Blatant Reality

After Serbian protesters set fire to the US embassy in Belgrade last night, things seemed to have quieted down a little this morning, but Russia isn’t ruling out the use of force to end this situation. With all this going on, I feel that the Serbian government doesn’t seem to grasp the idea that things need to proceed fairly peacefully within its own borders.

The U.S. has received assurances from Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica “that there would not be a repeat of this episode, and we will hold them to that,” State Department spokesman McCormack said.

 

Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic, said: “Those scenes that we saw are regrettable. The Serbian government has repeated time and time again that any solution to the Kosovo problem — other than peaceful and mutually accepted a compromise solution — would lead to instability in the region. Unfortunately, this fell on deaf ears.”

If they can’t even keep their own populous from rioting, why would Kosovo want to stay part of Serbia? Obviously people are mad in Serbia and you can’t just expect them to listen to your words of “stay calm.” Things like that will definitely fall on “deaf ears.” Serbia’s government has obviously failed miserably at protecting its own citizens and the lives of foreigners. They are just lucky that things didn’t get to the point where any American embassy workers were killed.

If these protest to continue, I fear that the world will end up giving in to Serbia and Russia’s demands just to obtain peace, no matter the costs. They will forgo analyzing the issues just so that they can return to the status quo. If Kosovo is to return to being part of Serbia, it needs to be done peacefully and Serbia’s government needs show the world that it can protect its citizens from themselves. If things aren’t done peacefully and either Kosovo returns to Serbia or stays independent, I can see the Serbians taking a lot of their anger out on the Kosovars. Either way, it looks like NATO is going to be there for a while.