Nation Building in Kosovo

Serbian attacks on the American consulate in Banja Luka on Tuesday and the burning of the American embassy in Belgrade last week were ugly but pitiful gestures of spite and impotence. But they were also reminders that nations rarely declare independence without violence of some sort.

In the case of Kosovo, the birth pangs have so far been remarkably mild; but that is largely because the conflict between Serbs and Kosovars was decided nine years ago by North Atlantic Treaty Organization's military intervention.

The Kosovo war of 1999, which precipitated the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic's regime in Serbia, left Kosovo in limbo — protected by NATO but with independence on hold. So Kosovo had to wait until the rump of the old Yugoslav federation, of which it was officially an autonomous province, ceased to exist in 2006.

Kosovo's declaration of independence on February 17 thus concluded a long process — the process by which the ethnically Albanian and religiously Muslim people of this poor, remote, mountainous Balkan region finally achieved self-determination.

When, though, did that process really begin? With the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s? With the death of Tito in 1980? With Yugoslavia's creation after the First World War or its recreation after the Second? With the Serbian conquest of Kosovo from the Turks in 1912? Maybe we have to go right back to the Middle Ages, to the one date that every Serb and Kosovar knows: 1389, the Battle of Kosovo.

This battle, according to a legend which lives on in present-day Serbian nationalist mythology, was the greatest calamity of their history: the victory of the Ottoman over the Serbian empire, and of Islam over Christendom.

As the British historian Noel Malcolm showed in his Kosovo: A Brief History (1998), almost everything that Serbs believe about the Battle of Kosovo is false. It was seen at the time as either a draw or a Turkish defeat: not only the Serbian commander Prince Lazar, but his Turkish counterpart Murat were killed — the first time that a Turkish sultan had died on the battlefield. Whoever won, it did not decide the fate of Serbia, and only assumed its later importance centuries later, first in epic poetry and folk tales, later in 19th century nationalist ideology.

Today's conflict over the legitimacy of the independent Republic of Kosovo is seen by Serbs through the prism of that mythology. The reality is that medieval Kosovo was only under Serb rule for about 250 years, from the 13th to the 15th century. It was then under Turkish sovereignty until 1912, by which time the population was overwhelmingly Albanian Muslim.

As elsewhere in the Balkans, the demography of Kosovo fluctuated throughout the wars and purges of the 20th century, but the higher birthrate of the Albanians ensured that the Serbs never constituted more than a fraction of the population. By the time Milosevic began ethnic cleansing in 1998, the Serb population of Kosovo was no more than 10%.

Now that Kosovo is finally independent, the rest of Europe must also live with the fact that it has another Muslim state after Albania — not to mention Turkey, which now claims to be European too.

This poses a problem that is difficult for people in Britain, say, to take seriously. A café we sometimes go to in Kensington High Street, not far from where we live in West London, is owned and staffed entirely by Kosovar immigrants. Polite, charming, and law-abiding, they are grateful to be living in the kind of free country that some indigenous British Muslims angrily insist must be replaced with an Islamic Caliphate. Nor have the Kosovars forgotten what happened in 1999, when Britain and America came to their rescue.

So we like the Kosovars and they like us. But the truth is that Kosovo, like any other Muslim country, is not immune to jihadi radicalization. There are worrying reports of Wahhabi clerics taking over the mosques, of Saudi money pouring in, of Kosovan links to the terrorist attacks on Madrid and London.

If Kosovars want international recognition for their independence, they must be made to understand that there can be no place for an Islamist republic in the heart of Europe. They will have to crack down on the jihadis, kick out the Wahhabi missionaries, and prove to the world in general, and Europe in particular, that they deserve to be accepted as part of western civilization.

A few miles south-east of Kosovo, the Turks announced this week that they are to edit the Koran and the oral tradition known as Hadiths to remove anti-Jewish or anti-Christian verses. At least Turkey seems to be aware that it has a public relations problem. But the deeper problem lies with Islam's literal-minded obedience to scriptures that ordain holy war.

That road of fundamentalist jihad is — literally — a dead end. If Kosovo wants to avoid that dead end, and place itself on the path that leads to freedom and prosperity, it should make clear to the world right now that it will eschew theocracy forever.

A new constitution is being drawn up to replace the provisional framework imposed by the United Nations interim administration. Kosovars would be wise to include a clause which, like the First Amendment, establishes freedom of religion and prohibits the creation of an Islamic republic. Only thus will Kosovo earn the trust that America and most of Europe have given it.