Allow me to respond to professor Peter Prifti's Jan. 8 letter, "Albanians act out desperation," which was a response to my Jan. 3 article, "The case against Kosovo independence."
(In his letter, Prifti asked if "fellow Slavs" such as Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians and Montenegrins could not live under the same roof with the Serbs, how could one expect Albanians -- who are not Slavs -- to do so?)
Ethnic minorities do take up arms against the majority to carve out their own nation state, with or without oppression, especially if there is a religious component to the ethnic divide.
Catholic Slovenia and Croatia were encouraged to secede by Catholic Bavarians, Austrians and the Vatican. The Vatican was the first to recognize the independence of these two states.
Montenegrins are Serbs just as Austrians are Germans. The secession of Montenegro was motivated by the wish to avoid the punitive sanctions against Serbia and by the belief that they would enter the European Union earlier if they seceded.
Slovenia and Croatia were more prosperous provinces and did not wish to subsidize the poorer republics and autonomous regions. Kosovo was the poorest within the Serb republic and was subsidized heavily by tax-paying Serbs.
There was no Serbian oppression of Slovenes, Croatians or Bosnian Muslims. The half-Slovene and half-Croatian dictator Josif Broz Tito ruled Yugoslavia on the principle that "a weak Serbia makes for a strong Yugoslavia."
In Kosovo, the Serbian crackdown was in response to Albanian violence against Serbs and the destruction of many of the 800-plus Serbian historical, religious and cultural monuments there. Except for a tiny sliver of land in the north, there are no Serbs left in Albanian-populated Kosovo.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.