Independence and a looming crisis...

Yesterday was a historic day, especially here in Tirana, Albania. For the entire day the city was shut done of traffic on the main roads, and Albanians wore their flags on their backs and had big festivals all over the city to celebrate the independence of Kosovo (the so called greater Albania). It was a fun time for me and some of the guys from the group to run around Tirana taking some fun pictures and seeing the excitement in the historical day here in Albania, something that is very cool to be apart of.
Often times people don’t make the connection that Kosovo is mostly populated by Albanians and everything that happened yesterday happened because the Albanian population wanted independence from the Serbian government and to claim Kosovo as their own making themselves their own country. This has been an on going bloody debate for years and the climax of this debate (until yesterday) was the 1999 war in Kosovo and Serbia that eventually brought President Clinton and the USA involvement in bombing Serbian strong holds. The war was over the ethnic cleansing of the Albanians who were being pushed out of Kosovo by the Serbs. Even today as you drive through Kosovo you will see that Albanians do not forget the genocide of the Serbs, as they have made shrines of the mass graves. This surely was a very dark time in this region.
However, amidst the claims of a peaceful resolve from both sides there has already been backlash both in violence and soon diplomatically. The reality is that Kosovo was fully supported by the Serbian government, everything from free trade between the two regions to the providing of electricity among many other things.
All this to say, although there seems to be much happiness in the air, the reality is that times are tense. If there was an out break of war in the region much like ’99 the flood of Ethnic Albanians would come back into Albania (Tirana especially) and potentially break the already fragile economic back of Albania. Only time will tell…