MITROVICA, Kosovo — At first glance, Mitrovica looks like an unremarkable post-industrial mining town. A cloud of smoke hovers over a sprawl of dusty roads dotted with Yugoslav-era apartment blocks and an unattractive monument to local zinc miners, both Serb and Albanian, who battled against the Nazis during World War II. Today, the city is divided by a river and a bridge, symbols of the ethnic strife that exploded in violence in 1999 and again in 2004, driving Mitrovica’s Albanians to the south, and Serbs to the north, of the Ibar River. The final scheduled talks between Kosovo and Serbia [...]
The German parliament recently renewed the “mandates” authorizing the German Bundeswehr to continue military operations in Afghanistan. On Oct. 12, the legislators voted to approve Germany’s continued military participation in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF). On Nov. 15, the Bundestag extended by one-year the authorization permitting Germany’s elite special forces unit, the Kommando Spezialkräfte, to participate in the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan, which also involves German naval patrols off the Horn of Africa. The OEF deployment, which focuses on counterterrorism, has proven more controversial among Germans than supporting the ISAF, which is often [...]
A new Russian epic film that tells the story of the emergence of the Romanov czarist dynasty is widely seen as the latest move in the campaign to keep President Vladimir Putin in power after his second and final allowable term ends in May 2008. “1612,” which is said to have been produced by a friend of Putin, recounts how the Russians “drafted” Mikhail Romanov to save the country during a dark period of its history, thus paving the way for imperial Russia. The film’s director is quite open about its contemporary message. “I’m convinced . . . that Russians [...]
