An act of war

I was already planning to write a post with this title before the Kosovo government talked about sending special police units to the north and Tadic reacted by calling this "war mongering".

My point is that the opening of the government office in the north was already an act of war. The basis of minority rights is that both sides agree not change things unilaterally. Yugoslavia started to destabilize when Milosevic changed the rules. It destabilized much more when the West recognized the secessionist republics before they had reached an agreement with Belgrade as was required by the constitution.

The problem of such an unstable situation is that the "winners" will feel that they can do whatever they want with facing sanctions while the "losers" feel that they are with their back to the wall and have nothing to loose. As a consequence people on both sides will feel more inclined to use violence. The grenade at the demonstration and the shots at the parliamentarian were a logical consequence of the unilateral opening of the office in N.Mitrovica.

What amazed me was that Kosovo minister Hyseni got away with stating that the grenade must have been thrown by a demonstrator. It is exactly this racist attitude why it is such a bad idea to bring Northern Kosovo under the rule of Pristina.