Friend of Democracy,
I'm currently traveling through Kosovo. And as a politically interested person, you can't travel through this fairly young country without asking yourself this question:
How does a secession movement succeed? How does a separate state emerge when those who don't want it are overwhelmingly powerful?
Kosovo has shown that this is possible.
On 17 February 17 2008, the parliament unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia.
Since then, many countries, including most EU states, the USA, and others, have viewed Kosovo as an independent state.
(The truth also includes that Serbia and some other states, such as Russia, China, India, and some EU members like Spain, Greece, Romania, Slovakia, and Cyprus, still do not recognise its independence.)
So how did the small country of Kosovo (an area the size of Cyprus) with only 1.5 million inhabitants achieve independence from Serbia?
In short, through a combination of peaceful politics and military strength.
On the one hand, there were politicians like Ibrahim Rugova, an intellectual who championed peaceful resistance in the early 1990s and thereby garnered considerable international support for Kosovo's independence.
On the other hand, there was the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army; here in Kosovo it is called UÇK, which stands for Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës), an armed Albanian nationalist guerrilla organisation that fought against the Serbian authorities in the 1990s and later against Yugoslav (mainly Serbian) armed forces.
Without people like Rugova, the idea of an independent Kosovar state would likely not have received the international support (especially from the USA). However, Serbia would not have had to grant Kosovo independence without the military power of the armed liberation forces (UÇK was heavily supported by Albania).
And so, today, Kosovo celebrates both the peaceful and the violent struggle side by side in many public spaces (for example, here in Peja, where I am right now). What at first glance doesn't seem to fit together does fit quite well: For the state of Kosovo to come into being, violent AND peaceful politics were necessary.
See you in Democracy,
Johannes Eber