What Will an Independent Kosovo Mean?

The West is putting pressure on the Kosovar Albanians to delay declaring independence until well into the New Year. Some think reason for this is that the West wants to create favorable conditions for the re-election of pro-Western democrat Boris Tadic as president of Serbia. The only other serious candidate for the presidency is Tomislav Nikolic, the acting leader of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party, whose founder, Vojislav Seselj, is on trial in the U.N. war crimes tribunal in Holland.

If Nikolic was to win the presidential elections, the West fears there will be a serious danger of "losing Serbia," but if Tadic wins a second term in his office, then there is a chance for Serbia, after a period of anger over losing Kosovo, to stay on the path to Euro-Atlantic integration. And, if Tadic can win, then he should be in a position to finally assert some serious influence in government, which he has not done in the last year.

The current prime minister in Serbia, Vojislav Kostunica, is a democrat and a moderate nationalist. But on the issue of Kosovo, he is unyielding.

Later in 2008, the current U.N. administration will be replaced by the EU mission, to implement Martti Ahtisaari's "supervised independence" plan.

However, a big piece of this puzzle is missing: What will this mean for the stability of the region, where war is never a remote possibility? Today, Albanian nationalism is also very strong in western Macedonia (where Albanians are in a majority), in southern Montenegro and in northwestern Greece.

There is another reason to be cautious about granting independence to Kosovo: It could lead to renewed ethnic cleansing of the more than 130,000 Serbs who remained in the province after NATO troops allowed more than 200,000 Serbs to be expelled from Kosovo by the Albanians eight years ago. The "reverse-cleanse" included virtually all the 40,000 Serbs who once lived in Pristina.

Belgrade controls Mitrovica, Zvecani and Lipanj, three municipalities in northern Kosovo populated by the Serbs, over which Pristina has no authority at all. This area will almost certainly demand partition. Albanian minorities in Macedonia and Serbia could call for a change of borders and Bosnian Serbs will in turn seek independence from Sarajevo.