Kosovo is a textbook example of the law of unintended consequences

Anne Applebaum looks at the likely consequences of an independent Kosovo. Kosovo will be another toehold for Islamists, especially the Whaabi. This puts an Islamic state within rocket range of central Italy. It also gives Islamists a springboard into the EU (I was going to say Europe, but that exists no more). Jihadi from around the world can jet into Kosovo and then take land transportation anywhere in the EU.

Just as important is the fact that other political entities will also want independence. The ramifications of all this will be felt in negative ways for decades to come.


FROM JEWISHWORLDREVIEW.COM:

Kosovo is a textbook example of the law of unintended consequences
By Anne Applebaum
As not everybody now remembers, the wars of Yugoslavia began not in Bosnia, not in Croatia, but in Kosovo. The chain of events that led to the Srebrenica massacre and the bombing of Belgrade started there, in the late 1980s, when Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic launched a series of repressive measures against this mostly Albanian, semi-independent, "autonomous province" within Serbia. These culminated in 1990, when Milosevic ended the semi-independence, revoked Kosovo's autonomy, installed a new police force, shut down Albanian newspapers, fired university professors, and generally inflicted economic and political chaos.

Milosevic's intention was to reassert Serbian and Orthodox dominance over Kosovo, the site of a historically significant battle between the Serbs and the Ottoman Empire in 1389 (the Serbs lost), and home to a genuinely substantial Serbian minority. And the result? This week, nearly two decades later, Kosovo — an Albanian-speaking, majority-Muslim state in which, it's safe to guess, Serbs will be less than fully welcome and no Orthodox church will be safe from vandalism — has just declared independence from Serbia. A more eloquent demonstration of the law of unintended consequences would be hard to find.

In fact, watching the crowds celebrate Saturday night in the streets of Pristina, I wondered there isn't a deeper lesson here for other would-be neighborhood bullies. Milosevic's stated goal was, after all, the greater glory of Serbia (he had other, unstated goals as well, such as the perpetuation of a communist-era power structure; but never mind). Spouting Serbian nationalism, he helped turned Serb minorities across Yugoslavia into mini-militias. They, in turn, inspired the creation of other mini-militias — Croatian, Bosnian, Albanian and others — which began fighting one another in a series of small, nasty wars.
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