[PEN-L:6127] Re: partition?

[Ken Hanly <khanly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I was the person who argued for partition not Max, indeed my post followed a
long critique of Max's position. Barkley told me to go look at a map and that
the important religious sites were in the north not the south. I didn't
specify a percentage division or where the borders should be drawn. The north
seems most plausible so that the main border would be with Serbia but I left
those matters up to the parties and any
third party mediator. The advantages of such a solution are: it obviates the
difficulty of settling people, many of whom hate each other with a passion,
right next door to one another; it offers something to both parties; it would
be a settlement made by the main parties in Kosovo and avoids an imposed
solution meeting NATO's aims but not those of the Albanians or the Serbs. I
can't see that any other plausible solution would to any extent satisfy the
aims of both Serbs and ethnic Albanians. The Albanians will not settle for
anything less than independence at this stage rather than autonomy. I doubt
that NATO will allow the status quo ante in which Serb control of Kosovo
continues. As in the Rambouillet agreements NATO would fashion Kosovo
according to its own lights. Disarmed Serbs and the KLA would just have to
sit back and take it. I would not be surprised if this were the ultimate
outcome, a NATO protectorate
run by the IMF, World Bank, bright-eyed planners of democracy, police, and law
courts none of whom
have any roots or understanding  of the area.
    Cheers, Ken Hanly

Jim Devine wrote:

> In the current issue of LEFT BUSINESS OBSERVER, Doug Henwood interviews
> Robert Hayden, the director for Russian and East European Studies at the U
> of Pittsburgh. Hayden says as one point:
>
> "The political solution, I've been arguing, has been the partition of
> Kosovo, in which the Serbs would keep the northern 20%, which has most of
> their important religious and symbolic sites, and the [ethnic] Albanians
> would get the rest as a protectorate, and probably joining the rest of
> Albania after about five years. There would have to be some provision for
> redrawing the borders of Macedonia."
>
> In addition to pointing to the interesting phenomenon of this this
> anti-imperialist author advocating something very similar to what Max
> favors, I ask: but aren't the Serbian "sites" in the south, not the north
> of Kosova/o? Isn't that what you said, Barkley?
>
> Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
> http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
> Bombing DESTROYS human rights. US/NATO out of Serbia!