“I see the danger of extremism in Kosovo,” Niall Ferguson, a British historian who teaches at Harvard University, has told Belgrade-based daily Politika.
He added he would be “very surprised” if New York Times reporting about Kosovo turning into “the new Molenbeek” did not come true.
Ferguson described extremism as a global movement that targets even secular communities and turns them into followers of an extreme version of Islam, and added: “We have created an unstable and dangerous state.”
Although he thinks the intervention in Kosovo was a success, Ferguson points out that the mistake was made later, “when Kosovo’s independence was recognized.”
He said this was a strategic mistake of the West, and that he “cannot see how any democratic president of Serbia could recognize Kosovo.”
This in turn means that Serbian accession to European Union is “almost impossible,” said the British historian.
Asked whether Serbia’s EU membership is impossible because of Kosovo, Ferguson said that “the West should think about this again.” “If peace and stability in the Balkans is in our interest, then there is little point in Kosovo being an obstacle to Serbia’s EU integration. Serbia also has to accept that Kosovo will never be a part of Serbia,” said he.
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