U.S. interest in the Kosovo
I spoke with an Italian editor recently who expressed a certain amount of perplexity about the amount of coverage that the International Herald Tribune was dedicating to the situation in the Kosovo. He found it almost obsessive, especially when compared to the way the paper practically ignored the situation in Bosnia while most European newspapers and magazines were dedicating pages and not just columns to the subject.
Although his stupefaction is certainly justified, it was not that difficult to intuit what the reasons might be for what seems to be an excessive American interest in the relatively small region of Serbian Yugoslavia. There are 2 million inhabitants in this region, only 200 thousand of which are Serbians. The rest are ethnic Albanians that have been multiplying with a vengence: The birth rate of this "minority" is one of the highest in Europe.
So why does that make what goes on in the Kosovo of particular interest to America and its newspapers? Evidently, like the Cubans and the Jewish and many other ethnic minorities in the United States, someone has probably been doing excellent PR work in lobbying congressional interest and rallying funds for the cause.
American interest in Albanian issues certainly isn’t new, although perhaps no one has bothered to delve into the subject. In 1991, when the former Yugoslavia was in the midst of the what would be only the beginning of its hell and bedlam, the United States was embracing Albania’s first non-Communist president since World War II and resuming diplomatic relations with the Balkan country for the first time in 51 years. In July of 1993, long before American involvement in Bosnia began through the Dayton Accords, 500,000 US troops were sent to Macedonia, where the Albanian minority represents over 20 percent of the population. This region of the former Yugoslavia which had declared its independence in 1992, shares its borders with both Albania and the Kosovo region. There are still several hundred American soldiers in Macedonia left over from that mission.
Obviously, America’s present interest in the Kosovo is also strictly tied to the fact that a flare up in the region could ruin the entire structure of the Dayton Accords which has been patiently woven over the past two years. But this hardly explains previous interest in the region.
According to La Stampa’s Giuseppe Zaccaria, the Albanians in the Kosovo, with a 9 to 1 predominance over the Serbians in the region, have been "reproducing at Third World rates while learning to use the mechanisms of the First." He also reports that "they have acquired true prominence, a rigorous organization, close ties with emigrants in America, millions of dollars which have emerged from nowhere, and [have found outside] willingness to buy houses and finance schools and hospitals."
On March 22, the Albanians of Kosovo held "political and presidential elections." Although the elections were not without incident, for the most part Belgrade allowed them to happen while looking on with disinterest and disdain. In 1992, they had done the same. The Serbian authorities had looked upon those elections as a farce, similar to the Northern League movement in Italy to create the new state of Padania. However, a so-called government in exile was the result of those elections and some of its members have been doing some successful fund-raising. Enormous sums of money have been collected from Albanians living abroad which has totally transformed the economic equilibrium in the Kosovo. If the Serbian minority still claims governance over the bureaucracy and the police, the formerly poor majority of Albanians are now able to buy practically anything they need, except, of course, their independence.
March 1998
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