The Presevo Monument: A Chip, a Decoy and an Outpost

source: voiceofserbia.org

The deadline for removal of the Preševo monument has passed without action by the men responsible to act, or at least the man who set the deadline in an outburst of verbal bravado, Ivica Dačić. Dačić threatened a forceful removal, instead of taking legal action. It was clearly smoke and mirrors, as is usually the case with Dačić's "threats." Threats of no less than a war over the monument from the Albanian side, both in Kosovo and the Preševo area, only amplified the clamor.

Serbia's government, increasingly subjugated to the will and whim of Western officials, even the low-ranking ones, like Philip Reeker of the U.S. State Department, decided to allow the monument to the men who attempted to rip off another part of it to remain standing. For the sake of charade, the Preševo municipal assembly decided to "legalize" the monument in a weird twist of Serbian jurisdictional mumbo-jumbo. Just like the monument to Aćif-efendi remained standing and just like no one talks about that formerly hot topic anymore, the Preševo monument will probably experience the same legitimization. The museum built to honor the commander of the terrorist OVPMB, which, as an extension of OVK (Kosovo Liberation Army), was thwarted in its attempt to transfer the NATO war against Serbia east of Kosovo administrative line in 2000-01, has never even been debated as an issue in the Serbian public. I don't consider the museum to be any less of a provocation against the home country by the Albanian minority than the Preševo monument. I hate when I have to substitute arguments with comparisons of this type, and I know how Americans like to think their lives are objectively more precious than lives of others, but imagine building a monument to Mohammed Atta in the lobby of the Freedom Tower. There.

The fact that Serbia's increasingly subservient prime minister cowers before any threat to his good standing with Western powers doesn't make the threat of the Greater Albania design, being materialized beyond the territory of Kosovo, any less critical. The fact that Serbia shies away from a conflict may indeed mean that the Albanian encroachment beyond Kosovo is fully supported by Western imperialists in the same way their terrorist actions in Kosovo were in 1998. Dačić is currently meeting with Hashim Thaci in Brussels and their working lunches may produce changes in the Kosovo stalemate, but considering the fact that the imperialist European Union is sponsoring the talks, there is no doubt that those changes will only benefit the Albanian side, even if in the short term Dačić is able to sell the solutions as a win.

source: nasisrbija.org

In other related news, Serbia's National Assembly adopted the Resolution on Kosovo and Metohija built on principles that were not very dissimilar to the principles Serbia was guided by in the failed Vienna talks in 2006. It will be interesting to see if Dačić, who has already allowed the Albanian customs to stand at the administrative line crossing, effectively drawing a border, obeys the Resolution in his talks with Thaci. President Nikolić's Platform has already been dismissed by both Dačić and, of course, Thaci. In Priština, any and all Serbian official lines are ridiculed and outright waved off. Albanians are not ready to negotiate, but only to accept no less than the official recognition. The EU keeps sending mixed messages but the course of its actions doesn't speak loud enough only to those paid not to hear. The EU has police presence in Serbia's occupied province without any international agreement warranting it and its mercenaries in Belgrade still dare to speak of its political missionaries as neutral, as some form of mediators. How could an occupying force be impartial in the process in which the country its armies occupy is a participant? Were the Nazi Germans impartial to their Croat cronies' genocide against Serbs? No, they allowed it and supported it. Why does anyone expect Catherine Ashton to impartially mediate talks between the side her bosses support and the one her bosses have fought a war against?

Dačić often insists on resolving the Kosovo issues once and for all. This is illogical because it puts the imperative on Serbia to strive to solve the issue that others imposed on her, while the other side is actually the one begging for a solution. The Albanians and their overlords need Serbia to affirm what they call "reality" and legitimize their aggression against her. What better absolution of sin than when the victim herself absolves the aggressor?

The Preševo monument issue may indeed play out as a bargaining chip against Serbia and for Dačić at this stage. (I say "at this stage" because no agreement made with the Albanians and their overlords is permanent. Even if the Preševo issue is a decoy now, the Preševo Valley subject will open up under the Greater Albania design eventually.) If Dačić comes back from Brussels with Thaci's nod to the Preševo Albanians to remove the monuments, whatever further concessions he makes to Thaci will be masked in the "victory" of the monument removal. As things stand now, even this is hardly likely. So, I'll quit speculating about something we will find out very soon.

source: webpublicapress.net

No matter how Dačić spins it, the policy of concessions to the EU hasn't produced anything positive and brought back only losses to Serbia. But since it is Serbia who is professing its undying desire to join the EU, the bargaining power generated by the fact that it is others asking something of Serbia is lost. With it, the power to condition the side across the table in the Kosovo haggling is gone. Thus, Dačić continues Boris Tadić's policy of allowing the Kosovo recognition in through the back door, distracting the Serbian public with side issues by amplifying them in a way that trumps real, meaningful debates about Serbia's strategy of defending its national interests.

The Preševo monument issue in itself, notwithstanding the humiliation and provocation it represented, should be irrelevant to everyone outside of Serbia's prosecutors and courts. In a country that increasingly acts like a colony, it becomes a matter of high political priority that must be resolved with the involvement of foreign ambassadors. Meanwhile, the people of Serbia sink deeper into discontent and, while Tadić's removal from power is still regarded as a definite positive, the new administration, continuing on his path in many areas, doesn't have a promising future. Voices against the Western imperial tyranny and plundering are ever louder, especially among the youth, radicalized in opposition to the continued Western aggression against the Serbian nation.