Why is there a different standard for the Serbs ?
Russian allies. Simple enough.
People should understand that Serbia=Russia completely on this. If you were to take the timeline of the breakup of the USSR and that for Yugoslavia, you will notice total parallelism. Milosevic played the role of the "evil hard-line communists", wanting to maintain a united country. The Gorbachev of Yugoslavia was Ante Markovic who pushed this confederation idea such as with the Union Treaty. Though it happened earlier, the 1991 Vilnius events in January were compared with the Slovenia business in late June and the Baltics were portrayed similarly to Slovenia vs Russia.
When the 21 August 1991 events happened, and Yeltsin usurped Soviet power and told the other republics to do the same, suddenly the Western powers claimed that Yugoslavia was dissolving. Yugoslav republics were officially recognised as soon as Yeltsin plotted with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus to dissolve the USSR.
They absolutely insisted on dissolving Yugoslavia and managing its dissolution to create a precedent for the USSR that they feared would be "Yugoslavia with nukes"; to have these places break apart on the republic borders. No question of border adjustments. Yeltsin of course was cooperative on this (he in fact pushed the dissolution process hardest). Milosevic, as leader of Serbia, was not. He was challenging the view that the country should break up on the republican borders.
milosovic will be treated kindly by history.
Posted at 2008-03-18 13:25:42 [PermaLink]Mark, you ask a great question!
“If Kosovo can separate from Serbia, why cannot the remaining Serb part secede itself and rejoin Serbia (not to mention the Serb part of Bosnia-Herzegovina doing the same thing)?”
Those countries that supported Kosovo’s independence argue that Kosovo is a unique case in the world. They say that Serbia lost its right to govern the province because of the deep-rooted conflict and mistrust between the two ethnic groups.
What about an independent Palestine, Kurdistan, Tamil region in Sri Lanka, and many others? Secessionist tendencies, mistrust, and deep-rooted conflict are not unique to Kosovo only.
Korea Times writes that Sri Lanka’s northern Tamil region “arguably has a stronger case for independence than Kosovo.”
SAVO HELETA
Author of "Not My Turn to Die:
Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia"
[External Link]