Where the past isn’t even past (The Economist)
A special court to try Kosovars for war crimes moves closer
Fight the good fight (The Economist)
FROM the Sea of Azov to Aleppo, fighters from the western Balkans are at war. So worried are their governments that laws have been passed to make fighting abroad illegal, and their security services co-operate with foreign ones to monitor them. The numbers are small, but the Balkans looms relatively large on foreign battlefields.
Orthodox Christian Serbs are joining pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine while Catholic Croats fight on Ukraine’s side. Muslim Albanians, Bosniaks and Muslims from Sandzak, the area straddling Serbia and Montenegro, have gone to fight in Iraq and Syria.
Small Balkan scandal (The Economist)
The EU’s mission in Kosovo is ensnared by corruption claims
Nov 15th 2014 | From the print edition
KOSOVO is agog and Brussels horrified. Allegations have been made that a judge was bribed in a murder case and the European Union’s police and justice mission, Eulex, failed to investigate properly. Maria Bamieh, the former British investigator behind the allegations, accuses Eulex of fabricating evidence against her and dispensing “Milosevic-style justice”.
Federica Mogherini, the EU foreign-policy chief, has appointed an academic to investigate.
Europe or Russia? (The Economist)
Vladimir Putin’s visit and a football match rekindle rows in Serbia
Oct 18th 2014 | BELGRADE | From the print edition
UNDER Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia’s prime minister, the country is caught between its European ambitions and his autocratic drift. This week’s visit by Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, highlights Serbia’s dilemmas. Its main strategic goal is to join the European Union, yet it is refusing to apply EU sanctions on its traditional ally, Russia.
Who will be indicted for war crimes? (The Economist)
War crimes in Kosovo
Aug 9th 2014 | PRISTINA | From the print edition
THIS is Kosovo’s holiday-and-wedding season, but some in the small Balkan state don’t feel much like celebrating this year. On July 29th Clint Williamson, an American prosecutor leading a special European Union task-force investigating war crimes, came out with a damning report. His team was created to look into claims in a report for the Council of Europe, published in 2010, which accused senior members of the wartime Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) of heinous crimes.