logo
Serbia's Student-Led Protests Have Vucic Cornered

Serbia's Student-Led Protests Have Vucic Cornered

Yahoo31-03-2025

On March 15, an estimated crowd of 300,000 demonstrators took to the streets throughout Serbia's capital city of Belgrade to stage the largest protests in the country's history. The massive Belgrade rally was the latest in a series of student-led marches across the country that have been gaining momentum since November 2024. They serve as a testament to the shifting tide of Serbian politics and the public's frustration with the rampant corruption that is by now synonymous with the regime of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.
The protests initially began after a concrete canopy collapsed at the central railway station in Novi Sad, Serbia's second-largest city, killing 14 people immediately, with two more victims subsequently succumbing to injuries sustained in the incident. Despite having taken credit amid much fanfare for the reconstruction of the station in July 2024, the government quickly attempted to wash its hands of responsibility for the tragedy that occurred just four months later. However, the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Novi Sad argued that the institutions entrusted with maintaining the railway station were responsible for the canopy's corrosion, while further public scrutiny raised suspicions that the added concrete layers during reconstruction contributed to the accident.
Furthermore, calculations by outside experts indicate that the reconstruction of the station building should have cost no more than €3 million—a stark contrast with the €16 million spent on the building alone. Worse still, according to former Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Goran Vesic, €65 million was reportedly dedicated to the entire project.
Though a significant turning point, the tragedy was merely the latest demonstration of the corruption and negligence that have been hallmarks of Vucic's ruling Progressive Party, or SNS, over the past decade. Vucic himself has been in power in one role or another since 2012, serving as the country's deputy prime minister, prime minister and now president over that time. His ruling methods have been described as characteristic of a hybrid regime, maintaining the formality of elections and some democratic practices while keeping a firm grip on the media and much of the financial and hard-power instruments of control.
To get more in-depth news and expert analysis on global affairs from WPR, sign up for our free Daily Review newsletter.
Over the past two years, however, a series of fatal incidents have fed public outrage, including unprecedented mass shootings that claimed 19 lives in the span of two consecutive days in May 2023 and a fire at a nursing home in January 2025 that left 11 senior citizens dead. The list of similar incidents is both extensive and exhaustive, with each generating varying degrees of public backlash.
This raises the question of what makes the latest round of protests stand out. In the context of Serbian politics, the primary reason behind their success lies in their politically leaderless and peaceful nature, as well as the ingenuity of the student protesters, who have demonstrated admirable organizational skills. In particular, throughout the demonstrations, which have often included countrywide marches of hundreds of miles between Serbia's major cities, the students have carefully avoided the traps that Vucic and his allies have previously laid for Serbian opposition movements.
First and foremost, this has consisted of targeting individual opposition leaders, both existing and emerging, with relentless smear campaigns, a tactic the government has been successfully executing for years. These campaigns have predominantly focused on accusations of corruption or unpatriotic sentiment, both of which hold significant weight in a traditional society like Serbia. While the public has not necessarily taken these campaigns at face value, the sheer amount of negative messaging targeting opposition figures often left them tainted among the electorate.
To evade this well-worn tactic, the student organizers of the most recent protests did much of their work behind closed doors, in university-style plenums away from the public eye. Furthermore, they were quick to distance themselves from activists attempting to assume leadership roles in the rallies. In many ways, the students represent the future of the country, both figuratively and literally, in that they bear no identifiable traces of a murky past or shady dealings that could be attributed to them. And they proudly display Serbia's national flag at the protests, signaling that they hold Serbian society's traditional values close to their hearts.
That has helped fuel another difference between these protests and previous iterations: the divided allegiance of older citizens, who generally make up the government's traditional base. Increasingly disillusioned with the hubris of local SNS office-holders, Serbia's senior citizens have found themselves torn between the students—whom they have been embracing as they would their own grandchildren, which in many instances is the case—and Vucic, whose narrative in recent months has become increasingly febrile and reactive. Faced with such a stark choice, the preferences of the elderly appear to be shifting away from the president.
Finally, opposition parties have supported the students and contributed to the protest movement by disrupting the work of municipal assemblies that have lost legitimacy in the public eye. But a clear division of labor seems to have emerged organically. As mentioned, opposition leaders have not taken a leading public-facing role, nor have they been featured speakers at any of the rallies or traffic blockades that have taken place across Serbia over the past four months. That reflects the fact that the students have clearly won over the Serbian public, achieving more in the past four months than any opposition party has managed in the past 13 years of SNS rule.
The demonstrations have now led to widespread acts of civil disobedience beyond the protests themselves, including public service workers openly siding with the students, an increasing number of workers across different sectors going on strike and even public acts of defiance by national television employees. Although the country's security services have not defected, signs of discontent among them have been widely discussed. Protesters increasingly report friendly encounters with police units, including their willingness to share information about the presence and whereabouts of regime-planted provocateurs within the protests. Meanwhile, the SNS has increasingly faced difficulties holding even minor rallies or setting up outreach booths in its constituencies, as disgruntled citizens keep showing up to confront them.
Interestingly enough, the students' demands have never included the resignation of government officials or Vucic himself, even though public sentiment clearly leans in that direction. Instead, they have consistently called for greater accountability and the release of all documents that would help uncover those responsible for the fatal accident in November. Nevertheless, despite refusing to meet the students' stated demands, Prime Minister Milos Vucevic ultimately resigned due to mounting public pressure in January. After some stalling by the SNS, parliament formally accepted Vucevic's resignation on March 19, disbanding the government and triggering a 30-day deadline for either forming a new one or calling snap elections. That leaves the SNS with mere weeks to come up with a solution to the crisis, but with no real pathways to a favorable outcome.
Thus far, the regime's main public response has been to search for a narrative to undermine the protests. The best it could come up with so far was to portray them as a 'threat from abroad,' with Vucic repeatedly calling them a 'color revolution.' This narrative aims to deter conservative audiences from further participation in the popular revolt for fear of acting as pawns of 'globalist' architects of regime change. Yet paradoxically, throughout this time, officials from the European Union have been tacitly voicing their support for Vucic and his party by continuing to issue communiques about ongoing affairs in a business-as-usual fashion.
Meanwhile, as is nearly always the case, Russia has been echoing the color revolution rhetoric while refraining from direct involvement in Serbia's domestic affairs, although Moscow's messaging has lately been less supportive of Vucic due to a diplomatic spat over a United Nations resolution. And the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has been signaling it is prepared to continue working with Vucic, including through a visit by Donald Trump Jr. to Belgrade, where he met with Vucic in mid-March, and comments by Trump's special envoy Richard Grenell's on X warning the protesters against the use of violence. Unsurprisingly though, the protests do not appear to be high on the list of Washington's priorities, as no other U.S. official has commented on the situation in Serbia to date.
Facing an increasingly precarious situation, Vucic now has limited room for maneuver. He could push for the naming of a new SNS government, which would amount to a mere reshuffling of the party's existing cohort of faceless loyalists and would do nothing to ease growing public discontent. Alternatively, he could agree to a transitional power-sharing government with the opposition that would set the stage for fairer elections in due course, a proposal already put forward by some parties in parliament. Finally, Vucic could opt for a technical government of experts that would likely enjoy public support as an interim solution to the ongoing crisis.
However, none of these options offer Vucic a path to comfortably maintaining the status quo, leaving him in many ways cornered, with the ruling party's mechanisms for holding onto power steadily crumbling. Unlikely to allow the formation of any sort of transitional government, as this would effectively spell the end of his control over the media and his ability to influence electoral processes, Vucic could still resort to a much darker fourth option: quelling the protests with brute force.
While the students never intended to turn the March 15 protest into a popular revolt seeking regime change, Vucic's effort to secure the perimeter around the presidential offices with fences, tractors, paid pro-government campers and riot police forces has stoked fears that he might be prepared to fight tooth and nail to stay in power at all costs.
Worryingly, security forces seem to have already resorted to the use of sonic weapons, which were apparently deployed to disperse the crowd while it was observing a moment of silence during the March 15 protest, resulting in horrifying images of panic. Some experts claim that the available evidence is consistent with the noise and effect typically produced by a Vortex Ring Gun or Vortex Cannon, leading some to speculate about the use of a long-range acoustic device. Yet Serbia's Ministry of Interior has since denied deploying any acoustic weapons against the protesters.
However, given that the ministry's public messaging shifted from denying possession of such a device to acknowledging it was in storage and finally to admitting it was used in the field but not as a weapon, the public has been further enraged by what amounts to a familiar pattern of denial and concealment. Considering the timing of its use and the lack of any threat posed by the protesters to law enforcement, public concern over the government's propensity for violence has intensified. Commentators thus continue to speculate that Vucic may indeed opt for measures as severe as martial law if all else fails.
Still, even if Vucic and his party end up overcoming the ongoing outburst of discontent throughout the country, there is no scenario in which the public will somehow forget its deep dissatisfaction with Serbia's existing ruling class. As a result, it appears that the regime's days in power are numbered and that a transition to a post-SNS era may soon be on the horizon. What remains to be seen is whether Serbia will get there through a peaceful transition or a more dangerous escalation.
Stefan Antić is a Serbian political scientist.
The post Serbia's Student-Led Protests Have Vucic Cornered appeared first on World Politics Review.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Iraq's Cultural Heritage Can Be a Double-Edged Sword
Iraq's Cultural Heritage Can Be a Double-Edged Sword

Yahoo

time18 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Iraq's Cultural Heritage Can Be a Double-Edged Sword

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraq has sought to reshape its global image, shifting from a legacy of aggression—most notably the 1990 invasion of Kuwait—to one centered on cultural diplomacy. With a civilization spanning over 6,000 years, the country's post-Saddam leadership recognized the potential of soft power as a peaceful and effective means of rebuilding its international relationships and national identity. Successive Iraqi governments also realized that promoting cultural engagement faced less resistance than traditional diplomacy and was an effective starting point for mending long-standing geopolitical tensions, particularly with neighboring countries like Kuwait. As such, cultural diplomacy became a cornerstone of Iraq's post-Saddam foreign policy, helping to forge international cultural ties, attract financial partnerships and restore its devastated cultural heritage, particularly after the territorial defeat of the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, in 2017. One pivotal early example occurred in 2004, when Iraq sent a cultural delegation of 40 literary and cultural figures to Kuwait at the invitation of Kuwaiti poet Abdulaziz Al-Babtain, marking the first significant contact between the two nations after decades of animosity. Through joint poetry readings and cultural dialogue, this group laid the foundation for renewed diplomatic and geopolitical discussions between the two countries, demonstrating how shared cultural values could foster understanding and cooperation. Iraq has also strategically leveraged its rich historical heritage as a platform for facilitating political engagement and global partnerships. This approach not only helped establish Iraq's soft power in the international community in the years since Saddam's fall but also enabled collaboration among Iraqi and international experts. To get more in-depth news and expert analysis on global affairs from WPR, sign up for our free Daily Review newsletter. A notable instance of this strategy of cultural diplomacy came in the aftermath of the destruction of Iraqi cultural sites by ISIS after it seized broad swathes of territory in 2014. Iraq used global outrage over the loss of these sites—a collective legacy for all humankind—to galvanize support in the years following the group's defeat. Its ability to transform a tragic loss into cultural solidarity and international engagement was highlighted in early 2024, when Italy donated a 3D-printed replica of the Assyrian 'Bull of Nimrud' statue, dating from the 9th century BCE and destroyed by ISIS in 2015, to the Basra Museum. For Italy and other partners, the partnership offered an opportunity to display solidarity with Iraq, but also with the norm of cultural heritage preservation. As Italy's then-culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, said at the statue's dedication ceremony in Iraq, 'Italy is at the forefront of safeguarding cultural heritage. It will therefore continue to make every effort to advance international collaboration in the field of cultural heritage protection.' Engaging with international technical experts and accessing available global funding for heritage preservation is another goal of Iraq's active participation in cultural diplomacy as an instrument of soft power, as highlighted in its efforts to restore cultural heritage destroyed by ISIS in Mosul. That involved tapping into international assistance, with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, providing technical advice and fostering cooperation. One of the flagship projects to grow out of that effort was the restoration of the 840-year-old al-Nuri Mosque and its al-Hadba minaret, destroyed by ISIS in 2017. Begun in 2018 and completed in February, the restoration was funded by the United Arab Emirates, which allocated $50 million to the project, and supervised by UNESCO. The collaboration also marked a positive shift in Iraq-UAE relations, which had been slow to develop after the fall of Saddam due to political factors and the influence of pro-Iranian Shiite militias in Iraq. The restoration initiative served as a nonpolitical foundation for enhancing cooperation in broader political and security matters. The Mosul Museum's collaboration with the Louvre to restore its facility and collection, including antiquities such as the 9th-century BCE 'Lion of Nimrud' statue destroyed by ISIS in 2015, was a similar step in deepening cultural ties between Iraqi and international experts. Rebuilding destroyed heritage projects is a good place to start. As Iraqi President Abdul Latif Jamal Rashid put it, 'Iraqi heritage is inexhaustible wealth,' offering the country an opportunity to show the world a side of itself that contrasts sharply with the conventional global image of it over the past 20 years as being mired in security crises and overrun by militants. Cultural diplomacy and the restoration of Iraq's cultural heritage have also played a crucial role in fostering national unity and rebuilding national pride since the fall of Saddam and the defeat of ISIS. Iraqis take immense pride in their ancient cultural heritage, so the looting of the National Museum of Iraq in 2003 and the destruction of iconic sites like the 3,000-year-old city of Nimrud outside Mosul by ISIS in 2015 deeply wounded their collective sense of identity. Recognizing the importance of preserving this heritage, Rashid and other Iraqi leaders have worked to not only restore but also reclaim Iraq's historical legacy as a means of healing the nation. In 2023, as part of these efforts, Iraq saw the return of a significant Assyrian artifact from Italy and 6,000 artifacts loaned by the British Museum. By reclaiming these historical artifacts, the Iraqi government is seeking to bolster Iraqi's collective identity and create a healthy nationalist sentiment. Work is currently underway to recover more than 40,000 other artifacts that are still scattered around the world. The loss of these cultural artifacts and monuments has at times amplified social divisions, fostering alienation and distrust among Iraqis. However, efforts to restore monuments such as the Mosul Museum and Nimrud have served as catalysts for social unity, demonstrating the Iraqi people's resilience and the power of a shared cultural identity. A key example of this was the 'Return to Mosul' art exhibition in 2019, a joint effort between Al-Ghad Radio and the Mosul Artists' Committee, which brought together diverse communities to use art as a medium for storytelling and healing. The exhibition sought to bridge social gaps by narrating the history of Mosul's occupation by ISIS and envisioning a more tolerant future. Finally, the rebuilding of Iraq's cultural heritage is not just about restoring physical sites but also about creating jobs and strengthening cooperation within the country. The 'Revive the Spirit of Mosul' project—a collaboration between UNESCO, the UAE, the U.S., the European Union and other partners, of which the al-Nuri Mosque restoration was a part—exemplifies this approach. This initiative has created 6,000 new jobs and trained over 1,300 young people in traditional crafts like carpentry, stonemasonry and painting. By combining cultural restoration with economic empowerment, these efforts are fostering a sense of collective unity, contributing to the nation's recovery and rekindling national pride. However, Iraq still has a long way to go in using its cultural heritage to nurture national cohesion and identity. The existence of numerous tribal and cultural communities and opposing religious groups that have used confrontation and even conflict with each other in the construction of their collective identities has made this process difficult. Since 2003, Iraq's elites have also appropriated the country's rich cultural heritage in the service of various harmful agendas. These range from commercialization to the propagation of exclusionary political and sectarian narratives, the latter facilitated by Iraq's governance system, which divides political power along sectarian lines. This leaves each group in control of the archaeological sites in its region of the country, free to use the revenue and other resources derived from cultural heritage to serve their ethno-sectarian goals and agendas, rather than to enhance national identity and cultural cohesion. In this way, they seek to use Iraq's shared history and identities to create cultural divides rather than ambitious national agendas. One example is the reconstruction in Babil of the Shrine of the Prophet Ezekiel, known as Al-Kifl in Iraq, the biblical prophet of the exiled Judean community in Babylon in the 6th century BCE. Until 2010, the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage was the custodian of the complex, which consisted of a shrine, a synagogue, a mosque and adjacent Ottoman-era khans, or inns. However, ownership was subsequently transferred to the Shiite Endowment, based on the claim that Imam Ali—the first Shiite religious leader in the middle of the 6th century CE—camped and prayed at the site. In the decade since the endowment assumed control of the site, it has used a series of interventions to remove the synagogue and khans, expand the mosque and build new minarets, in an effort to advance its own sectarian interests and narratives, to the detriment of Iraqi national identity. Over the past 20 years, Iraq has used cultural diplomacy as a tool to advance its soft power and promote international engagements, as well as to enhance national cohesion and the creation of a common identity among the country's at times conflicting tribal and religious communities. In its efforts to reclaim its cultural heritage in the global arena and reconstruct ancient sites destroyed by ISIS, Iraq has been able to revive a spirit of collective cooperation and shared identity in the domestic arena. Meanwhile, technical cooperation with global partners has paved the way for a cultural coalition to reconstruct humanity's common heritage in Iraq, further illustrating and bolstering Iraqi soft power. However, Iraq still faces challenges and limitations in the domestic uses of its cultural heritage, which must be addressed by prioritizing national cooperation over sectarianism and ethnic differences. Mohammad Salami holds a doctorate in international relations. He is a research associate at the International Institute for Global Strategic Analysis (IIGSA). He can be followed on X/Twitter at @moh_salami. The post Iraq's Cultural Heritage Can Be a Double-Edged Sword appeared first on World Politics Review.

China Is Counting On Its Rare Earths Dominance to Make Trump Blink
China Is Counting On Its Rare Earths Dominance to Make Trump Blink

Yahoo

time18 hours ago

  • Yahoo

China Is Counting On Its Rare Earths Dominance to Make Trump Blink

The U.S.-China trade dispute has continued to deepen, demonstrating the dramatic difficulty of any decoupling of the two countries' economies, as well as the limited leverage that U.S. President Donald Trump has over Beijing if he wants to avoid huge economic shocks at home. In the first cycle of the dispute, which began with Trump's imposition of punishing tariffs in April and culminated last week with a phone call between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, China emerged as having the stronger hand and the ability to wait the U.S. out, even as its own economy languishes. Key to China's comfortable position is its control of rare earth metals, which are central components to a range of high-tech products. China's dominance in the sector is nearly absolute, from mining and processing them to manufacturing intermediate inputs from them, especially magnets. It exercises a similar hold over the supply chains that use these inputs, including electric vehicle—or EV—batteries, wind turbines and other products critical to the clean energy sector. Beyond clean energy, these critical minerals are necessary for key weapons platforms of the U.S. military and many everyday consumer products, from cell phones to rechargeable batteries. After their first round of trade talks in Geneva in May, the two sides agreed to a 90-day truce on their most draconian tariffs and counter-tariffs. But China's decision following those talks to slow-roll any relaxation of its export bans on a range of rare earths, several of which it imposed after Trump's tariff announcement in April, sent industries and governments into a frenzy of concern. There were reports of production pauses in the automotive industry and fears that U.S. military readiness would be at risk. Reporting from the latest round of talks in London, which began yesterday and will continue today, suggests that the U.S. is considering relaxing its own export controls to China of advanced semiconductors. If so, it demonstrates that the Trump administration wildly overestimated its bargaining position vis-a-vis Beijing when it launched its trade war in April. To get more in-depth news and expert analysis on global affairs from WPR, sign up for our free Daily Review newsletter. The way the conflict is unfolding raises two questions. Why did China use its most lethal bargaining chip now? And what does this latest round of supply chain weaponization indicate for the future of U.S. self-sufficiency and derisking with regard to its rare earths dependencies on China? There is plenty of precedent for China's weaponization of supply chains, including for rare earths, so there should be little surprise that Beijing has wielded them as a bargaining chip today. China's leaders first recognized the significance of the country's dominant position with regard to rare earths in 1992, when Deng Xiaoping remarked that rare earths are to China what oil is to the Middle East. Moreover, China has already weaponized rare earths for political leverage: against Japan in 2010, when the Japanese coast guard arrested the captain of a Chinese trawler that had rammed a coast guard vessel intercepting it for fishing in waters off the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, which China claims as the Diaoyu. While Tokyo quickly released the captain, the pause in exports of rare earths to Japan, which was almost totally dependent on China for them at the time, threatened the supply chains of its then-dominant automotive sector. But if the 2010 incident revealed China's ability to leverage its dominance over the sector for political purposes, why has so little changed when it comes to that dominance between 2010 and 2025? The 2010 shock did lead Japan to reduce its dependence on China for rare earth minerals. But it continues to source about 60 percent of its rare earths, both raw and processed, from China. The U.S. similarly tried to reduce its rare earths dependence on China after 2010, but mostly through market mechanisms that either failed completely or moved too slowly. From Deng's remark in 1992 to the dispute playing out today, China's critical minerals strategy is a textbook study in its ability to wield party-state control over the economy, ultimately implementing industrial policies that heightened Beijing's leverage over other global actors, ranging from nation-states to large multinational corporations. China achieved this dominance through a step-by-step strategy across the supply chain—from mining and processing, to manufacturing of inputs and end products. First, Beijing expanded domestic mining and processing of rare earths, taking advantage of other countries' concerns about the severe environmental degradation caused by both activities to dominate global supplies. In doing so, China encouraged intense domestic competition in the sector, including the role of private firms that were often less regulated than state-owned enterprises. This intense competition allowed China to bring production costs down, even at the expense of the environment, which was not an overarching concern in the early reform period under Deng. Second, as China's dominance increased, the state moved to enact industrial policies that encouraged domestic manufacturing of products using rare earths to the detriment of producers elsewhere. This allowed China to dominate in the next and more advanced stage of the supply chain: manufacturing inputs. As an example, China now produces over 90 percent of rare earth magnets needed for global supply chains. Third, after the first round of weaponization against Japan in 2010, as other countries began to expand their own domestic capacity in mining, processing and manufacturing, China then moved to rapidly increase its exports of these goods, driving down global prices and making self-sufficiency efforts elsewhere economically unfeasible. This torpedoed attempts in the U.S. and elsewhere to open new mining and processing facilities. Finally, China has encouraged domestic consolidation of rare-earths processing with large state-owned enterprises that are more able to respond to government directives quickly. Internationally, this consolidation has allowed China to continue to dominate the processing of rare earth minerals, including even those mined in the U.S. and Australia, further complicating the efforts of other countries to achieve self-sufficiency. As a result of this multistage effort, China is now dominant not just at home, but also globally. The thorough weaponization of economic interdependence is not new. It has been on display in Russia's dominance of Europe's energy supplies prior to the war in Ukraine, the United States' wielding of financial sanctions and China's power over critical minerals. But each incident of weaponization tends to weaken leverage, as countries seek new ways to reduce dependence. Russia's invasion of Ukraine led Europe to find new energy supplies, for instance, and U.S. sanctions on Russia have led China to seek financial options outside the U.S.-dominated SWIFT network for international settlements, as well as to increase yuan-denominated bilateral trade. China wielded the rare earths 'weapon' now because the U.S. has moved too slowly thus far. And given the time needed to open new mines and processing plants, China still has several years of advantage. If this now leads to a U.S. retreat on semiconductor controls, thereby dismantling restrictions on Beijing's AI ambitions, then China will also benefit in the future in other critical sectors. The use of rare earths in the current trade war will further impel the U.S. to expand domestic mining and processing. But any new approach to reducing China's dominance in this sector will require borrowing from Beijing's playbook. Industrial policy, state support and subsidies will be needed. But the Trump administration is going in the opposite direction, with a broad reversal of policies instituted by former President Joe Biden that sought to supercharge investments into clean energy technology and products made in the United States. The current budget reconciliation bill under consideration slashes these policies, while preserving the stockpiling of critical minerals. Given the importance of renewable energy to many other critical sectors, including AI, the U.S. needs to create domestic capacity for rare earth inputs, not just stockpiles. In the meantime, China can claim a twofold victory in this round of Trump's trade war: economically, as it shows its leverage in this critical sector, but also politically, as its state-led policies have paid off handsomely. Now the question is whether the U.S. will learn the right lessons from China's success. Mary Gallagher is the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. The post China Is Counting On Its Rare Earths Dominance to Make Trump Blink appeared first on World Politics Review.

Bujar Bukoshi, Kosovo independence leader, dies at 78

time21 hours ago

Bujar Bukoshi, Kosovo independence leader, dies at 78

PRISTINA, Kosovo -- Bujar Bukoshi, a former Kosovo independence leader who for years headed a self-proclaimed government-in-exile, died early Tuesday morning after a long illness, his family said. He was 78. He died in Germany, where he was being treated for cancer and receiving financial support from the Albanian government, according to his family. Kosovo's President Vjosa Osmani expressed deep regret for the loss of 'a visionary physician and a statesman of unparalleled dedication.' 'Dr. Bukoshi, former Prime Minister in Exile, will forever be remembered for his contributions to strengthening the cause of a free and independent Kosovo in the most difficult times for our people,' she wrote in a letter of condolence to his family. A respected physician and surgeon, Bukoshi helped to found the Democratic League of Kosovo, or LDK, in 1989 alongside Ibrahim Rugova, who was later president of Kosovo. Shortly after receiving his medical degree at Belgrade's Medical School University, Bukoshi went into exile, where he raised funds to run parallel governing institutions to peacefully defy the late Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's repressive rule in Kosovo, a former Serbian province. Bukoshi served as prime minister of Kosovo's government in exile from 1991 through 1999, the end of the 1998-1999 war that left around 11,400 people dead. A 78-day NATO air campaign stopped the Serb forces' crackdown on ethnic Albanians and pushed Serbian forces and authorities out of Kosovo. He also led an ethnic Albanian militia that was seen as a rival to the more militant Kosovo Liberation Army. The shadow government, which was never recognized by Belgrade, was formally dissolved in 2000. After the war, Bukoshi served as deputy prime minister, healthcare minister and lawmaker. 'His life and activity are a record of patriotic commitment and unshakable political involvement for Kosovo's freedom and independence,' said LDK's current leader Lumir Abdixhiku. 'His contribution at the most difficult moments of our country will be forever valued.' Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008. Most Western nations recognize its sovereignty, but Serbia and its allies Russia and China don't. Bukoshi was born in Suhareke, 60 kilometers north of the capital Pristina. He is survived by his spouse Zana, three daughters and two nephews.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store