Evening Roundup Feb 18, 2008 -- Headchopping lessons from daddy

After the Read More!

A dad shows his son how to behead British soldiers. Serbia recalls its ambassadors from nations which have recognized Kosovo. In Iraq, reconciliation by the Coalition on the one hand and executions by al-Qaeda on the other. Hillary and Obama now neck and neck in Texas. Now the the "human rights officer" who interrogated Ezra Levant has resigned.

---

Poor little Abrar. His father, who lived on welfare, decided to find meaning in his life by plotting to behead British soldiers who were Muslims. I can't help thinking that Parviz Khan was a sad specimen of man whose ability to intimidate extended only to five year old boys. The Daily Mail tells the story of a man sentenced to jail for conspiring to kill a soldier of the Queen.

"Islamist fanatic" Parviz Khan was secretly taped ordering little Abrar to swear allegiance to Osama Bin Laden under threat of a beating with a stick.

He was also recorded asking his son Abrar: "Who do you love?" The child answered: "Sheik Osama Bin Laden. Sheik Abu Hamza" - a reference to the jailed hook-handed Finsbury Park Mosque cleric. Khan - who was paid £20,000 a year in benefits ... wanted Basiru Gassama, a Gambian national, to find a Muslim soldier who would then be lured to his death with cocaine during a night out in central Birmingham.

---

'Some damned fool thing in the Balkans.' Serbia withdrew its ambassadors from Washington and other major capitals in protest as the US and other European powers prepared to recognize Kosovo's independence. Reuters has a list of who will and who won't recognize the new country. China's ambassador to the United Nations warned that Kosovo's independence could split the U.N., and repeated his country's "deep concern" over the nascent state's unilateral move.

The Telegraph says the chances Kosovo can join the UN over the objections of Russia and China are small. With the international community split on the legitimacy of Kosovo, the Serbs are talking about encouraging their enclaves in the area to break away.

All in all Kosovo has created a great deal of diplomatic trouble. The EU has staked a great deal of its prestige on the outcome of a shaky deal in the Balkans. What is at stake to make it all worthwhile?

There will be no celebrations for the Serbs at least. Harry de Quetteville who has toured Kosovo says it's easy to spot a Serbian house in the new country. It's the one ringed with razor wire and guarded by KFOR troops. How will the Serbs far under the protection of the EU's 'army in suits' a "a justice and law mission of 2,000 police, judges and administrators" that is now being sent to the area?

---

Two articles serve as bookends to the situation in Iraq. Fred Barnes describes a series of laws that have been passed by the Iraqi parliament to institutionalize reconciliation and the fruit the Surge. "The most controversial--and the toughest to enact--gives significant power to provincial councils and mandates new provincial elections by October 1. As a result, leaders of the so-called Sunni Awakening who have broken with al Qaeda and insurgents are all but certain to gain power. And Iraq will have a decentralized, federal system of government."

The other bookend is a CNN news story describing the last, desperate attempts by al-Qaeda to keep its death grip on its final strongholds. "Video provided to CNN shows an al Qaeda in Iraq firing squad executing one-time allies -- fellow Sunni extremists -- who were not loyal enough to the terror organization, coalition military analysts said."

Question: is Barack Obama still going to withdraw troops as fast as he can no matter what?

---

Hot Air reports that Hillary's Texas "must-win is now a may-lose. He’s a 70% favorite for the nomination on InTrade as I write this; after tomorrow’s victory in Wisconsin plus another few weeks of campaigning, it’ll be 80% heading into March 4."

Meanwhile, Roger L. Simon wonders whether Barack Obama is peaking too soon. His experience in Hollywood may have led him to the belief that time is the enemy of fame.

---

Ezra Levant is unsympathetic to to job loss of a human rights bureaucrat charged with investigating him for publishing the Mohammed cartoons. I guess the bureaucrats thought it was safe enough to begin but the public outrage at the human rights inquisition generated soon made the job like trying to polish a running buzz saw or trying to floss with a razor blade. It can be done but why bother? In the end you've got to wonder what the bureaucrats who decided to make a case out of something like the cartoons in Canada were thinking. I'll bet the bureaucrats have decided by now that they weren't.

In a loosely related development, French police have raided housing estates to arrest youths suspected of inciting some of the recent riots in Paris. "They were suspects in the investigation into violent riots in these suburbs last November, which followed the deaths of two teenagers in a motorbike crash with a police car."

At some point even the worm turns.

---

Kosovo's Independence

After the Read More! Kosovo's Independence: who's for it, who's against. Who will protect the Serbs? Will it work?

---

President Bush backs the UN designed independence plan: "On Kosovo, our position is that its status must be resolved in order for the Balkans to be stable. Secondly, we have strongly supported the Ahtisaari plan," Bush said, referring to a so-called "supervised independence" plan put forward by the former Finnish president and UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari."

Ahtisaari presented a plan in early 2007 calling for independence under international supervision for Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia which has a 90-percent ethnic Albanian population.

---

A roundup of who will recognize the new state is reported by the Guardian.

Serbia said a declaration would be 'a flagrant and unilateral act of secession of a part of the territory of the Republic of Serbia and... therefore null and void'. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said it 'would be immoral and illegal'. Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro are also likely to reject it. The US and most EU countries will recognise Kosovo. Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Greece are against it.

---

Some 120,000 ethnic Serbs live in Kosovo, many next to the border with Serbia. Half of that number live under Nato protection in scattered enclaves south of the Ibar river. The VOA reports that "The European Union gave its final approval Saturday for a security force, which it calls a civilian peace and justice mission, to keep the peace and safeguard human rights in Kosovo after the the departure of the U.N. team that has administered Kosovo since 1999, when NATO airstrikes halted a Serbian crackdown on the province's ethnic Albanians.."

In one of the most ironical turnabouts, the mission of the West in the Balkans has shifted from protecting the Muslims to protecting the Serbs. What happens if the Serbs living in contiguity with the Serbian border join it, claiming their territory with them? This seems to be exactly what the Serbs have in mind. (See below)

---

The International Crisis Group provides the reasoning behind the acceptance of the Atisaari plan.

Forcing Kosovo Albanians back into a constitutional relationship with Serbia would reignite violence. Belgrade has offered little beyond proposing that Kosovo remain an integral part of the Serbian state. ... Instead it has tried to establish the basis for an ethnic division of Kosovo and partition along the Ibar River, which runs through the northern city of Mitrovica. It has done so by trying to delay the adoption of a Security Council resolution in the expectation that this would trigger a Kosovo Albanian overreaction, including violence, and so create the conditions for such partition. Partition, however, would not only destroy the prospect of multi-ethnicity in Kosovo but also destabilise neighbouring states.

The Ahtisaari plan is apparently a plan to keep the fractured egg of Kosovo glued together by a combination of EU money and police advisers, as the International Crisis Group goes on to describe.

The Ahtisaari plan is a compromise that offers Kosovo Albanians the prospect of independence, Kosovo Serbs extensive rights, security and privileged relations with Serbia, and Serbia the chance to put the past behind it once and for all and realise its European future. It is the best recipe for the creation of a multi-ethnic, democratic and decentralised society and fits within the European Union’s multi-ethnic project for the Western Balkans, which ultimately offers the prospect of accession. The EU is already the largest donor in Kosovo and plans to assume the lion’s share of responsibility for the post-status Kosovo civilian mission. Ultimately, Kosovo is, and will remain until resolved, a European problem.

But the egg is unlikely to stay glued together. A partition may eventually occur. The Serbs have clearly concentrated their ethnic population in anticipation of Kosovo's independence the better to prise a piece of it off. The Kosovars will be glad to be rid of the Serbs, but probably want the land. However, it will probably be too expensive to drive the Serbs from it as long as they are supported from Belgrade and Moscow. So they may have to cede the land to Serbia in the end. The EU will fold like a cheap suit the moment their representatives start taking casualties. If any sort of trouble breaks out look for them to make as quick an exit as possible. Either that or they will yell for NATO support. But even with that they will fold anyway.

In a decade the Balkans may have reorganized itself along ethnic lines. The intervention of Europe and NATO will have made the process more orderly and humane but it would not have succeeded in changing the basic outcome. The whole Balkan adventure is a cautionary tale about the limitations of specifying the "multicultural" idea as the cornerstone of the modern state.

---