By Atlas Al

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on February 17^th, 2008. Does this make them an internationally recognized sovereign state? No, it does not.

While countries buy advertising space on CNN to attract foreign direct investment, Kosovo seeks statehood recognition. (Watch here.) One of these commercials showed people from around the world congratulating Kosovo on its independence, or second birthday. Miss Kosovo 2009 (2^nd place in The Miss Universe competition) even said a few words. When I saw this for the first time I was like, “What the hell, Kosovo’s not a country!” And how can someone compete in an international beauty pageant that doesn’t even represent a legitimate country? – which will be the topic of another blog post entirely.

Their marketing tactics are professional-looking and convincing, but are misleading. If what they wanted was for people to be confused and ask themselves, “Is Kosovo really a country,” they’ve succeeded.

In the aftermath of the Kosovo War, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1244 in 1999. The creation of this resolution is significant because it clearly recognizes Serbia’s sovereignty (at the time it was called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) over its southern province of Kosovo.

Wikipedia’s article on the United Nations Security Council’s Resolution 1244 says it best, “Reference to the Article 1 of the Helsinki Accord places high value on the Sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with Kosovo recognized as an autonomous province. In a similar fashion the references to autonomy in 1244 articles points to a final goal of essentially returning Kosovo to the pre-1999 status of autonomous province within the Serbian legal framework.”

Currently, the UN maintains a peacekeeping presence in Kosovo, but they won’t be there forever. They will leave. If the UN didn’t have peacekeepers in Kosovo or in the general region right now, I bet there’d be another war in the Balkans. Look what happened after the USA declared its independence from Britain: a war ensued.

Kosovo is definitely playing their cards right. They see a chance for independence since the State Union of Serbia & Montenegro dissolved into a separate Serbia and a separate Montenegro in 2006. They’re not going to claim their independence when the UN peacekeepers have already left.

What interests me most is what Serbia will do in the coming years. So far, they’ve peacefully petitioned Kosovo’s independence claim with the International Court of Justice. If Kosovo doesn’t get its way being the “newly born”, “young Europeans” they claim to be, will they split anyway? I highly doubt Serbia will allow another loss of territory nearly the same size as Montenegro to happen again.

Unlike Montenegro’s peaceful split that had international approval, the international community does not fully endorse Kosovo’s independence movement. It’s true that some 65 countries recognize Kosovan sovereignty, including the United States, most of Europe, Japan, and Australia. Unfortunately though, 65 out of roughly 193 countries is not majority recognition.

The promising so-called Republic of Kosovo has become a member of The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund among other organizations, and that’s great. I predict Kosovo will be the next region of the world to gain independence; it’s only a matter of time.

However, claiming independence and being independent are completely different scenarios. Until that day comes, if you shagged someone from the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, you got the Serbian flag.

Flags of the World, European flags, Serbian flag

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