europe to be moved eastward, reducing the role and political weight of
Orthodoxy and the Serbian Orthodox Church.
To complete the dismantling of the Federation, the West puts into play every
possible initiative and exploits the economic clash between the various Yugoslav
entities, masked behind an ethnic-linguistic and cultural conflict, while the
various components of the Balkan populations are induced to massacre. After an
initial war between Serbs and Croats, and while Slovenia and Macedonia withdraw
from the conflict, the Bosnian situation becomes particularly dramatic, due to
the multi-ethnic and multi-religious nature of the region's population. The
armies of Croatia and Serbia compete for the territory of Bosnia and both
massacre the populations of Muslim ethnicity: Sarajevo is besieged and destroyed.
NATO launches a first "special operation" which takes the name of "Operation
Deliberate Force", resorting to the use of force. The fighting between the ethnic
armies devastates the Balkan peninsula and gives the right to NATO, which
considers the security of the countries that belong to it to be compromised, to
intervene on the field with an expeditionary force with the task of acting as an
interposition force. In addition to the countries that are part of this
organization, Russia also participates in the operation, occupying the Pristina
airport. To succumb, to work of both the contained, is the Muslim component of
the population that is massacred with particular ferocity: the NATO troops assist
without intervening to massacres such as those of Srebrenica that these troops,
in justification of their intervention, had declared they wanted to avoid .
Meanwhile, the Kosovar question is growing, an autonomous region that had seen
its autonomy abolished by Serbia; the Kosovar nationalists rise up, relaunching
the historic project of building a greater Albania, strengthened by the size of
the Albanian-speaking population in the region, opposing the creation of a
"greater Serbia". The clash is inevitable and Serbia will try to maintain control
over the Serbian-speaking population entities in Kosovo as it has already done in
the crajne where there are Serbian-speaking populations and traditions
historically linked, also from a religious point of view, to the Orthodox
Patriarchate Belgrade. The clash between the parties is thus enriched by the
interreligious conflict and the Serbian Orthodox Church takes the field alongside
the state.
A second "special operation", called Allied Force , is therefore set up by NATO;
Italy stands out as it intervenes by participating in the bombing of Belgrade,
also targeting hospitals. What strikes are " smart bombs", called humanitarian
bombs. This is what war propaganda tells us, claiming that it is a matter of
humanitarian intervention, as if these bombs, once dropped, deviate their
trajectory when they are about to hit civilian targets.
The Italian intervention as "humanitarian", is financed with eight per thousand
funds destined to the State for humanitarian purposes, the auspice of the
operation by the then Prime Minister D'Alema who dusts off the historic Italian
policy in support of the creation of Greater Albania as a contrast to the Slavic
populations[1]. For intervention on the ground, an interposition force called
KOFOR was set up, whose command was entrusted to Italy.
As can be seen from the reconstruction of events, the United States like the USSR
first, and then Russia, felt they had a free hand not only with respect to their
allies, but also in relation to the so-called "buffer countries", i.e. that band
of countries which, interposing themselves between the two blocks, constituted no
man's land.
Thus the United States, through NATO of which I am the major shareholder, have
decided, with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, to be able to extend their
jurisdiction, starting by setting themselves up as gendarmes of the Balkan area
and feasting on the peoples Balkans, encouraging them to set up autonomous state
entities and initiating them to undertake a process of progressive integration
into the EU, which proposed itself as a pole of attraction to ferry the new
entities into the Union, on condition that they standardize their regulations and
respective economies to those of the Community (sharing of the aequiscommunity).
Thus we are witnessing a process, still ongoing, which sees the Balkan peoples on
the one hand fighting the aftermath of a terrible, fratricidal and disastrous
civil war and on the other demolishing those borders to erect which they fought
to become part of a common political entity, the EU which abolishes these borders
and, by joining NATO, a formally defensive security structure, but in reality an
instrument of support for the hegemony of the USA and Western countries.

New order and overcoming of nation-states

One could think that with the occasion, identifying and delimiting the new
borders of the States, ethnic, linguistic and religious affiliations would have
been respected and the new entities redesigned in order to remove the reasons for
conflict, but this was not the case, because the new state structures are nothing
more than entities that follow the borders administrative precedents, established
within the Yugoslav federal state, and in some cases they take note of the areas
occupied by the armies on the ground, with the result that the process of
re-founding the states is accompanied by operations of ethnic cleansing,
displacement of populations, which give continuity to an ethnically fragmented
configuration of the dislocation of populations on the territory.
Particularly dramatic is the situation in Bosnia Herzegovina where a
cantonalisation was carried out, with great difficulty, which leaves the Republic
of Srpska alive as a de facto separate entity, made up of the Serb ethnic group
present in those territories and effectively creates a regime special for Sarajevo.
Once Serbian ambitions have been reduced and the area of the southern Balkans
stabilized with the consensual separation between Serbia and Montenegro, today we
see the conflict between Serbs and Kosovars re-explode, never really dormant, in
a part of the country where there are a majority of Serbian populations to whom
the Albanian-speaking government it wants to impose its own political control.
Nor is the Kosovar situation destined, in our opinion, to be resolved, proof of
which is that the necessary presence of KOFOR remains in this "autonomous
entity", so much so that the territory, although self-administered, is under NATO
and United Nations protection and because the Kosovo is a no-State as it
constitutes today a political entity not even recognized by all EU countries,
first of all Spain, which sees in its recognition a dangerous precedent of a
hypothetical right to secession of a territory forming part of a State, a problem
certainly alive in that country due to the requests for autonomy, if not for
secession, of the Basque and Catalan entities. As can be seen, respect for
different identities is not resolved and creates numerous persistent problems in
the West as well, producing violations of the independence, autonomy and
self-government of peoples.

The situation in Ukraine

In the light of what we have mentioned regarding the Balkans, the Ukrainian
situation takes on a completely different dimension, which places it outside the
simplistic scheme, consisting of a clash between attacked and aggressors, with
which we intend to interpret what is happening. For a correct reading of the
events, it must be remembered that on the one hand, the USA and NATO believe they
have their own area on which to project their influence - proof of this is the
progressive enlargement of NATO - and that conversely the same conviction is
typical of the leaders of the Kremlin, who until before the Ukrainian war
believed that Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova constituted areas falling within
Russia's security sphere and therefore removed from any Western influence and
therefore subjected to a projection of Russia's security policy.
In support of this thesis, Russia recalls that the current borders of the Eastern
European states are not the usual ones, nor are they the historical ones. In
fact, the Second World War restructured them, moving the Russian border to ad
West of about 200 km: The simultaneous presence of populations different in
language, tradition, religion, culture was accentuated by the Stalinist
government policy of the USSR territories, implementing massive population
displacements; the same happened for the other states of Eastern Europe. Thus
forced displacements of the population took place, accentuated by security
reasons but also to make the territories uneven in order to strengthen the
control of the central power and prevent possible independence secessions,
thinking that it was possible to amalgamate the different peoples. This set of
reasons has allowed the passage under the jurisdiction of other States of entire
territories and populations characterized by languages, common traditions, family
and kinship ties, as well as by historically defined religious affiliations, By
applying these criteria of analysis to the entire territory of Ukraine, we note
that today it is made up in the West by a large part of territory which in fact
has Polish tradition and culture, in which this language is the majority,
widespread and spoken (Lviv and contiguous territories). In the northwestern part
of the country, along the border with Hungary, we find that territory that was
once of the Ruthenians, with a population that has its own Church. Catholic of
the Greek rite and of Hungarian traditions and culture, a language spoken by the
majority of citizens, proof of this is the special policy of the Hungarian
government with regard to this population to which it grants dual citizenship and
this suggests that tensions and future claims.
In many ways the situation is similar, looking at the southern territories, at
the western borders of the country, with Transnistria and gradually along the
borders with Romania and Moldova, where the language spoken is Romanian and the
same applies to the other factors identities. Only moving towards Kiev and
settling along a border ideally constituted by the Dnepr river do we encounter
territories in which the Ukrainian language is spoken more frequently and the
original nucleus and identity of the country is found. In the great plains up to
Odessa and starting from the Dnepr, going east to the border with Russia, the
majority of the language spoken by the population is Russian and the same applies
to traditions and customs.
Finally, Crimea has a particular history because over the centuries it has been a
territory belonging to Russia since 1784, transferred only in 1954 under the
administrative jurisdiction of Ukraine for purely reasons of functional
convenience, given the topographical contiguity, under Ukrainian jurisdiction due
to the fact that at that time Ukraine was an indistinguishable part of a single
state entity - the USSR. It is in this context that Putin's "special operation"
was born and developed.
As can be seen, the problem is more complex and damned similar to the arrangement
that we have seen characterizing the Balkans and this set of reasons and these
similarities made Putin think that it was possible in Ukraine to create a
situation similar to the Balkan one with which to justify and motivate their own
"special operation".
But the idea of nation is not - as in the thought of the Italian premier - a fact
of blood and much less a genetic question, nor of linguistic belonging; it
overcomes cultural and family ties, while putting them to the test: it is rather
the result of the constitution of a political entity that arises from economic,
political and social choices and which is consolidated with the common suffering
caused by an absurd, violent war, by massacres and common tragedies, from the
hatred that matures with the increase of the dead.
Therefore the breaking of borders constitutes the violation of a convention, of a
border that has been established as such, on the basis of a political agreement.
Paradoxically and only now, with the war that unites the populations living in
the Ukrainian territory in suffering, have the Russian bombings and violence
ended up creating a unity of purpose, an opinion in favor of a common defence,
putting aside linguistic affiliations, cultural and family ties and has led to
the establishment of a national identity for a large part of the population which
inevitably degenerates into nationalism and makes lose sight of the values of
class solidarity and internationalism. This occurs because the concept of nation
is that of a political entity - as we said - and therefore the Russian armed
intervention, certainly aggressive, has violated borders established as the
result of historical events, political agreements, in accordance with power
relations that prescind from the identity situation in the area and is
experienced as an aggression against the nation.
The claim of territories by both Ukraine and Russia is therefore, above all a
problem of an economic nature and therefore the end of the war is what both sides
want for themselves an economic and strategic space, a territory, in which
interests economic and political leaders who report to the great oligarchs, both
Russian and Ukrainian, who operate with the consent and participation of
international investors, to manage a territory in which it is necessary to
operate in order to make profits, trying to divide up the spoils of a country,
with the sorry to defend its integrity.
To see its identity and independence affirmed and respected, probably the
country, which is a mosaic of peoples, would need to adopt a federal structure in
which the territorial communities should be able to express themselves and freely
aggregate to give life, if they wish, to a shared social management of the
territory. But this would be pure common sense that the Minsk agreements had
tried to prefigure. Assuming, in particular, for the territories of Donbass a
federal structure characterized by broad autonomy, agreements rejected by the
parties.
The fact is that the Ukraine question is complicated by strategic economic
interests which belong to the United States and England as well as to Russia, and
which concern the control of energy sources, the exploitation of its mineral
resources, the use of its agricultural and industrial production, as well as the
balance of power between the different powers, the geopolitical structure of the
world, the strategic and power balances between the states and strongly condition
the future of the EU
Having said that, the Kosovar question that is being presented to the West today
appears darned similar to that concerning Ukraine and for this reason what must
be questioned is the narration that both the Russians and the Ukrainians make of
the problem, as well as the one that the Westerners carry out their intervention
in the Balkans, while only one thing is certain that the victims of the situation
are the Ukrainian people and the Russian people, induced to hate and massacre
each other, to die in the name of the interests of their respective oligarchs,
without being seen the end.

[1]The constitution of the "great Albania" is a political project cultivated
mainly by Italian colonialism which at the beginning of the twentieth century
aimed to expand its influence in the Balkan area, with the intention of opposing
the populations of Illyrian origin to the Slavic ones, annexing Kosovo, part of
present-day North Macedonia, and Tsamoria, known in Greek as Thesprotia, to
Albania. These intentions led in 1939 to the Protectorate of Italy, to its
annexation and subsequently to the Italian military intervention during the
Second World War. See: G. Cimbalo, Confessional pluralism and religious freedom
in Albania, BUP, Bologna 2012.

Giovanni Cimbalo

http://www.ucadi.org/2023/06/19/la-questione-kosovara/
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