The Balkan Chronicle

Barbed wire and burnt-out vehicles, trucks laden with logs splayed across the roads, stone-throwing mobs and panicking international peacekeepers cowering behind their riot shields. The Balkan checkpoint, wearily familiar from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, is back.

In an attempt to keep a little swath of Kosovo Serbian, Serbs have cut roads, blocked passages and erected checkpoints at a score of locations across the north of Kosovo bordering Serbia since the summer.

Last week dozens of German and Austrian peacekeepers and Serbian protesters were injured in clashes as the confrontation escalated into a crisis whose impact is reverberating well beyond this poor, dusty corner of south-eastern Europe.

The title of this blog post is taken from an old Yugoslav song. The Vardar is a river that runs through Macedonia; Triglav is a mountain in Slovenia celebrated on the country's flag. It seems an apt way to describe the news pouring out of the former Yugoslavia. A round-up is in order:

Macedonia. A triumphal arch was recently erected in Skopje, Macedonia's capital. It wasn't obvious what triumph it was supposed to be celebrating. But today Macedonians have an answer. Judges at the International Court of Justice have ruled by 15 to 1 to uphold Macedonia's complaint that, by derailing its bid to join NATO in 2008, Greece violated an interim agreement made in 1995 not to block Macedonia's accession to international organisations before the contentious issue of the country's name was resolved.

A series of events from June onwards provides strong evidence that EU-Serbia relations are approaching a turning point. Serbia's apprehension of Mladic and Hadžić, the commencement of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue and the positive opinion of the Commission on EU candidacy represent valuable evolutions. For Serbia, it has improved its European and international standing, boosting its chances of obtaining EU membership. For the EU, it has strengthened its stabilizing role in the Western Balkans.

Greece was in the wrong when it blocked Macedonia's admission to NATO because of a dispute over the former Yugoslav republic's name, the UN's highest court ruled Monday.

The 2008 action violated a provisional agreement reached in 1995 to end the long-running row, the International Court of Justice ruled, saying Athens had "breached its obligation." Macedonia lodged a complaint before the ICJ shortly after NATO was forced to turn it down for membership because of Greece's objection.

As the nation once called Yugoslavia collapsed into a deadly maelstrom through the 1990s, the world largely stood mute in the face of unspeakable atrocities: ethnically-driven mass murders, concentration camps and rape as a weapon of war. Conventional wisdom blamed the Balkan nations for their own blood-soaked disintegration, which took more than 130,000 lives.

The principal stand against the horrors unfolding in the region came through the United Nations Security Council, whose members banned weapons sales to the region.

Now, nearly 20 years later, new facts are emerging that cast a different light on that narrative, and show that other nations had a hand in stoking the deaths and destruction that engulfed the Balkans.

The Serbian interior minister's position that Serbia must not say that it would not go to war over Kosovo so it would not break the "balance of fear" has been supported by opposition Serb Progressives (SNS) and Serb Radicals (SRS).

Bogdanović, who serves as minister for Kosovo, pointed out that he also supports the idea of defending people in Kosovo by all means.

SNS Presidency member Borislav Prelević says that Dačić's positions are completely in accordance with Serbia's interests.

Mersiha stands in front of a modernist apartment block in the center of downtown Zagreb and nervously rings the bell at the entrance for the umpteenth time while calling the same mobile number over and over.

She sees the light on the fourth flour where her potential home should be. The curtains on the windows seem to be moving, and someone up there is looking down, but no one opens the door or answers the phone.

It's 9:30 p.m. and half an hour has passed since the arranged time to view the apartment for rent. Mersiha finally gives up. "He must have seen me, which is why he doesn't want to open up," she tells me angrily later, meaning her headscarf.

A new chapter in ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic's war crimes trial has opened with the testimony of a survivor of the Srebrenica massacre, Europe's worst wartime atrocity since Nazi rule.

The protected witness's testimony rings in the final phase of the prosecution's case before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, focusing on July 1995 killings during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.

Kosovo, a country that has been recognized by 85 members of the UN so far, is considering the Macedonian strategy, which uses a different diplomatic title when it conducts its diplomacy with international organizations due to disputes with Greece over its name since the declaration of independence in 1992, to start dialogue with the EU over visa liberalization despite the objections of some EU countries.

Waiting for the next EU summit that will take place in Brussels next month Kosovo's major objective is to start visa liberalization dialogue with the EU similar to that of the other Balkan states. On the other hand, there are still major obstacles to surmount considering the fact that five EU members, Spain, Slovakia, Greece, Romania and Greek Cyprus, do not recognize the small Balkan country.

Sixteen years after Serb-initiated ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the world is still cleaning up the mess. On Wednesday, the UN Security Council extended its peacekeeping force there for another year.

Twelve years after NATO bombed Belgrade to stop Serb genocide in Kosovo, there's no solution in sight there, either.

In both cases, the Serbs are still the principal cause of the crises

Sure, Slobodan Milosevic, the chief war criminal of the Balkans, has long been gone. There's no more war. Serbia, the successor state to the disintegrated Yugoslavia, has been on a democratic path. President Boris Tadic has apprehended war criminals, and gets along with former enemies — Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo. He has done so partly to strengthen Serbia's candidacy for the European Union, which insists on good neighbourly relations as a condition of entry.

Seeking to cement unity among Serbia's Muslims, Turkey is acting to end divisions among two major Muslim groups in the Serbian region of Sandzhak, the Hurriyet Daily News reported.

"These are controversial issues that have long been discussed in Serbia, in Sandzhak," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters in Belgrade.

Sandzhak is a historical region lying along the border between Serbia and Montenegro.

Muslims in Sandzhak are divided between two groups; the Islamic Communities of Serbia and the Islamic Communities in Serbia.

Led by Muammer Zukoric, the Islamic Communities of Serbia has close links with the Grand Mufti of Bosnia Herzegovina, while the other group, led by Adem Zilkic, is backed by Belgrade.

The Empire-manufactured reality matrix continues to disintegrate. Aware that its grip on power is rapidly weakening, the quisling regime in Serbia is now trying to whip up anti-Russian hysteria. Their target is Moscow's ambassador, Aleksandar Vasilevich Konuzin. Back in September, Konuzin stood up at a pro-NATO event in Belgrade, hosted by "NGOs" on Empire's payroll, thundering, "Are there any Serbs in this room?" This was in response to NATO troops beginning an operation of seizing the north of the province for the "independent" Albanian regime; an attempt thwarted by the Kosovo Serbs themselves, despite Belgrade's constant betrayal.

More recently, Konuzin attended a rally of the opposition Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), and praised it for advocating change. This drew harsh criticism from the government and its hangers-on, who charged the Russian with "interference" and "disrespecting Serbia's sovereignty."

SARAJEVO won today as much as Istanbul,” declared Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, after his election victory in June. His comment excited new debate in the western Balkans about Turkey’s activist foreign policy. Are the Ottomans coming back? Several examples suggest not.

In Ankara on October 22nd, Muslim politicians from Bosnia and Sandzak in Serbia praised the Turks for mending a rift between Serbia’s two Islamic groups. The deal swiftly collapsed. The Turks were also praised in 2010 for reconciling Serbia with Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) politicians in Sarajevo. Yet relations between Bosniak, Serb and Croat politicians in Bosnia remain icy. A recent poll showed that views of Turkey in the region divide pretty clearly between Muslims (pro) and Christians (anti).

Thanks to the Russian ambassador Alexander Vasiljevich Konuzin and his public performance, the first Belgrade Security Forum remained in the shadow of a media hubbub. Today, however, this is already history, since the situation at the crossings Jarinje and Brnjak has been deteriorating, and the rightwing organizations are demanding that the Pride Parade in Belgrade be banned, and at that, primarily due to security reasons.

To make the situation even more complicated, the Independent Police Union of Serbia (family people from the Ministry of Interior) joined the inevitable [rightwing organization] Dveri, and appeared in the public warning that certain organized groups are planning the operation "Belgrade in flames". Thus, in their opinion, it is best to cancel the Pride Parade, planned for October 2nd.

Nikola Tesla, who in Serbia is adored like a demigod, is considered to be the most important person in the history of the country's neighbor, Croatia, according to preliminary results of a Facebook poll by Croatian Internet portal Index.hr. This is likely to vex many Serbs, who say that this inventive genius–who among many other things developed alternating current and the radio–is one of their own.

The undisputed fact is: Tesla was born to Serbian parents in 1856 in the Austro-Hungarian empire in a village situated in what is modern-day Croatia. Success and the realization of most of his inventions, however, only came after his move to the United States.

For three months, this gritty mining town has been a flash point of Balkan ethnic tension ominous enough to prompt new deployments of armed NATO peacekeepers and action by the European Union to slow Serbia’s long-sought bid for membership.

In the long siege at makeshift gravel barricades, ethnic Serbs hurled rocks toward ethnic Albanians on the other side of the Ibar River, and earlier this summer hooded men in summer shorts and sneakers firebombed a border control station, stoking fears among Western powers of spiraling ethnic clashes in northern Kosovo.

The death toll from a powerful earthquake in eastern Turkey rose into the hundreds on Monday, as rescue teams worked a second night to extract survivors, and residents fearful of aftershocks fought for tents to shelter their families.

As of late Monday, 279 people had been confirmed dead and 1,300 injured after nearly a thousand buildings either collapsed or were severely damaged in Sunday's quake, according to Turkey's emergency agency, AFAD. Officials said the number of dead was certain to climb.

The most-damaged areas were the cities of Van and Ercis and nearby villages in the region near the Iran border. Earthquake teams in Ercis, the worst-hit town, said the effort was one of the most organized responses the country has seen. Turkey declined offers of international help—including from estranged ally Israel—other than from fellow Turkic-speaking Azerbaijan.

The crisis in Greece does not help the image of the Balkans in the West. But neither does it help the image of the West in the Balkans.

While it is less likely now for countries such as Bulgaria to be admitted to the eurozone, none of them are burning with desire to join either. As they accumulate debt and sink deeper into poverty, they are waking up to the realization that EU membership will not save them: They will always remain in a semi-periphery, a source of cheap labor and resources preyed upon by the EU's voracious multinational banks and corporations.

There, in black and white, her grandfather and other relatives, all bearing distinctly Muslim Albanian names, were listed as born in Greece.

"It's surefire proof we are Greeks," Mustafaj, 65, told Reuters in the village of Shengjergj in Albania's eastern Korce region.

NATO peacekeepes have given Serbs until tomorrow night to remove roadblocks on the border between Kosovo and Serbia, as a tense stand-off threatens to trigger renewed violence in the region and damage Belgrade's bid for European Union membership.

Fighting has erupted twice in recent months at the frontier, where local Serbs refuse to recognise Kosovo's independence from Belgrade and reject the presence of customs officers from the fledgling state's 90 per cent ethnic-Albanian majority.