Judges at the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague April 3 found two former commanders of the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA), Kosova's ex-prime minister Ramush Haradinaj and Idriz Balaj, not guilty on all charges. A third ex-KLA defendant, Lahi Brahimaj, was sentenced to six years imprisonment. The three were accused of murders, rapes, torture and persecution of Serbs and perceived collaborators during the KLA guerilla struggle in 1998. (VOA, Kosova Live, April 3)

Some 40 activists marched against the NATO summit in Bucharest April 3, beating on drums and chanting "Stop the war, stop NATO" and "NATO out of Bucharest." In a pre-emptive strike before the march, Romanian security forces broke into a factory that had been rented by the protesters as a Convergence Center, detaining 46 for "identity checks." Eight others were picked up off the street and brought to police precincts. (Gipfelsoli Infogruppe, Germany, April 3) The city remains occupied by some 30,000 special police, military troops and intelligence officers. A "code yellow" security alert has been declared, with all protests forbidden. (Balkan Decentralized Network, April 3) A solidarity protest demanding release of the detained was held at the Romanian embassy in Berlin (IMC Deutschland, April 3)

Our March issue featured the story "Phantom Republics: Kosovo's Independence Reverberates Across Eurasia," by Rene Wadlow, a reprint from Toward Freedom. Wrote Wadlow: "The self-proclamation of independence by Kosovo may be the last act in the division of former Yugoslavia, or it may be one step in a new chain of territorial adjustments. There are calls in Republika Srpska, the Serb unit of the Bosnia-Herzegovina federation, for its integration into Serbia... There is also the impact of the example of Kosovo on the other phantom republics born of the break up of the Soviet Union: Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Transnistria in Moldova—and, if not completely crushed, Chechenya in Russia." Our March Exit Poll was: "Do you support independence for Kosova? If your answer is 'no,' please tell us how you feel about Palestine, East Timor, Western Sahara, Northern Ireland, the Basque Country and Puerto Rico. If your answer is 'yes,' please tell us how you feel about Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria." We received the following responses:

Serbia's minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, has proposed the ethnic division of Kosova to the UN mission in the disputed territory, a Belgrade newspaper reports. The key point of the accord offered to the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) is to create "the functional separation of Serbs and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo," Samardzic told the pro-government daily Politika. "We accept the [UN Security Council] Resolution 1244 and authority of UNMIK police, judiciary and customs, but after the unilateral proclamation of independence, only Serbs, aided by Serbia, could carry that out," Samardzic, a member of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica's party, was quoted as saying. He told Politika the proposal referred to all Serb-populated areas of Kosovo, and not only the northern Serb stronghold including the flashpoint town of Kosovska Mitrovica.

Newly pseudo-independent Kosova, it seems, is serving as a sort of political Rorschach test, with commentators' views on its drive for self-determination shaped more by their views on other issues. Days after left-wing Israeli dissident Uri Avnery noted Israeli reluctance to recognize Kosova lest it give some ideas to the Palestinians (and, worse yet, Israeli Arabs), comes a voice from the neocon end of the spectrum—finding that Kosovars and Israelis are natural allies. Michael Totten writes in a March 20 piece for Commentary (also online at his website):

With a boycott of the March 9 election called by parties barred from participation because of their presumed links to the armed separatist group ETA, abstentionism in Spain's Basque Country was at 35%—ten points higher than the national average. Elections in the three provinces that make up the semi-autonomous Basque region (Álava, Biscay and Guipúzcoa), the Socialist Party for the first time won power, ousting the long-ruling Basque Nationalist Party (PNV)—a "moderate" party which was not among those barred. The March 7 slaying of Isaias Carrasco, a former Socialist town councilor in Mondragón (known in Basque as Arrasate) was widely attributed to ETA.

The idiot left has lost no time in blasting Kosova's declaration of independence. The latest spew from New York's International Action Center screams "US Hands Off Serbia!" and cheers the Belgrade protests (where wanted war criminal Ratko Mladic was hailed as a hero) and the attack on the US embassy there. Predictably, the statement barely mentions the Albanians—and then only to note that almost a quarter of them have been forced to leave Kosova to seek work abroad. The uninitiated reading this propaganda would have no idea that the Albanians constitute over 90% of Kosova's population, and that they overwhelmingly—practically unanimously, it seems—support independence. Fortunately, there have been a few principled voices on the left who have had more honest things to say about Kosova...

Kosovo's Independence Reverberates Across Eurasia

by Rene Wadlow, Toward Freedom

The self-proclamation of independence by Kosovo may be the last act in the division of former Yugoslavia, or it may be one step in a new chain of territorial adjustments. There are calls in Republika Srpska, the Serb unit of the Bosnia-Herzegovina federation, for its integration into Serbia. There have also been discussions among Serbs of the partition of Kosovo with the area north of the Ibar River joining Serbia.