End of ‘Supervision’ Means Little for NATO-Occupied Kosovo

Hot on the heels of the phony NATO handover of the Bagram prison in Afghanistan, another ceremony took place in Kosovo today marking another transition that means essentially nothing in practice, as Kosovo officially came out from under international “supervision.”

The reality of this transition is a distinction without a difference, as the European Union will retain its virtual stranglehold on internal Kosovar policies and NATO will continue with its military occupation.

And even this long after the occupation supposedly “settled” the matter, the question of Kosovo remains up in the air for even the European Union, with Greece, Spain and others still rejecting Kosovo as an independent state, fearing the precedent that unilateral secessions in mid-war would set.

The external dispute on Kosovo is nothing, of course, compared to the internal dispute, as the northern portion of Kosovo’s territory is ethnics Serbs who never wanted to secede from Serbia in the first place, and whose only contact with the southern government is southern forces trying to prevent them from crossing the border for trade.