Balkanalysis.com

By David Binder Forget about status negotiations for a moment. The near-term outlook for Kosovo is unalterably grim: an economy stuck in misery; a bursting population of young people with “criminality as the sole career choice;” an insupportably high birthrate; a society imbued with corruption and a state dominated by organized crime figures. These are [...]

Special Report by Balkanalysis.com Director Christopher Deliso At around 5am on 7 November, an ethnically-mixed elite police force in Macedonia raided the remote, Albanian-populated village of Brodec. Their target: a group of vigilantes, led by a known Wahhabi extremist and a paramilitary partner who had been mysteriously sprung from jail in Kosovo in August. It [...]

By David Binder Remember what it was like last winter and spring with the Kosovo issue? Hardly a day went by without a declaration or a prediction that a resolution would be achieved in days, weeks, a month. Independence was just around the corner. Condoleezza Rice, Nicholas Burns, Daniel Fried, Frank Wisner and the pathetic [...]

(Balkanalysis.com Research Service)- The July 3 decision by Richard Monk, the UN police commissioner in Kosovo, to ban rubber bullets in anticipated upcoming showdowns with Albanian protestors angry at the slow pace of independence bodes ill for the efficacy of UN policing, against protestors who have already been emboldened by the apparently weak-willed nature of [...]

By David Binder Could Kosovo, as a newly independent state in the middle of the Balkan Peninsula, become a second Israel? A thorny question: Merely linking Kosovo and Israel in the same sentence could invite accusations of anti-Zionism on the one hand or anti Illyrianism on the other. Yet there are some historic parallels. I [...]

(Balkanalysis.com Research Service)- A Slovenian intelligence source has confirmed for Balkanalysis.com a claim made recently in the Serbian media- that the Wahhabis arrested at a training camp broken up near Novi Pazar on St. Patrick’s Day had connections with Kosovo militants, the final status process there and potential violence again Serbs in the North Mitrovica [...]

(Balkanalysis.com Research Service)- Former KLA chief and ex-Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj was returned to the custody of the Hague Tribunal today, just as the recent death of a potential key witness in the international court’s war crimes case against him underscored the likelihood that the powerful Albanian leader will prevail by way of intimidation. [...]

By Borka Tomic (Serbian Institute for Public Diplomacy, Brussels) While some high US officials have claimed that Kosovo’s “train for independence has left the station,” recent developments show that the train for Kosovo’s future might not be stopping at the station of independence. Namely, the Council of Europe, the continent’s oldest political organization, with the [...]

(Balkanalysis.com Research Service)-  According to a report from A1 TV yesterday, Izet Mexhiti, the young Albanian mayor of Skopje’s Cair municipality, from the DUI party of former NLA leader Ali Ahmeti, has proposed that 20 percent of the city’s streets should be renamed to honor the many heroes of the Albanian people. Among these heroes, [...]

By Carl Savich When discussing the opposing claims of Serbs and Albanians over Kosovo, its history and its rightful future status, mass media reports often include the obligatory sentence about Kosovo being “Serbia’s historic and culture heartland.’ Usually, the unstated implication for including the phrase is that the Serbs are unfortunate and delusional nostalgics, living [...]