New fuel for the Balkan cauldron

Nor are there clips of weeping victims or ruthless murderers. Nevertheless, the Balkan cauldron has already started to boil.

Catalysts for change

Two key pieces of information appeared on the very same day. The first of these was that Kosovo, a Serbian province overwhelmingly inhabited by ethnic Albanians, could at any moment declare full independence - with the full consent and support of the US administration and European Union diplomacy. Serbia is categorically opposed to Kosovo's independence. The issue has led to a conflict between the West and Russia, Serbia's strongest ally, which is a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

The second item of regionally important news was relegated in the business sections of newspapers and news channels - the information that the Serbian government had accepted an agreement under which the Russian company Gazprom would become the strategic partner of state-owned fuel-market monopolist NIS. Gazprom and Srbijagas, an entity born of NIS in 2005, will run a branch of the South Stream gas pipeline through Serbia.

Russia plans to pipe gas to Central and Southern Europe across the Black Sea through South Stream. An underground storage facility for supplies from the Black Sea pipe will be constructed in the north of Serbia. This greatly strengthens the alliance between Moscow and Belgrade and, moreover, makes Serbia totally dependent upon Russia for its energy needs.

South Stream dilemma

Russian fuel expansionism shows how easy it is to fracture the political unity of the EU, along with its ideals of brotherhood, unity and solidarity. The first to succumb was Bulgaria, one of the youngest members of the European Union. Without asking Mother Brussels' opinion, it joined in the construction of the South Stream gas pipeline even earlier than Serbia.

This took place despite the fact that both Brussels and the US support the construction of the Nabucco pipeline, which - via Turkey - would send Caspian and Asian gas flowing into Central and Southern Europe. This would free the European Union from dependency on Russian fuel.

Greece also supports the construction of South Stream and some business and political circles in Italy have also begun to favor it. Without the slightest show of military might, Moscow has established a number of beachheads in the European Union, neatly dispatching any illusion of unity the bloc may have had. The Balkan example shows that the common economic policy of the Union is merely a utopian dream.

New order, new chaos

In the future, officials in Brussels will have to lean over a completely new map of the Balkan peninsula. First an independent Kosovo will appear and, soon afterwards, a large Albanian state - the result of a Kosovo-Albania union.

That is not the end, however. In due course, Serbia itself will take advantage of the precedent set by Kosovo and try to obtain independent statehood for that part of Bosnian territory inhabited by Serbs. In this it is likely to be supported by its Balkan neighbors - Greece, Bulgaria and Romania - which disapprove of the rebirth of Greater Albania. There will be no strength in the Union to resist the permanent creation of a Greater Serbia, as Bosnian Serbs reunite with their kinsmen.

This new Balkan alliance will be supported by Russia, which will build its political and economic influence in the region. Moreover, Bosnian Croats will surely want to taste independence and join their territory to present Croatia. Then in the very middle of the peninsula, around Sarajevo, there will arise one more small state - that of the Bosnian Muslims, where already both Syria and Wahhabi ideology have powerful influence. And Mother Brussels will soon find out that her Balkan children are more and more independent ... and less and less obedient.

 

Joanna Wóycicka is the former head of the foreign section of the Życie Warszawy and Życie newspapers and the former head of the foreign department at the Polish Press Agency (PAP). j.woycicka@hotmail.com