By Melanie PhillipsLondon Spectator
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/
Sunday, 24th February 2008
The decision by Britain, America and certain other European countries to recognise Kosovo as an independent state is mind-blowingly stupid and suicidal and of a piece with their obvious determination to capitulate in the war for civilisation. It is a rotten decision for the following reasons:
1) It endorses a breach of a country's right to maintain its own integrity. Serbia is a properly constituted democratic country. To recognise the validity of such a secession is to undermine the principle of a country's right to determine its own composition. It puts up two fingers to international law, which explicitly recognises Serbian authority over Kosovo and upholds a state’s right to its own sovereignty. It opens the way for any other breakaway movement to do the same, both in the Balkans and around the world. So Tamils can now claim a precedent for seceding from Sri Lanka, Corsicans from France, Basques from Spain. And after Kosovo, can Scotland be far behind?
2) It asserts that religion matters more than nationality. This is multiculturalism taken to its lunatic natural conclusion. It says in effect that nationality is not the glue that must bind people of different creeds together, but religion or ethnicity can be allowed to break the nation apart. Every nation with restive ethnic minorities will now be undermined by this endorsement of illegal Balkanisation. Serbians will now find themselves foreigners in their own country. And as Eldad Beck applies the same thinking to Israel -- whose kamikaze government is said to be ‘thinking about’ recognising Kosovo too -- a horrific potential scenario presents itself:
In contradiction to all the pessimistic predictions, Israel and the Palestinians are able to successfully conclude negotiations on a final-status agreement, among other things based to incentives provided by the European Union. In the final stages of negotiations, Israeli representatives cave in to international pressure and waive the demand to recognize Israel’s unique Jewish character.
A short while after the agreement is signed, an uprising breaks out in the Galilee, in the Triangle area, and in the southern Negev desert, with Arab Israelis demanding a cultural and political autonomy that would enable them to manage their own lives while disconnecting from the State of Israel’s ‘Jewish’ institutions.
The bloody clashes between the sides prompt the United Nations to call on Israel to restrain itself and consider the deployment of multinational forces to serve as a buffer. The European Union threatens to renounce Israel’s special status if it fails to act immediately in order to meet the demands of the minority living within it. Israel’s dependence on the EU is so great that it is forced to capitulate and turn into a ‘greater Tel Aviv’ shtetl.
3) It gives victory to the forces of ethnic cleansing. Although the Serbs under Milosevic committed atrocities, the Kosovars started the killing in their revolt against a sovereign country and drove out between 150,000 and 200,000 Serbs. In the past eight years 1,248 non-Albanians have been killed, with many more kidnapped, now presumed dead. 151 spiritual and cultural monuments in Kosovo have been destroyed by Albanians and 213 mosques built with money from Saudi Arabia. Eighty per cent of graveyards have been destroyed or desecrated, with no response from the international community. The Albanians have turned Christian graveyards into car parks, playgrounds and rubbish dumps. Anything relating to Serbia or Christianity libraries, public records, books, names of places and even towns have been wiped out.
4) Most important of all, an independent Muslim Kosovo is a beachhead for radical Islam in Europe. Al Qaeda has been operating in Kosovo since the early 1990s. Jihadis from Yemen and Chechnya have been fighting with the Kosovo Liberation Army and Saudi is pouring money into the Kosovo mosques thus turning them into Wahhabi hotbeds of radicalism. Caroline Glick notes in the Jerusalem Post:
In 2006, John Gizzi reported in Human Events that the German intelligence service BND had confirmed that the 2005 terrorist bombings in Britain and the 2004 bombings in Spain were organized in Kosovo. Furthermore, ‘The man at the center of the provision of the explosives in both instances was an Albanian, operating mostly out of Kosovo... who is the second ranking leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Niam Behzloulzi.’
It was at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 that some 70,000 died to keep the Islamic Ottoman Empire from advancing further into Europe. What is the point of fighting the jihad in Iraq when we are cheerfully opening the door to it in that very same place?
Russia’s President Putin has warned that recognising Kosovo will rebound very badly upon the countries who have blundered into endorsing it. The fact that this outcome is merely the inevitable consequence of the war so unwisely prosecuted by those countries against Serbia does not soften its deeply alarming implications. Putin is warning only too correctly of the dangers to the west of this development and the supreme folly of endorsing it.
For once, Putin is on the right side and Britain and America are utterly wrong. That is the measure of this debacle.
Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'Londonistan', published by Encounter and Gibson Square.
Sunday, 24th February 2008
The decision by Britain, America and certain other European countries to recognise Kosovo as an independent state is mind-blowingly stupid and suicidal and of a piece with their obvious determination to capitulate in the war for civilisation. It is a rotten decision for the following reasons:
1) It endorses a breach of a country's right to maintain its own integrity. Serbia is a properly constituted democratic country. To recognise the validity of such a secession is to undermine the principle of a country's right to determine its own composition. It puts up two fingers to international law, which explicitly recognises Serbian authority over Kosovo and upholds a state’s right to its own sovereignty. It opens the way for any other breakaway movement to do the same, both in the Balkans and around the world. So Tamils can now claim a precedent for seceding from Sri Lanka, Corsicans from France, Basques from Spain. And after Kosovo, can Scotland be far behind?
2) It asserts that religion matters more than nationality. This is multiculturalism taken to its lunatic natural conclusion. It says in effect that nationality is not the glue that must bind people of different creeds together, but religion or ethnicity can be allowed to break the nation apart. Every nation with restive ethnic minorities will now be undermined by this endorsement of illegal Balkanisation. Serbians will now find themselves foreigners in their own country. And as Eldad Beck applies the same thinking to Israel -- whose kamikaze government is said to be ‘thinking about’ recognising Kosovo too -- a horrific potential scenario presents itself:
In contradiction to all the pessimistic predictions, Israel and the Palestinians are able to successfully conclude negotiations on a final-status agreement, among other things based to incentives provided by the European Union. In the final stages of negotiations, Israeli representatives cave in to international pressure and waive the demand to recognize Israel’s unique Jewish character.
A short while after the agreement is signed, an uprising breaks out in the Galilee, in the Triangle area, and in the southern Negev desert, with Arab Israelis demanding a cultural and political autonomy that would enable them to manage their own lives while disconnecting from the State of Israel’s ‘Jewish’ institutions.
The bloody clashes between the sides prompt the United Nations to call on Israel to restrain itself and consider the deployment of multinational forces to serve as a buffer. The European Union threatens to renounce Israel’s special status if it fails to act immediately in order to meet the demands of the minority living within it. Israel’s dependence on the EU is so great that it is forced to capitulate and turn into a ‘greater Tel Aviv’ shtetl.
3) It gives victory to the forces of ethnic cleansing. Although the Serbs under Milosevic committed atrocities, the Kosovars started the killing in their revolt against a sovereign country and drove out between 150,000 and 200,000 Serbs. In the past eight years 1,248 non-Albanians have been killed, with many more kidnapped, now presumed dead. 151 spiritual and cultural monuments in Kosovo have been destroyed by Albanians and 213 mosques built with money from Saudi Arabia. Eighty per cent of graveyards have been destroyed or desecrated, with no response from the international community. The Albanians have turned Christian graveyards into car parks, playgrounds and rubbish dumps. Anything relating to Serbia or Christianity libraries, public records, books, names of places and even towns have been wiped out.
4) Most important of all, an independent Muslim Kosovo is a beachhead for radical Islam in Europe. Al Qaeda has been operating in Kosovo since the early 1990s. Jihadis from Yemen and Chechnya have been fighting with the Kosovo Liberation Army and Saudi is pouring money into the Kosovo mosques thus turning them into Wahhabi hotbeds of radicalism. Caroline Glick notes in the Jerusalem Post:
In 2006, John Gizzi reported in Human Events that the German intelligence service BND had confirmed that the 2005 terrorist bombings in Britain and the 2004 bombings in Spain were organized in Kosovo. Furthermore, ‘The man at the center of the provision of the explosives in both instances was an Albanian, operating mostly out of Kosovo... who is the second ranking leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Niam Behzloulzi.’
It was at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 that some 70,000 died to keep the Islamic Ottoman Empire from advancing further into Europe. What is the point of fighting the jihad in Iraq when we are cheerfully opening the door to it in that very same place?
Russia’s President Putin has warned that recognising Kosovo will rebound very badly upon the countries who have blundered into endorsing it. The fact that this outcome is merely the inevitable consequence of the war so unwisely prosecuted by those countries against Serbia does not soften its deeply alarming implications. Putin is warning only too correctly of the dangers to the west of this development and the supreme folly of endorsing it.
For once, Putin is on the right side and Britain and America are utterly wrong. That is the measure of this debacle.
Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'Londonistan', published by Encounter and Gibson Square.
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