En la boca del lobo

• Para los que auguraron el desastre, este análisis podría suministrarles información de interés:

A year has passed since Kosovo declared independence on 17 February 2008.  Concerns about possible widespread violence and/ or a mass exodus from the Serb enclaves, have not materialised. While there have been violent episodes, the situation has remained largely stable.  Kosovo’s government has made positive gestures to the Serb minority and committed to protect minority rights, including through the decentralisation of local government and preserving the Serb cultural and religious heritage. In July the international community demonstrated its commitment to supporting the new state by pledging € 1.2 billion in aid for Kosovo. After long delays, the EU Rule of Law Mission (EULEX) finally became operational on 9 December, including, crucially, in the north.

Más en International Crisis Group / Kosovo

• Para los que no saben lo que sucedió o siguen pretendiendo que no sucedió:

Early in the morning on May 14, 1999, a large force of Serbian paramilitaries, soldiers, and special police appeared in Qyshk, a farming village in western Kosovo. The Serbs had come to Qyshk before, searching for weapons and valuables, but this time they herded the residents, all ethnic Albanians, toward the center of the village. They said that they were looking for Hasan Ceku, the father of General Agim Ceku, the chief of staff of the Kosovo Liberation Army. This was at the height of the war between the Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’s forces and the K.L.A., and seven weeks after NATO had entered the conflict, bombing Belgrade and other parts of Yugoslavia in an attempt to halt Milosevic’s brutal campaign against Kosovo’s Albanian majority. Hasan Ceku, who was sixty-nine years old, came forward, according to an eyewitness. To prove who he was, he produced a picture of his son Agim. “They shot Hasan right there, and set him on fire,” another witness said. The Serbs also killed Agim’s uncle Kadri Ceku.

Más en Letter from Kosovo The Countdown de William Finnegan publicado por The New Yorker el 15 de octubre de 2007

• Y esta crónica de un excepcional periodista británico, Anthony Loyd:

Far beyond the borders of Serbia a sickening form of revisionism has prevailed across the years among critics of Kosovo’s desire for independence. Some of it is born from a smug desire for controversy. Much of it comes from ignorance. A part of it derives from racism: inscrutable, impoverished, Muslim, their language and culture unlike any other in Europe, Kosovo Albanians are an easy “white nigger” target for the self-satisfied elements of Western Europe’s pseudo-political classes.

Más en Kosovo deserves its independence

Para Miguel Ángel Moratinos: Kosovo, A short History Noel Malcom. Pan Books. Un libro esencial para entender, aunque seguro que lo conoce. Si es así, que se lo pase a Zapatero.

Para Carme Chacón: Tres cantos fúnebres de Ismael Kadaré. Alianza Editorial. El primer canto es extraordinario. Se podría haber cantado en España en cualquiera de sus nacionalismos, incluido el franquista. ¿Quiénes son los trovadores en nuestra larga, sangrienta, triste y apasionante historia?

Para José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero: Postales desde la tumba de Emir Sulidjic. Galaxia Gutemberg. Se centra en Srebrenica, pero ayuda a recordar que en política las personas deben ser el eje. Y más las que han sufrido persecución.

A la gente del PP les recomiendo cualquier cosa menos presumir. Los discursos completos del hombrecillo insufrible (Ansar, claro) serían una buena terapia. Si les parece un castigo excesivo, que lo es, puede bastar este gran artículo que acaba de aparecer en The New Yorker.

Regime change was one of the stated goals of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Unlike cleansing the place of weapons of mass destruction and breaking up the alleged Baghdad-Al Qaeda nexus, it was a reality-based goal; and, unlike the other two (which were as unattainable and unnecessary as ridding the moon of green cheese), it was actually accomplished. Saddam Hussein’s regime has indeed been changed—though what it has been changed into, of course, is not quite what was intended.

Más en Follow the Leaders de Hendrik Hertzberg