DW: “Balkan is boiling again”
28/02/2017 00:00
The Washington Agreement Must Be Reactivated! 06/01 19:04
Dutsche Welle says in a special article for Balkan that the ghosts of
the past seemed to have disappeared for some years. Former enemies shook
hands, dialogue procedures kept going and the EU membership perspective
was giving hopes, making the EU happy too.
But Balkan is boiling again, to the point that two Defense Ministers, both NATO members, Albanian Mimi Kodheli and Croatian Damir Krstevic, addressed a letter to the NATO Secretary General, Jense Stoltenberg, concerned that Serbia’s dangerous policies were threatening security in the region.
This declaration from both Ministers was made after Serbs in Northern Mitrovica built a wall, and a Serbian train covered with nationalistic slogans departed from Belgrade to enter Kosovo, but was stopped in the border, causing Serbian President to talk about war.
DW questions if the reconciliation era is over in Balkan, and if the region is going back to nationalism.
Croatian political expert at the Zagreb University, Nenad Zakoshek, says that the nationalistic fire was never completely put out in Balkan. For him, the clear perspective of a future in the EU was what stopped nationalism these years, and made peace procedures progress. Any delay of this perspective would cause a negative dynamic, because disappointment from the EU is already turning into a problem for the region.
Zakoshek brings Macedonia to attention, a country that for him has regressed, due to the delayed EU accession perspective. Zakoshek says that a new nationalistic era might even cause wars in Balkan.
While Trump has given a sensation of the USA abandoning the region, and with the EU having its own problems, the current nationalistic tendencies may get stronger in Balkan, especially under the influence of Russia and its authoritarian system.
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