Kosovo

Remember the Kosovo War? The one that NATO won in 1999? The one where Trent Lott was the leader of the antiwar faction in the Senate?

Kosovo was then and still is legally part of Serbia, though since the war it has operated as de facto independent, with a significant NATO force still stationed there.

Now a former guerrilla with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) has won the presidential election there: Hashim Thaci, de guerrillero a primer ministro de Kosovo El Mundo 18.11.2007.

Now he says he intends to declare Kosovo and independent country, which supposedly would be named Kosova (don't ask me what the difference is). Serbia has said they would do whatever they have to in order to block formal Kosovar independence. The Russians have been backing Serbia on this. They prevented a recent UN Security Council vote on the subject.

It's a reminder that even clear successes in these "small wars" leave a lot of complications to be unraveled. Actually, the immediate goal of that war, stopping the Serbian ethnic cleansing of Kosovars, was not immediately achieved, and there is a lot to criticize about that war in retrospect. But in the United States and Europe, it was and is seen as a success.

Tags: kosovo, kosovo war