Two recent stories give insight into the rotten game Belgrade is playing in Kosovo.

First, members of the Serbian Independent Liberal Party (SSLS) returned to take their seats at the Kosovo parliament yesterday. The SSLS chose not to boycott the November elections in Kosovo and therefore has claimed the several seats reserved for minorities. They hadn’t been participating in the government up until now due to several death threats they had received. The president of SSLS, Slobodan Petrović, gave an interview in January in which he heaped scorn on Belgrade for presuming to know what’s best for Kosovar Serbs, and in which he revealed that neither Prime Minister Koštunica nor Minister for Kosovo Samardžić had deigned to meet with him.

Second, several Serbian NGOs working to foster dialogue between Serbs and Albanians were attacked by a mob in Štrpce, a Serbian enclave in southern Kosovo. Sonja Biserko of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights claimed that Belgrade was behind the attacks:

Clearly, the security services have been keeping an eye on what we’re doing in Kosovo, and organized a spontaneous gathering of citizens. A group of people came after us, but the international police stopped them.

Kosovo is important to the nationalist factions in Belgrade because it is an emotional issue that can be manipulated for electoral gain. Anyone working to find a peaceful solution in Kosovo is seen as an enemy and is faced with violent reprisals.

As Petrović said in the interview cited above,

Besides the large problems which we have already, Kosovar Serbs resent that their interests and livelihoods are being negotiated by people who aren’t from Kosovo and who have no intentions of ever living there.

A poignant echo of the lament of Croatia’s Serbian minority—roused to revolt by Milošević’s regime only to be sold out when supporting them became a liability—it’s heartening that Serbs in Kosovo are coming to recognize that the cynical rhetoric coming from Belgrade may very well do them great harm.

Via Eric Gordy, here’s a snippet from a recent Serbian cabinet meeting, as reported by Serbian weekly Blic:

Velimir Ilić (minister for infastructure): They have caused us much greater damage than broken windows. Those people at B92 and other media had better be careful how they talk about those young people.

Snežana Marković (minister for youth and sport): You are the last person who should tell people how to behave. Everyone knows what you have been advocating.

Ilić: Madam, you have been in sports for two months, and I have been for twenty years. Be careful, the sportspeople will come to you.

Dragan Šutanovac (minister of defence): What sportspeople, what are you talking about? I will stand in front of those wimps if somebody has to. Now, why was the police instructed to allow the hooligans to g wild on the one hand, and on the other hand to protect public order? That just endangers the police.

Ilić: You cannot call them hooligans just because they broke some windows and injured a few police officers.

Šutanovac: To be precise - 53 of them.

Vojislav Koštunica (prime minister): Those people, hooligans as you call them, were just reacting to the violation of international law.

Šutanovac: Oh please, if they had not been organised they would not have known what to do. What defence of international law are you talking about?

Bizarre personal threats aside, you can clearly see the machinations of Koštunica and his henchmen on display. Keep in mind that these deliberations were not meant for public dissemination, so what you’re reading here are unvarnished behind-closed-doors discussions. Šutanovac and Marković are from Tadić’s party (DS) and Ilić belongs to Koštunica’s DSS.

If you haven’t yet, go and read Marko Hoare’s essay on the situation in Serbia and what it all means.

Marko Atilla Hoare, one of the finest Balkanists writing today, has an excellent essay up this morning on his blog:

This rioting and looting was not just the action of a few troublemakers; it is an expression of the new climate of violence and intimidation that the Kostunica regime and its allies in the Serbian Radical Party and other extreme right-wing and nationalist groups are deliberately encouraging.

It really can’t be overstated just how rotten and dangerous Koštunica’s government is. Read the whole thing for an excellent run-down on the thuggery being employed by these goons. It’s a must-read for anyone following the Balkans and questioning whether the Kosovo decision was the right one.

Take a second to digest the words of Russian journalist Konstantin Syomin ruminating on the recent events in Serbia on Russian state-run television (as reported by Belgrade’s B92 and translated by me):

It was these very cheering masses, drunk on liberal promises, who mourned the Western marionette (former Serbian PM) Zoran Đinđić’s passing to the next world—a man who destroyed the legendary Serbian army and security services, a man who handed over to the Hague the heroes of Serbian resistance in exchange for abstract economic help, and who for his efforts received a well-deserved bullet.

That’s right: state-run Russian TV celebrates the assassination of a former Serbian Prime Minister, the only real reformer Serbia has had since the tyrranical Milošević. Remember, this is hardly the aberrant opinion of a lone journalist—it’s not like Russian state TV allows things to air that haven’t been carefully vetted.

B92 reports that the Serbian embassy in Moscow has asked for an official apology from Putin over this statement. Hopefully President Tadić will take this opportunity to distance his country from the toxic influence of Moscow, thereby provoking some serious soul-searching among his compatriots as to where they’d like to see themselves in the next ten years.

Andrew links to an article tracking National Review’s longstanding sympathy for fascism. It’s a lively and eye-opening read, made all the funnier given that one of NR’s current editors has just published a book titled Liberal Fascism.

It reminds me of a clip of Gore Vidal debating William F. Buckley Jr. in 1968.

Vidal calls Buckley a crypto-Nazi, and Buckley in return threatens to punch Vidal’s lights out. When I saw this clip a year or so ago, I thought Vidal was just being nasty. Given the above-linked article, perhaps his gybe wasn’t completely unfounded.

Towards the end, the article excerpts a section out of NR editor Jeffrey Hart’s 1987 book, From This Moment On, which includes the following fascinating snippet:

Mussolini liked to interrupt his working day several times with sexual intercourse, often standing up and in his uniform, a very rapid performance.

I’d need to see it in context in the book to make out if Mr. Hart really is lionizing Mussolini here. But if he is, I’m puzzled. Fine, the man was horny, had to have it several times a day, so busy he did it standing up and clothed. Got it. But is quick ejaculation a sign of virility? I suppose one could say that it signals utmost disdain for those on the receiving end of his effluence, which could be an admirable trait for thug-worshippers. But apart from that, I’m at a loss.