Balkanalysis.com

By Christopher Deliso It’s a clear warm spring day high on a barren, charred plateau in Macedonia, and Mike Goldstein is holding a Hebrew prayer book in his hands, with a row of tiny saplings decorating the freshly-turned earth at his feet. A retired general in the Vermont National Guard, Mike has been asked by [...]

By David Binder* Serbia is both blessed and cursed. So, too, are those blessed and cursed that are forced by geography or other circumstance to deal with Serbia. They usually become entrapped. The reason is obvious. As defined in the last century by Jovan Cvijic, the preeminent Serbian geographer of the Balkans, “We built our [...]

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 [...]

By Mehmet Kalyoncu Several developments are concurrently taking place in and around the Middle East, both national and regional ones, which are likely to have wider implications. First, the United States is reluctantly starting to realize that the mission “Operation Iraqi Freedom” is failing, and that fairly soon the withdrawal of troops from Iraq will [...]

(Balkanalysis.com Research Service)-  The May 7 arrests of six Islamic radicals, four of them ethnic Albanians originally from Macedonia and Kosovo, led American intelligence officials to issue a direct order to their Macedonian colleagues, urging them to redouble efforts against known and unknown Islamic radical elements in the country, Balkanalysis.com can now report. The alleged [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

By Mehmet Kalyoncu The assassination of Hrant Dink, one of the most prominent Turkish Armenians and the editor-in-chief of bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly newspaper Agos outside his newspaper’s office was a deplorable act by any definition. Yet it was not an unexpected one, given the selection of the target and its expected/actual impact on Turkish society [...]

By Lara Scarpitta* It is old news that geography matters in foreign policy. A dormant EC/EU had to learn this vital lesson in 1989, when communism crumbled behind its safe walls. Faced with the sudden prospect of bordering poor, unpredictable and unstable neighbours, it responded by anchoring the former soviet satellites of Central Europe with [...]

By Nikolas Rajkovic* In the quest to establish stability and democracy in Serbia, yet another tumultuous chapter is now beginning. In May of this year, the EU suspended Stabilization and Association talks due to the Kostunica government’s failure to arrest and extradite General Ratko Mladic. On October 1st, the Kostunica government fell over the same [...]