To deter extremists in Syria, Obama must heed lessons of Kosovo intervention
And while President Obama weighs the options of intervening in Syria, as he is reportedly in the process of doing, he should consider these similarities. In doing so, he will find another reason to ramp up US support for the Syrian opposition, one that is not commonly associated with the Kosovo War: combating extremism.
I recently sat down with Petrit Selimi, the No. 2 official in Kosovo’s Department of Foreign Affairs, to get a better understanding of what happened in Kosovo’s fight for independence from Yugoslavia and the forces of Slobodan Milosevic. I wanted to understand how the conflict in Kosovo might parallel the current turmoil in Syria, and the role of extremism in both places. In particular, I wanted to know why Kosovo never became a significant platform for Islamic extremists, despite its heavily Muslim population and the prolonged period of conflict it endured – both well-known recipes for Islamic radicalism.
If anything, Kosovo has gone in the opposite direction: developing democratic institutions, facilitating economic reform, and even increasing the role of women in society. Of course, Kosovo’s democratic evolution hasn’t been without its problems. Complaints of corruption and inadequacy still plague the government there. But Kosovo has largely avoided the pitfalls of Islamic extremism.
Indeed, extremists actively attempted to develop a foothold throughout the conflict. Thousands arrived “trying to justify the conflict in Kosovo as some sort of religious or civil war,” Mr. Selimi says. Just as with foreign jihadists in Syria, they “were looking at Kosovo as a base not only to fight Serbs but also all of the so-called colonial or anti-Islamic powers.”
