Who wants change?

Everybody, looks like! Cuba, Kosovo, and Pakistan … for starters.

Fidel has finally stepped down, as long expected, and shifted power into the hands of his brother, Raul. Fidel, bless his boney head, has longevity, the longest in power and the least willing to give in at any level; once again, this harkens back to that 60’s energy that’s shadowing us now. Cuba is a mere 90 miles from American soil — Florida is in an uproar.

Kosovo has declared its independence from Serbia — neither Serbia nor Russia are amused, but the Americans and Europeans support this move. The Serbs have already attacked Kosovo border points and NATO has sent in peacekeepers. We have no troops to send, obviously … so international pressure will have to do.

Pakistan has had enough of Musharraf’s dictatorship — his interference with their Supreme Court last year loaded the gun and Benazir’s assassination pointed it … it just went off in an election designed to reestablish a parliament, and step Mr. Musharraf down. Pakistan is the most unstable of our trio, and the most dangerous.

This is all pretty stunning on the day Mercury goes direct and leads us into the second, and lunar, eclipse. These are the kind of events that prove to us, once again, that nothing is static and written in stone … and we need to be ready to shift with the tides.

Impressive news day! I’ve posted a couple of MSM pieces on each of these countries, and a blog entry to break down the rhetoric.

Jude

Fidel Castro Stepping Down as Cuba’s President
Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 19, 2008

MEXICO CITY, Feb. 19 — Fidel Castro announced early Tuesday morning that he is stepping down as Cuba’s president, ending his half-century rule of the island nation.

“I am saying that I will neither aspire to nor accept, I repeat, I will neither aspire to nor accept the positions of President of the State Council and Commander in Chief,” Castro, 81, said in a letter posted on the Web site of the state-run newspaper, Granma.

The announcement ends the formal reign of a man who, after seizing power in a 1959 revolution, not only outlasted nine U.S. presidents but his communist patrons in the former Soviet Union as well. Prior to the Soviet Union’s collapse, support from the Kremlin sustained Cuba as a socialist outpost on the doorstep of the United States, and placed Castro and his country in the middle of events central to the Cold War, including the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis.

Those long-standing animosities colored Tuesday’s announcement and U.S. reaction to it.

Castro said leaving office was a hard step for him given all that his “adversary” — the United States — had done over the years to try to get rid of him, including assassination plots.

President Bush, asked about the news in a public appearance during his trip to Africa, said: “The question really should be what does this mean for the people in Cuba. They are the ones who suffered under Fidel Castro.”

Bush said he hoped this would be “the beginning of a democratic transition for the people of Cuba . . . An interesting debate will arise. Some will say let’s promote stability. In the meantime, political prisoners will rot . . . This should be a transition to free and fair elections. And I mean free and fair. Not these elections that the Castro brothers rig.”

Castro had temporarily handed over power to his younger brother, Raul Castro, in July 2006, after undergoing stomach surgery. He has kept a low profile since, but still officially holds the title of president and was widely believed to retain control over Cuba’s government.

The ailing leader, who has a penchant for cryptic messages, mentioned in the letter posted Tuesday that he had hoped “to discharge my duties to my last breath. That’s all I can offer.”

Cuba’s Council of State, a panel comprised of handpicked Castro allies, is scheduled to name the country’s next president when it meets Sunday. In previous years, the selection was always a foregone conclusion, with the council picking Fidel Castro. The council is now widely expected to select Raul Castro, 76.

Fidel Castro made no mention of Cuba’s future leadership in the letter. He had previously said that he hoped his brother would replace him. Vice President Carlos Lage and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque are also considered top contenders to lead the nation.

Since taking power on an interim basis, Raul Castro, who is the head of Cuba’s military, has repeatedly referred to his older brother as Cuba’s “commander in chief.”

“Raul, who is also minister of the Armed Forces on account of his own personal merits, and the other comrades of the Party and State leadership were unwilling to consider me out of public life despite my unstable health condition,” Fidel Castro wrote. “It was an uncomfortable situation for me [vis-a-vis] an adversary which had done everything possible to get rid of me, and I felt reluctant to comply.”

Cuban exiles and their supporters in the United States said they were skeptical that change will come soon with the Castro family still in charge.

“I have no hope that Raul Castro, who has been the older brother’s enforcer, will be the agent of change that Cuba needs,” U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), a Cuban native who has been staunchly anti-Castro, said in an interview on CNN. Nevertheless, “it is a good day for the Cuban people . . . At least we have one down and one to go.”

Castro rose to power in the Cuban Revolution in 1959, an era when Socialist and Communist movements were gaining influence in many less developed countries. Alongside Ernesto “Che” Guevara, he became a revolutionary icon and drew followers from around the world.

Throughout his time in office, Castro clashed with the U.S. government, which backed a failed invasion of the island at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and maintains a trade embargo against it.

Castro did not discuss the current state of his health in the letter, but did provide a narrative of his illness.

“In my necessary retreat, I was able to recover the full command of my mind as well as the possibility for much reading and meditation. I had enough physical strength to write for many hours, which I shared with the corresponding rehabilitation and recovery programs,” he wrote. “Basic common sense indicated that such activity was within my reach. On the other hand, when referring to my health I was extremely careful to avoid raising expectations since I felt that an adverse ending would bring traumatic news to our people in the midst of the battle.

“I kept saying that my recovery ‘was not without risks.’ ”

There were few people in the streets of Havana early on Tuesday after the announcement, according to a person in the capital who spoke by phone on condition of anonymity. There did not appear to be any unrest. Cuba has a small dissident movement among its 11 million people, but its leaders have not sought a change in the country’s leadership since Castro’s illness was announced.

Castro’s announcement was posted on the Communist Party newspaper Web site before dawn on Tuesday. Access to the Internet is strictly limited in Cuba, and only a few elite politicians, military leaders and scientists have access in their offices or homes. The vast majority of Cubans can only access the Internet at state-run facilities, where they must pay an hourly fee and where many popular sites, such as Yahoo and Google, are blocked.

It is unclear what role, if any, Castro will play in governing Cuba now that he has officially stepped down. Many Cubans believe that he will be the real power in the nation — regardless of titles — as long as he is alive.

Raul Castro has pushed for reforms that would open the island’s economy more to foreign investment, but Cuba experts say those reforms have been stymied by his brother. As head of the military, Raul Castro oversaw Cuba’s tourism industry, a key source of revenue that helped revive Cuba’s economy after the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of subsidies from Moscow.

After the announcement on Tuesday, Trinidad Jimenez, Spain’s secretary of state for Iberoamerica, suggested that economic reforms could be in the offing.

“This is a moment in which [Raul] can assume the process of reforms that he has spoken of with greater capacity, solidity and confidence and in which these reforms could start to materialize,” Jim¿nez said, according to the Spanish news agency EFE.

Cuba struggles with a foundering economy that has left most residents living in poor conditions. Cuban officials blame their economic woes on the U.S. trade embargo, which they say makes it more expensive for them to import key items, such as rice — a staple of the Cuban diet — and cars.

Raul Castro has made numerous statements about trying to improve Cuba’s inefficient agricultural system. During a speech last July in Camaguey, he criticized Cuban farmers for failing to cultivate land and announced plans to improve distribution of milk.

Castro’s resignation is sure to resonate heavily in Florida, a bastion of anti-Castro sentiment where more than a million Cuban-Americans now live. Hundreds of thousands of supporters of the Fulgencio Batista regime fled to Florida and other parts of the United States after Castro’s 1959 victory. Another wave of Cubans left the island during the 1980 Mariel boatlift when Castro allowed political opponents to emigrate. The exodus overwhelmed the city of Miami, which converted the famed Orange Bowl into a shelter.

Cubans continue to flee the island, in part because U.S. immigration policy gives them preferential status when seeking political asylum. Under the so-called “wet foot-dry foot” policy, Cubans captured at sea are generally denied entrance to the United States, while those who are caught on U.S. soil are generally allowed to stay.

The initial reaction to the news in Miami was cautious. Prominent exile leader Jos¿ Basulto said in a telephone interview that he didn’t expect major changes. Basulto is the founder of the group Brothers to the Rescue, which aided rafters fleeing the island and dropped leaflets condemning Castro in Havana in the 1990s. The Cuban government has accused the group of being involved in terrorist attacks on the island, an accusation denied by Basulto.

Basulto has been trying to persuade the U.S. government to back his effort to bring criminal charges against Raul Castro for the downing of two Brothers to the Rescue airplanes off of Havana in 1996.

On Tuesday, Basulto said: “If the United States truly wants change in Cuba, they will help us with this. If Raul Castro is charged, there cannot be a legal succession of power in Cuba.”

Janisset Rivero, the executive director of Cuban Democratic Directorate, a group that works with dissidents in Cuba, told CNN that Fidel Castro’s announcement “doesn’t mean any change to the system. It doesn’t mean there will be freedom for the Cubans. One big dictator is replacing the other.”

Exiles in the blogosphere, meanwhile, scoffed at the idea that this would bring meaningful change.

“We are supposed to sigh and take a breath of relief. Not us,” one anti-Castro blogger wrote early Tuesday. “Be alert, the Cuban people is not free. The tyranny apparatus is in place, Castro and Castroism are still there. No changes.”

Fidel Castro Resigns As Cuba’s President, Brother Raul Castro Take Over
ANITA SNOW, AP
February 19, 2008

An ailing, 81-year-old Fidel Castro resigned as Cuba’s president Tuesday after nearly a half-century in power, saying he will not accept a new term when parliament meets Sunday.

The end of Castro’s rule - the longest in the world for a head of government - frees his 76-year-old brother Raul to implement reforms he has hinted at since taking over as acting president when Fidel Castro fell ill in July 2006. President Bush said he hopes the resignation signals the beginning of a democratic transition.

[...]

President Bush spoke about Castro and the future of Cuba while on his trip through Africa:

President Bush, asked about the news in a public appearance during his trip to Africa, said “the question really should be what does this mean for the people in Cuba. They are the ones who suffered under Fidel Castro.”

Bush said he hoped this would be “the beginning of a democratic transition for the people of Cuba . . . An interesting debate will arise. Some will say let’s promote stability. In the meantime, political prisoners will rot . . . This should be a transition to free and fair elections. And I mean free and fair. Not these elections that the Castro brothers rig.”

Barack Obama released a statement on Castro’s resignation:

“Today should mark the end of a dark era in Cuba’s history. Fidel Castro’s stepping down is an essential first step, but it is sadly insufficient in bringing freedom to Cuba.

“Cuba’s future should be determined by the Cuban people and not by an anti-democratic successor regime. The prompt release of all prisoners of conscience wrongly jailed for standing up for the basic freedoms too long denied to the Cuban people would mark an important break with the past. It’s time for these heroes to be released.

“If the Cuban leadership begins opening Cuba to meaningful democratic change, the United States must be prepared to begin taking steps to normalize relations and to ease the embargo of the last five decades. The freedom of the Cuban people is a cause that should bring the Americans together.”

John McCain, R-Ariz., also issued a written reaction to the media.

“Today’s resignation of Fidel Castro is nearly half a century overdue. For decades, Castro oversaw an apparatus of repression that denied liberty to the people who suffered under his dictatorship.

“Yet freedom for the Cuban people is not yet at hand, and the Castro brothers clearly intend to maintain their grip on power. That is why we must press the Cuban regime to release all political prisoners unconditionally, to legalize all political parties, labor unions and free media, and to schedule internationally monitored elections.

“Cuba’s transition to democracy is inevitable; it is a matter of when — not if. With the resignation of Fidel Castro, the Cuban people have an opportunity to move forward and continue pushing for the moment that they will truly be free. America can and should help hasten the sparking of freedom in Cuba. The Cuban people have waited long enough.”

Castro’s successor is his brother youngest brother Raul, the man who has been the de facto ruler of Cuba since 2006.

Who is Raul Castro? According to Wkipedia:

Raul Modesto Castro Ruz (born June 3, 1931) is the President of Cuba and Acting President/First Vice President of the Cuban Council of State. The younger brother of former Cuban President Fidel Castro also occupies the positions of First Vice President/Acting President of the Council of Ministers, Acting First Secretary/Second Secretary of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), and Acting Commander in Chief Maximum General of the Armed Forces (Army, Navy, and Air Force), second only to the Commander in Chief, Fidel Castro.

Raul Castro fought alongside his brother in the 1953 assault on the Moncada barracks. He was jailed, along with Fidel, for 22 months. It is Raul who is said to have befriended Che Guevara and introduced him to Fidel. In 1959 the Castro brothers, Guevara and their guerilla army returned to Cuba and overthrew Fulgencio Batista’s government in 1959. Older brother Fidel assumed leadership and officially ruled until today.

Dump the Cuban Embargo
Matt Cooper, HuffPo
February 19, 2008

I’m in the U.S. Airways Shuttle Terminal at La Guardia. It’s a late night in October, and I run into a senior economic official from the Clinton administration. We catch up on friends, and I tell him that I’m working on a column about the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba and what a disaster it’s been — for Cuba and for the United States. The official says this to me: “If someone had told supporters of the embargo that after nearly 50 years, the Soviet Union would be gone; Communism would be gone from Eastern Europe; China, while Communist-controlled, would have 300 McDonald’s and thriving capitalism; that Cuba would be one of the only Marxist governments left; and, oh, that Castro would still be alive, they might have thought differently.”

The American embargo of Cuba is one of those things that most of the political elite in Washington privately acknowledge as a failure. Publicly, they defend it because of fears that the Cuban American community, famously concentrated in presidentially pivotal Florida, will beat the tar out of them. In October, President Bush reiterated his commitment to it in a speech to Cuban dissidents, and it’s no wonder that none of the leading presidential candidates has called for abolishing the embargo, initiated in 1960 as Fidel Castro’s regime began confiscating U.S. assets. During the past 47 years, the embargo has evolved into a slew of restrictions on travel and trade, all designed to bring down Castro. And it’s worked so well!

It’s time to end the embargo — unilaterally and completely. The policy has been useless as a tool for cudgeling Castro, and it is hindering opportunities for American industries from travel to banking to agriculture, which is why there’s no shortage of U.S. business groups lobbying to ease it. Far from hurting the deplorable Communist regime, the embargo has only given Castro an excuse to rail against Uncle Sam, both to his own people and to the world. Every year, Cuba asks the United Nations for a vote lifting the embargo. What happens? We usually end up with a couple of superpowers like Palau and the Marshall Islands standing with us. Last year, the vote was 183 to 4. The embargo makes us look like an arrogant bully.

Sure, in the early days of the cold war, we persuaded other countries to help us isolate Castro by severing trade ties with him. But in the ensuing years, they’ve all fallen away. That’s why you can buy and smoke a fine Habana Cohiba pretty much anywhere but in the U.S.  sanctions are hard enough to enforce when the world agrees on them, as was the case with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. With Cuba, it’s an embargo of one, which is like a lone guy in Times Square on New Year’s Eve grumpily refusing to put on a party hat.

While we grouse, the world sells. Italian telecoms, French hotels, and Korean automakers are more than happy to trade with an island 90 miles off our shores. Of course, Cuba is not a huge market: The island is the size of Pennsylvania, but its population is only 11 million and its G.D.P. a mere $46 billion. By comparison, Vietnam, the last Communist country with which we ended a dubious embargo, is 85 million strong, with a G.D.P. of $262 billion. Selling to Cuba wouldn’t slash our trade deficit, but it wouldn’t hurt us either.

Aside from hindering American business, the policy also keeps us from having any political influence over the country, says my old friend Julia Sweig, who is the foremost Cuba expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. She’s been to Cuba nearly 30 times and has escorted the likes of the Blackstone Group’s Pete Peterson to meet with Castro. Reading her work and talking with her shaped my thinking for this piece. “We’re shooting ourselves in the foot,” she says near her Dupont Circle office.

Kosovo Gains Recognition By U.S., Some in Europe
Peter Finn and Peter Baker, Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 19, 2008

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Kosovo, Feb. 19 — The United States and the European Union’s largest countries recognized the independence of Kosovo on Monday, a major boost for the fledgling state, which still faces intense opposition from Russia, Serbia and even some Western European countries over its proclaimed status.

President Bush, traveling in Africa, hailed the new state’s “special friendship” with the United States, promising to set up a U.S. embassy there and inviting Kosovo to establish a diplomatic mission in Washington. Asked Tuesday about Russia’s opposition, Bush told reporters, “There’s a disagreement, but we believe as do many other nations that history will prove this to be the correct move.”

In a letter Monday to President Fatmir Sejdiu, Bush said, “On behalf of the American people, I hereby recognize Kosovo as an independent and sovereign state.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who first announced the U.S. decision, tried to placate the Serbs, and by extension their closest allies, the Russians. “We invite Serbia’s leaders to work together with the United States and our partners to accomplish shared goals,” she said in a statement.

In a widely expected move, Kosovo’s independence from Serbia was declared Sunday by its parliament, dominated by ethnic Albanians. The decision has divided the European Union, which is to supervise independence and replace a U.N. mission that has acted as the province’s overseer since Serbian forces withdrew from Kosovo in 1999.

What happens next is unclear. Russia and Serbia have called on the United Nations to overturn the independence declaration, and Russia appears likely to try to block any attempt to wind down the U.N. mission here and turn it over to the E.U.

At an emergency U.N. Security Council session, Serbian President Boris Tadic warned that Kosovo’s act would embolden other separatists and that Serbia’s relations with Kosovo’s supporters would be harmed. “If you allow this illegal act to stand,” he told council members, “you will show that right and justice may go unrespected in the world. You will show that, unfortunately, this body of the world organization is losing its authority.”

Tadic reiterated Serbia’s commitment to forgo violence against Kosovo, but his foreign minister, Vuk Jeremic, said, “Serbia is going to fight tooth and nail, diplomatically and politically” to reverse this “illegal decision.”

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made it clear that the United Nations would continue to support Kosovo as it begins its transition to full independence, but he sidestepped a question about whether Kosovo’s declaration was legal. “I know that the independence of Kosovo has been recognized by a number of countries, and I’d like to remind you that the recognition of states is for the states and not for the U.N. Secretariat,” Ban said. “I’m not here to say if it is legal or illegal.”

American and some E.U. diplomats say they think Ban can order the transition without referring the issue to the Security Council, where Russia holds veto power.

Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, an official in the Russian Foreign Ministry, told the news agency Interfax that Moscow “expects the head of the U.N. Mission in Kosovo to invalidate the resolution of the Pristina parliament.”

Members of Kosovo’s Serb minority insist they will never recognize the declaration of independence. The vast majority of them appear determined not to cooperate with E.U. oversight, though it is intended to guarantee their rights in Kosovo, which is 90 percent ethnic Albanian.

Thousands of Serbs marched in this divided city Monday chanting, “This is Serbia!” Much of northwestern Kosovo is almost entirely Serb.

“Serbia regards this as theft,” Serbia’s deputy minister for Kosovo, Vuko Antonijevic, said in an interview at the rally. “Serbia will try to keep Kosovo within our borders, and we will use all political and diplomatic means to achieve that.”

In a worrying sign for the new Kosovo government, and the future E.U. mission, Serb policemen have begun to leave the multiethnic Kosovo police force created by the United Nations and are pledging loyalty instead to authorities in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, according to political leaders here.

The creation of separate governing and law enforcement bodies in Serb enclaves, particularly in northern Kosovo, which borders Serbia proper, could mark an attempt to partition Kosovo.

“If they can have their independence, then we can have ours,” said Snezana Milenkovic, a 20-year-old dentistry student from Mitrovica who now lives in Belgrade but returned here for Monday’s protest. “If Kosovo cannot stay in Serbia, then we will look for partition.”

Officially, at least, Serb leaders have avoided stating that they want to make any current divisions in Mitrovica permanent; it would lead not only to the abandonment of Kosovo but isolated Serb communities south of Mitrovica.

Serb leaders said Kosovo would never become a truly independent state because Russia and Serbia would prevent it from joining international organizations, especially the United Nations.

“As long as there is Russia and Serbia, there will never be an independent Kosovo,” said Marko Jaksic, a hard-line Kosovo Serb leader, speaking at Monday’s protest in Mitrovica, where portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin adorn shop windows. “America is no longer the single world power.”

The formal U.S. statement on Kosovo came at the end of a long and confusing day. Bush appeared to recognize Kosovo’s independence during an interview with NBC News, only to have the White House try to withdraw the recognition and then finally reconfirm it after Rice’s statement was released. Serbia then withdrew its ambassador from Washington in protest.

In her statement, Rice also warned Russia that Kosovo should not be used “as a precedent” to support independence for pro-Moscow breakaway regions in the former Soviet Union.

Spain, which fears Kosovo’s independence could bolster separatist impulses among its own population, forcefully refused to recognize Kosovo. Cyprus, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia are also expected to decline to recognize it.

The E.U. was able to agree on a supervisory mission because it was settled before Kosovo declared independence, thus avoiding any de facto recognition of its new status by countries that are opposed to it.

Charles Grant, of the Center for European Reform in London, said that the divisions “make the E.U. look a little bit silly as an organization, but in practical terms, the reality is it doesn’t matter much because even the countries that don’t really approve of independence are going along with the majority and not preventing things from happening.”

Baker reported from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations and correspondent John Ward Anderson in Paris contributed to this report.

Unbridgeable: The ethnic divide in Kosovo
Dan Bilefsky, International Herald Tribune
Monday, February 18, 2008

MITROVICA, Kosovo: A day after Kosovo’s ethnic-Albanian leadership declared independence from Serbia, 7,000 Serbs took to the streets of this divided city, waving Serbian flags, chanting “Kosovo Is Serbia!” and burning an American flag covered with the words: “The Fourth Reich.”

A small clutch of Serbs stood at the bridge leading to the Albanian side of the city shouting “Kill the Albanians!” Old men and women wept, some expressing disbelief that Kosovo was no longer theirs. A NATO military helicopter hovered overhead. Police officers formed a shield to keep the protesters from trying to cross to the other side of the bridge, where a crowd of Albanians looked on defiantly.

Divided between the Albanians who live south of the Ibar River and the Serbs who live to the north, Mitrovica has long been a flashpoint for violence in Kosovo, a territory of two million people where the 125,000-strong Serb minority eke out an existence in isolated enclaves. The ability of NATO’s 16,000 soldiers to maintain peace will determine whether Kosovo can hold together.

As Kosovo’s jubilant ethnic Albanians continued to celebrate, concerns were growing that the Serbian-dominated northern part of the province could boil over, break off from Kosovo and partition the territory. Conversely, analysts warned of the risks if Kosovo’s Albanians, newly emboldened by independence, tried to assert a territorial claim over the north, which accounts for 15 percent of Kosovo’s territory.

The northern part of Kosovo already has parallel institutional structures and a majority of Serbs here do not recognize the authority of the Kosovo government.

“Mitrovica has for a long time been the critical area in the south Balkans where things are going to come to a head,” said Misha Glenny, an expert on the Balkans. “Whatever the outcome of Kosovo’s independence, everyone knows we are heading for de facto partition. But no one is willing to admit it.”

In a sign that Serbia could already be asserting its authority in the north, reports emerged Monday that some Serbian police officers had deserted the multiethnic Kosovo police force and given their allegiance to Belgrade. The police force in Pristina denied that report.

As Kosovo’s ethnic-Albanian leaders pledged to protect the rights of the Serbian minority, Serbs in Mitrovica said Monday that they would never join the “false state” and would remain part of Serbia. They said they had put their faith in Moscow, which vehemently rejects Kosovo’s independence.

“If the Albanians try to cross the bridge, we demand from the Serbian Army to use all available means to stop them,” Marko Jaksic, the hard-line leader of Kosovo Serbs, told the protesters here. “America is no longer the single world power. The Russians are coming. As long as there is Russia and Serbia, there will never be an independent Kosovo.”

Serbs said they were under orders from Belgrade to ignore the independence declaration and remain in Kosovo to keep the northern part of the territory under de facto Serbian control. “They will offer us a lot of money to sell our houses, but we will never leave. Never!” Jaksic said, as many in the crowd raised three fingers in a sign of Serbian unity.

On the ethnic-Albanian side of the river, some people watched the Serbian protesters but most heeded police warnings to stay inside. Bislim Bislimi, an unemployed 28-year-old ethnic Albanian, said it was unjust that they could not move freely around their own territory. “We live here and we can’t even walk to the other side of the bridge. It belongs to us.”

While the demonstrations here were calm by Balkan standards, violence erupted nearby. An explosion early Monday destroyed a United Nations car in Zubin Potok, about 10 kilometers, or six miles, to the northwest, the local police said. There were no injuries. An explosion Sunday rocked a UN building near Mitrovica, causing minor damage but no injuries.

In a move that threatened to heighten tensions even further, the Serbian Interior Ministry on Monday filed criminal charges in a Serbian court against the three Kosovar leaders who were instrumental in proclaiming independence: President Fatmir Sejdiu, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and the speaker of Parliament, Jakup Krasniqi.

It was a symbolic move, because Kosovo does not recognize the legal jurisdiction of Serbian courts.

Meanwhile, in Belgrade, 7,000 protesters gathered in Republic Square waiving Serbian flags and chanting anti-Albanian slogans.

A small group attacked the Turkish Embassy with bricks and stones as reports emerged that Ankara would recognize an independent Kosovo. The march followed demonstrations Sunday in which protesters stoned the U.S. Embassy and attacked the mission of Slovenia; both countries have backed Kosovo’s independence.

Ljubica Gojgic, a Serbian commentator, said that the West’s recognition of independence would embolden Serbian nationalists while making it difficult for those who advocate closer ties with Europe to have their voices heard.

“By supporting Kosovo, the international community is making it difficult for mainstream, outward-looking Serbs who want to align themselves with the European Union,” she said. “How can we try and fight for EU values when the French foreign minister calls Kosovo’s independence a triumph for international justice, even as the EU breaks international law.”

Independence of Kosovo: After the Party is Over
Hannah Lucinda Smith, Social Europe Blog
2/19

So it’s finally happened: 11 years after ethnic tension exploded into ethnic conflict and cleansing, 9 years after the UN intervened to keep the peace, Kosovo has become an independent nation state. There was jubilation on the streets of Pristina following Prime Minister Hashim Thaci’s long awaited announcement; a stark contrast to the angry Serbian crowds who threw rocks at the American Embassy in Belgrade. Over the coming months, the West will be watching Kosovo closely for any indication of renewed conflict.

But once the agony and the ecstasy have subsided, what will become of Kosovo? At the moment, violence is the primary concern, but it is a concern that is likely to quickly subside. Whilst there will probably be small scale flare ups, no one truly believes that Serbia can or will mount a full scale offensive. The real cancer that could eat away at Kosovo’s stability comes not from outside the newborn state, but from within.

Nine years of international rule have restored a tentative peace in Kosovo, but they have also held it in stasis as the rest of Europe experienced a decade of economic growth. This is the youngest population in Europe – 65% are under 30 – but there is nothing for them to do. Kosovo produces next to nothing, it’s traditional and potentially lucrative heavy industries severely depleted during the harsh Milosevic era. The UN’s decision to encourage free trade means that even the agricultural sector is not competitive in its own country; tomatoes from Greece are cheaper than those that are home-grown, so Kosovo is starting life with a 90% trade deficit. And foreign investors have been unwilling to put their money in a country whose status remained undecided. The result? Unemployment currently runs at around 50%, and the average Kosovan income is just 1000 Euros per annum.

Bujar Bukoshi, the Kosovar Albanian politician who spent the 1990s as Prime Minister in exile in Germany, believes that there are “many reasons to be sceptical”. When I met him in the foyer of Pristina’s iconic Grand Hotel last December the latest ‘deadline’ for independence had just been and gone, and the mood amongst Kosovans and the assembled journalists alike was deflated. Most could think only of when, and if, the day would finally come. But Bukoshi voiced the doubts that nagged at the back of the collective consciousness.

“People are so focused on independence, but this society will have problems,” he stated flatly. “If you walk through Pristina you see many young and jobless. They are frustrated, they see no prospects. Many try to leave but have issues getting visas. This problem is gradually accumulating.”

Kosovo was always the poorest part of the Yugoslav federation, but many like Bukoshi argue that the economic rot really set in with the UN administration. But the end is now nigh for the UN in Kosovo: following Thaci’s declaration, they have 120 days to hand over to the new and greatly reduced EU mission. And then the real battle will start, to transform this economically stilted state into a modern European nation.

Pakistanis Deal a Blow to Musharraf
Opposition Parties Head for Big Victories in Parliamentary Elections
Candace Rondeaux and Pamela Constable, Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 19, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 19 — Voters in Pakistan appeared to deliver a sharp rebuke to President Pervez Musharraf on Monday, handing significant victories to the country’s two leading opposition parties in parliamentary elections, according to early returns and Pakistani politicians.

Official vote tallies were not expected to be released for several days, but by early Tuesday morning, there were indications that the party of Musharraf, a top U.S. ally, had fallen far out of favor with voters. The country’s opposition groups were outpacing other parties by wide margins in several key provinces, including Punjab, home to more than half of this country’s 80 million eligible voters.

The president of Musharraf’s faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, along with several other prominent party leaders, lost their seats in parliament, according to Pakistan’s Dawn News, an English-language television station.

In a televised address early Monday, Musharraf, who had promised to hold “free, fair and transparent” elections, pledged to abide by the results.

“This is the voice of the nation,” he said on state-run Pakistan Television. “Everyone should accept the results. That includes myself.”

Sporadic reports of clashes at polling stations and several bombings across Pakistan appeared to have kept many voters at home, particularly in urban areas. Opposition parties and election observers cited some instances of rigging and voter intimidation.

Pakistan has experienced widespread tumult since last year, when huge protests erupted following Musharraf’s decision to fire the chief justice of the Supreme Court and place him and several other jurists under house arrest. In the following months, public frustration grew over increasing insurgent violence, rising consumer prices and corruption. In December, following the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, the president’s popularity fell to an all-time low.

Monday’s elections were widely seen as a referendum on Musharraf. Critics alleged that, because the president had been weakened, his government would attempt to manipulate the results to ensure his allies remained in power. A hostile parliament could move to impeach Musharraf, who has held power since a 1999 coup.

Rana Muhammad Riaz, 50, an engineering administrator who cast his vote in Rawalpindi, shrugged off suggestions that rigging would affect the outcome.

“I’m hopeful that we will have a democracy,” he said. “Right now we have democracy, but it is not a complete democracy.”

In the Punjab city of Lahore, the nation’s cultural hub and second-largest city, polling was generally orderly, but turnout was extremely low. A provincial assembly candidate was killed Sunday night, casting a pall on voting throughout the city.

Across Lahore, a stronghold of the Pakistan Muslim League faction headed by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, early returns showed his party to be winning by a landslide, with the opposition Pakistan People’s Party coming in a distant second and Musharraf’s party trailing further behind.

But a majority of voters, it appeared, decided not to go to the polls at all. By 1 p.m., at one polling station in Lahore’s densely populated Old City, only 250 out of 1,500 registered voters had cast their ballots. Similar low turnouts were reported at many other stations.

“This is due to the uncertain atmosphere, the threat of terrorism,” said Mohammed Badwa, an economics professor who served as the manager of one polling station. “The procedure is transparent and orderly inside, but the people are very much afraid of violence outside.”

Lahore has been at the epicenter of protests by Pakistan’s lawyers, who took to the streets by the thousands in November following Musharraf’s decision to fire the Supreme Court chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, and detain the president of the Supreme Court bar association, Aitzaz Ahsan, both of whom had been critical of the government.

Several opposition politicians and groups called for the chief justice’s reinstatement. Most notable among them was Sharif. Although Sharif is not running for office, his stance on the judiciary appeared to garner the party widespread support at the polls.

“He espoused very clearly and very stridently the cause of the chief justice,” said Ahsan, who spoke by phone from his home in Lahore. “This was an election about Pervez Musharraf. I think that had the Pakistan People’s Party adopted the same position from the outset, I think it would have swept the polls, and the national grief with Bhutto’s assassination would have translated into a strong position, and nothing would have stopped them.”

Sherry Rehman, chief spokeswoman for the Pakistan People’s Party, said that it was too early to predict the outcome and that Bhutto’s party had a strong showing in several areas of the country, including the party’s traditional stronghold of Sindh province, Bhutto’s ancestral home. Rehman said the party had received hundreds of complaints from voters about rigging at the polls, adding that a delay in delivering ballots to officials charged with counting the vote was especially troubling.

“We’re not getting the results. They have been delayed, which in Pakistan means they will be changed,” Rehman said.

A Western election observer who spent the day touring polling stations near the northwestern city of Peshawar reported witnessing violence and irregularities. The observer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said problems were particularly rife at several women’s polling stations.

“The most egregious irregularities we saw were at the women’s polling stations. There were missing voters’ lists, misuse of ballot boxes, intimidation of voters,” the observer said. “These were in the most secure areas and more affluent areas. I mean, if this was happening here, I could just imagine how bad it must have been in some of the rural areas.”

In Pakistan’s restive tribal areas, local officials reported that nine security officials were believed to have been kidnapped in the town of Baka Khel in North Waziristan. Police launched a search for them, but there was no immediate word on their whereabouts.

Many polling stations across the northwest were all but deserted during the first half of the day. Problems were compounded as reports of violence around the country began to trickle in. Local news media and several local officials said three explosions occurred in the northwest Swat Valley. The once-serene valley has been roiled in the past year by dozens of skirmishes between Taliban fighters and government troops.

In the densely populated military enclave of Rawalpindi, the flow of voters at one polling station was snarled for more than an hour after election officials opened the polls late.

“I arrived about an hour ago, and I have been unable to vote because they did not open the polls, and the election officials are saying that they do not have the list with my name on it,” said Hafiz ur-Rehman, a supporter of the Pakistan People’s Party.

Tempers ran high when election officials at the station said they could not find a list containing the names of 324 voters. “It’s very concerning to me, because it’s our right to cast our vote. We are not servants; we are voters,” said Salehain Quereshi, a local council member and People’s Party supporter who said election officials refused to record his complaints.

Confusion over the missing voter rolls also incensed some of Musharraf’s backers at the station. Khanja Muhammad Khursid Alam shook his head in disgust as he watched an election worker struggle to find another voter’s name.

“They are untrained people. They don’t know how to work in polling stations. People come out and want to vote,” said Alam, a polling representative and member of Musharraf’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q.

Official election results are expected to be tallied and released before the end of the week.

Constable reported from Lahore. Special correspondents Imtiaz Ali in Peshawar and Shahzad Khurram in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Pakistan celebrates a final end to military rule — but what next?
Jeremy Page in Lahore and Zahid Hussain in Islamabad, Times UK
February 19, 2008

President Musharraf’s supporters conceded defeat last night in a landmark parliamentary election that could seal his political fate and resurrect democracy in Pakistan after eight years of military rule.

But while the two main opposition parties appeared to have swept the vote, neither was expected to win an outright majority, setting the stage for a coalition government in this chronically unstable country.

Despite 470,000 police and troops on the streets, turnout was only 30 to 40 per cent because of a wave of suicide attacks by Islamic militants since July, including one that killed Benazir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister, on December 27. Voting was relatively peaceful given the security threat — although Ms Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) claimed 15 members were killed in an attempt to deter voters.

Final results are not expected until tomorrow, but preliminary figures suggest that the PPP will win the most seats followed by the Pakistan Muslim League (N) led by Nawaz Sharif, another former Prime Minister.

The PML (Q), which split from Mr Sharif’s party and supports President Musharraf, was lagging in third place with several of its leading figures — including the party’s leader — losing their seats. Tariq Azeem, a PML (Q) spokesman, said: “People have given their verdict. We respect it. We congratulate the PML (N) and PPP. As far as we are concerned, we will be willing to sit on opposition benches if final results prove that we have lost.”

The makeup of a coalition government will be negotiated in the next few days but a front-runner to be prime minister is Makhdoom Amin Fahim, 68, the PPP vice-chairman and veteran Bhutto loyalist.

The new government could then decide whether President Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999 and became a key US ally in the War on Terror, should be impeached for imposing emergency rule last year to secure his own re-election. It could also determine whether Pakistan continues to co-operate with Britain and the US to the same degree in a campaign against al-Qaeda and Taleban militants near the Afghanistan border.

President Musharraf, 64, who had promised a fair election and warned the opposition not to protest against the result, pledged yesterday to work with the new civilian government.

Asif Ali Zardari, 51, Ms Bhutto’s widower and successor as PPP leader, has not ruled out working with Mr Musharraf, even though many PPP supporters blame the President for her death. “Victory is our destiny and we will change the system,” Mr Zardari said. However, Mr Sharif and senior PPP figures have said that they cannot work with Mr Musharraf and will try to impeach him if they win a two-thirds majority.

The PPP swept the vote in the southern province of Sindh, its traditional stronghold, and also picked up votes in North West Frontier Province from Islamist parties that have lost credibility by allying themselves with President Musharraf.

The main battleground, though, was Punjab, home to 60 per cent of the population and accounting for 148 of the 342 seats in Parliament. The most hotly contested constituency there was in Gujarat. That race — seen as symbolically the most important in the country — was between Chaudhry Shujaat, the leader of the PML (Q), and Ahmad Mukhtar, a wealthy shoe magnate and PPP loyalist.

Mr Mukhtar said that he had spent 40 million rupees (£300,000) of his own money on his campaign and had recruited a militia to guard him and his supporters. “It was very important for us to do a lot of firing into the air,” he said as he dispatched armed men to polling stations where his supporters were reporting alleged electoral abuses. “They are such big crooks. You have to show that you have guns too and can protect people.”

Mr Shujaat, meanwhile, was relaxing over lunch at his white-washed headquarters swarming with heavily armed Punjab police. “I went to vote but otherwise I’m not going out,” he said, scoffing at the suggestion that he was threatened by Mr Mukhtar’s wealth. However, preliminary results suggested that Mr Mukhtar had prevailed and that the PML (Q) would not have enough seats to form a government with its traditional allies. And in Rawalpindi, where Ms Bhutto was assassinated, Mr Sharif’s party appeared to have trounced all the PML (Q) candidates.

The men who matter:

Asif Ali Zardari
Benazir Bhutto’s polo-loving widower named as PPP leader in her will, despite corruption allegations that earned him the nickname “Mr 10 Per Cent”. He is running the party until Bilawal, their 19-year-old son, graduates from Oxford. Not standing as prime minister, but is seen as the “power behind the throne”

Makhdoom Amin Fahim
The PPP’s softly-spoken Vice-Chairman and prime ministerial candidate. Served in the Cabinet under both Ms Bhutto and her father, and led the party during her eight years in exile. Refused premiership in 2002, but is seen as acceptable to all sides

Pervez Musharraf
A former special forces commando, he was applauded widely when he seized power in 1999, but angered many conservatives by backing the US-led War on Terror. Alienated urban middle class last year by sacking the Chief Justice and imposing emergency rule

Nawaz Sharif
Wealthy industrialist who has twice been Prime Minister, Mr Sharif heads the Pakistan Muslim League (N) party. Ousted in the Musharraf coup of 1999 and sent into exile. Returned in November to challenge Musharraf, but is barred from elected office because of criminal conviction

Chaudhry Pervez Elahi
Leads splinter faction of Sharif’s party which worked with intelligence agencies to drum up support for Musharraf. Supported by only 5 per cent of Pakistanis

Musharraf Loses a “Referendum”; Pakistan Wins Big
Shuja Nawaz, HuffPo
February 18, 2008

Early results from the Pakistan elections indicate a routing of the leadership of the Pakistan Muslim League (Q Group) that supported President Pervez Musharraf for the past five years and allowed him free reign effectively to convert Pakistan from a parliamentary to a presidential system. It appears that the Pakistani voter saw this election as a referendum on Musharraf. If so, he lost big.

There is a possibility of a grand alliance at the center, involving former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League (N), the Pakistan Peoples Party, and the mainstream Awami National Party of the North West Frontier Province, with even the urban Muttahida Qaumi Mahaz of Sindh joining in. This kind of government would provide a useful counterweight to the power that resided in the presidency for the past eight years plus. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto must be smiling in heaven: democracy indeed is the best revenge!

If Musharraf learns to co-habit with this new dispensation at the center, then he may be able to salvage his place in history. One hopes he resists the temptation to resort to political engineering which brought a previous president to his fall at the hands of an army chief who felt the impending chaos was not in Pakistan’s interest. Indeed, the new army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, must be credited with having helped prepare the ground for the people to exercise their franchise with confidence that the army would not be party to rigging. He and the army can now move back to the military part of the war on terrorists inside Pakistan.

The new government in Pakistan should now see the insurgency inside Pakistan and in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) as Pakistan’s own war and not that of the US alone. And it needs to employ military tactics as part of an overall strategy that envelopes economic, social, and political approaches. The US should not have to push Pakistan into doing what is in its own interest on that front. Senator Joseph Biden must be pleased that the US can now have an alliance with the people of Pakistan and not with an autocrat, no matter how personally liberal he might be. And one hopes and prays that the new leadership in parliament will not wish to pander to the religious right, as the PML- Q did. Cutting deals with the Pakistani Taliban falls in that category. It never worked and never will.

An important part of the political puzzle now will be control of the critically huge province of the Punjab. If it is in concert with the government in Islamabad then Pakistan have a chance of stability that will allow it to regain its political footing and restore the teetering economy.

Stay tuned!

Shuja Nawaz is the author of Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within for Oxford University Press, April 2008.

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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