Recurring nightmares

Ethnic clashes in Kosovo reverberate throughout the Balkans as Bosnia and Macedonia fear a spillover, reports Adisa Busuladzic from Sarajevo

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Last week's clashes in Kosovo constituted the worst outbreak of violence in the Balkans since the 1999 war, with some 28 people killed and 870 injured. The fighting between ethnic Serbs and Albanians broke out after three Albanian boys drowned in a river. The sole survivor said that they were trying to escape a group of angry Serbs wanting to exact revenge for the near-fatal shooting of an 18-year-old Serb by unknown gunmen two days earlier.

Ever since the American-led NATO intervention expelled the military forces of Serbia and Montenegro from this autonomous province, establishing a UN protectorate therein, the situation has been calm on the surface. However, the unresolved status of Kosovo has kept tensions smouldering. Kosovo's Albanian, Muslim majority wants independence from Serbia and Montenegro, while the Orthodox Christian Serbs want to retain at least part of it.

Sources at the Serbian Ministry of Interior reported that during three days of rioting, Albanians attacked 30 Serb Orthodox churches, 11 Serb monasteries and three cemeteries, while dozens of homes were destroyed. Immediately retaliating in kind, mobs of angry Serbian nationalists torched mosques in the three largest Serbian cities, Belgrade, Nis and Novi Sad.

Ethnic clashes quickly spread into neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, where four mosques in the Serb-dominated area and one mosque located in the Croat-dominated area of the country were set afire or vandalised. Although the latest reports hint at the return of peace to Kosovo, echoes of the violence still reverberate, the arson attacks in Bosnia and Herzegovina gaining popularity among Serb and Croat extremists. The question is: Who is more interested in seeing a religious war -- Albanians or Serbs? Events so far have suggested the latter.

In the Serbian version of history, Kosovo is portrayed as home to a medieval Serbian state that vanished in the 15th century with the first Ottoman advances into the Balkan Peninsula. In an attempt to keep its Orthodox Christian faith intact, the Serbs left Kosovo en masse during almost five centuries of Ottoman reign there. On the other hand, a great majority of Albanians stayed under the Ottoman rule, by and large adopting the Muslim faith of their new rulers. The breakup of the Ottoman empire at the end of World War I and the creation of a Serb-dominated Yugoslavia resulted in Serbs regaining power over Kosovo and ruling it until 1999 when it become a NATO-controlled UN protectorate.

Albanians have always been open in stating that their ultimate national goal is the eventual independence of Kosovo from Serbia. Indeed, they have often instigated nationalist violence against the Serb minority towards that end.

Since the 1999 Kosovo war, Serb nationalists have bitterly resented the American-led NATO forces for their open support of the Albanian rebellion against Serb rule in Kosovo. The plight of the Serb minority still residing in Kosovo, meanwhile, has become a battle cry for Serb nationalists trying to mobilise the entire Serb population around its quest to create a Greater Serbia, which would incorporate parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Western allies' postponement of a decision on the final status of Kosovo has been primarily motivated by concern about the reaction of nationalists in the Serbian government. Serb nationalists might try to compensate for losing Kosovo by incorporating Republika Srpska (a Serb-dominated entity in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina) into a Greater Serbia. This would lead to the renewal of recent conflicts, not only between Serbs and Bosnian Muslims in Bosnia, but also between Macedonians and ethnic Albanians in Macedonia. Albanian nationalists may also try to imitate the Serbs by demanding to join parts of Macedonian territories with an independent Kosovo, or to merge all former Yugoslav territories populated with an Albanian majority into a Greater Albania.

Serbia's internal economic and political reform process has largely ground to a halt after the assassination of a moderate prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, in 2003. The only issue that can still easily unite Serbs is patriotic sentiment related to Kosovo. Even a post-Slobodan Milosevic Serbia has remained fervently nationalist, and in elections last December voters returned nationalist parties to power.

Serbs are very much aware of the Western allies' distaste for Serbian nationalism. With their enemies in Kosovo nearly entirely Muslim, some nationalists are trying to get on Washington's good side by painting rebellious Albanians as terrorists. If they were to successfully transform any kind of nationalistic violence Serbs face in Kosovo into a religious-based conflict, much of the Balkans could be engulfed in the ensuing strife.