Ariel Rusila's Conflicts [Ex-BalkanPerspective]

Different aspects of freedom are fundamental value of human rights in Balkans as well globally. While starting of a year it’s good time to check the near past and make some benchmarking. Rankings or ratings are one kind of (process) benchmarking in which organizations or in this case states evaluate various aspects of their processes in relation to best practice. In 1 st part of my "Freedom in Balkans" serial I make a short update about political rights and civil liberties. Part 1 - Political Rights and Civil liberties In my article “ Freedom in Balkans ” On September 2008 I wrote about the freedom ratings with political rights, civil liberties, religious and press freedom in Balkans. Now Freedom House released the findings from the latest edition of Freedom in the World 2009 , the annual survey of global political rights and civil liberties. The ratings reflect an overall judgment based on survey results and global events from Jan. 1 st through Dec. 31 st 2008. In m...

American history professor Charles Ingrao said that he expects the new U.S. administration's Balkans policy to differ from that of George Bush. U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has already gathered a group of advisers who have great experience with the Balkans, Ingrao told Belgrade daily Večernje Novosti. (Source: Vecernje novosti, Tanjug and B92 5th January 2009) I found also three other interesting remarks from his interview as he said that Obama is "a lot more capable of analyzing complex issues" and that he would use his term to build relations with European partners and would not ignore the Balkans. that a group of 300 American scientists, historians, sociologists and lawyers will submit a special report on U.S. policies for the Balkans over the last two decades in late January. that “The U.S. government lied to its citizens regarding its resolve to arrest war crimes suspects, including Radovan Karadžić, to whom Richard Holbrooke promised that he would not be a...

I am a bit worried about a trend at the beginning of year 2009 - a trend I hope will not dominate the rest of the year. The phenomena in my mind is the new tradition of non-negotiation. Crisis management and solving conflicts will be much more harder if local stakeholders are unable even to talk each other. Few examples from last weeks: Israel does not negotiate with Hamas so war and human catastrophe will continue before some outsiders are broking s.c. temporary ceasefire or truce while sustainable solution would need long and deep negotiations between local partners. U.S. and Iran are discussing in UN and direct talks we must wait until new President takes his office in White House. Let's hope that situation does not escalate before that. If real talks had been implemented earlier some today's problems in Middle East could be now smaller or non-existing. Separatist government in Kosovo province does not want talk with Belgrade authorities about technical details of UN s...

After years of deadlock year 2008 showed some promising signs of progress with dispute between Moldova and Transdnistria/Pridnestrovie – its separatist region or independent state depending of viewpoint. After a 7-year long pause the leaders of Moldova and Transdnistria met on April 2008, conflict in Georgia launched new process while Russia took a stronger role as mediator. The culmination of year was meeting between President Voronin/Moldova and President Smirnov/Transdnistria on Xmas week. Short history In 1992 Moldova and Transdnistria fought a brief, bitter war which the separatists won, with the assistance of a contingent of locally-based Russian troops left over from the Soviet Red Army. Cease fire left Russian troops in place as peacekeepers and Transdnistria has since then acted de facto as independent - although not recognized – state. Conflict was frozen nearly ten years, then started first serious try to find sustainable solution. In the Spring 2003 Dimitry Koza...

War in the Gaza Strip has continued now over week, diplomats and demonstrations are demanding ceasefire immediately - war news and high-flown statements are following each other like they have done last decades. In this never ending story it was very refreshing to read an article of John R. Bolton published in Washington post 5 th Jan. 2009. This former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations 2005-2006 has quite unusual idea to solve the Gaza conflict. Instead of empty statements and dead road maps he is proposing “The Three-State Option”. Again his thoughts are not pleasant or polite to highly idealistic diplomatic elite but maybe therefore his idea could work on the ground. The original article can be found from here but I quote some highlights: We should ask why we still advocate the "two-state solution," with Israel and "Palestine" living side by side in peace, as the mantra goes. We are obviously not progressing, and are probably going backward. W...

Situation in Gaza is escalating to full scale war with already some 400 deaths and triple of that in hospitals. Using of force can stop rockets from Gaza to Israel for a while but what after that. Gaza strip is so small piece of land hat creating a sufficient buffer-zone – minimum 40 km for present day’s hand-made rockets – is impossible, occupation would cost human lives and money for years, human catastrophe would stay without any perspective of better future. I think that in Balkan history some lessons could be learned and applied also in the Middle-East. If some ethnic groups hate each other and when both can base their views and claims to selected parts of hundreds or thousands of years so basically there only two peaceful solutions: to train tolerance for generations developing same time living conditions or separate the groups by ethnical lines. Balkans have long experience about the second option. Balkan examples In recent history the vast movements of population provoked by...