Bridging a Divide
NEED TO KNOW
Bridging a Divide
KOSOVO
A bridge over the Ibar River divides the Kosovan city of Mitrovica between the north and the south, and between the Serb and Albanian communities.
A microcosm of the small, tense, and divided Balkan country of two million, the bridge has been mostly closed for more than a decade, often barricaded by the Serb community with burned-out trucks and other detritus to ensure the two sides stay apart.
However, it’s been Kosovo’s prime minister’s mission to make the country whole. Last year, when Albin Kurti tried to reopen it, however, Kosovo’s Serbian community protested, saying that it shields them from “ethnic cleansing.”
But Kurti says opening the bridge is about normalization: “Kosovo is a normal state and its bridges should be normal, too, which means open.”
Still, Serbia opposed it. Western countries did, too, worried about further escalating tensions that have already been simmering between the two communities over the past few years.
Now, as Kosovo’s voters go to the polls on Feb. 9 to choose their lawmakers, the elections have become a proxy for the conflict in the country.
Kosovo, a former Serbian province, became independent in 2008 nine years after a NATO bombing campaign ended a war between Serbian government forces and ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo. Serbia does not recognize Kosovo’s independence.
Since then, relations between Kosovo’s Albania majority and its Serbian minority backed by Serbia have been rocky. The spike in tensions came after European Union- and US-backed negotiations between Kosovo and Serbia all but collapsed in 2023.
Meanwhile, over the past few years, Kosovo’s government began dismantling the bureaucracy of separateness of the Serbian community. For example, Serbians in Kosovo aren’t allowed any longer to drive with Serbian license plates or use the Serbian dinar.
That push to end the “parallel institutions” has intensified in the run-up to the elections.
Earlier this month, Kosovo police raided 10 Serbia-linked government offices across the country, including post offices and banks that used the Serbian currency in ethnic Serb areas. Some of these administrative offices didn’t actually provide any services, wrote Agence France-Presse, but served instead as a symbolic presence of Serbia within Kosovo.
Opponents of the move say it was Kurti’s attempt to score points for the election. But the leader never made a secret of his intentions to wind down Serbia’s remaining presence in the country – it was part of his prior election campaign, France 24 said.
Still, in late December, Kosovo’s election authority barred the main ethnic Serb party, Srpska Lista (Serb List) from running candidates in the election because of its Serbian nationalist stance and its close ties to Serbia. Kurti, meanwhile, considers Srpska Lista as the “political branch … of Serb state terrorism,” the Associated Press wrote.
Srpska Lista called the ban “institutional and political violence” against the ethnic minority, done to score “easy political points.”
Regardless, a few days later, Kosovo’s Electoral Panel for Complaints and Appeals voided the ban. Srpska Lista will run 48 candidates for 10 seats reserved for the minority group in the 120-member parliament.
Analysts say that while the elections don’t pit minority groups against each other for specific seats, the tensions play a large role in the race, which is a test for Kurti, whose governing party won in a landslide in 2021, but isn’t expected to perform as well this time around,
Violeta Haxholli of the Pristina-based Kosovo Democratic Institute think tank told the Balkan Insight.
The two main opposition parties, the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) and the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), have been criticizing Kurti’s ruling Vetevendosje party and its leader for being overly optimistic about peace with the Serb minority – and with Serbia.
Still, Kurti is expected to win a third term, say analysts at Ifimes think tank.
Whoever does win the race will have to continue negotiations with Serbia. The EU and the US are pressing both sides to implement the 2023 reconciliation agreement between Serbia and Kosovo. US President Donald Trump, with strong ties to Serbia, is a complicating factor for Kosovo, wrote the European Council on Foreign Relations.
If they don’t, the country may descend into a new war, wrote Germany’s Die Welt. The newspaper said that the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, has already been making threats to take Kosovo by force to complete his “Serbian World” project, and would have Russian backing to do so.
It added that Serbia is just waiting for “the right time.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Bulldozing Legacy
BANGLADESH
Thousands of protesters demolished the family home of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the capital Dhaka this week, as the ousted leader delivered a political speech condemning the country’s new interim government, the Independent reported Thursday.
Demonstrators carrying sticks, hammers, and other tools, marched to the house of Hasina’s father and the country’s founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on Wednesday night. Other protesters brought a crane and excavator to demolish the building – a rally that was dubbed “bulldozer procession.”
Photos and videos published later showed some parts of the home leveled to the ground, while other sections were burned. Local media reported that protesters also launched attacks on houses and businesses connected to Hasina’s Awami League supporters.
Many of them also chanted calls for Hasina’s execution, while others described Rahman’s home as a “symbol of fascism.”
Rahman led Bangladesh when it became independent from Pakistan in 1971 but was assassinated in his home four years later. His daughter later turned the home into a museum.
The demolition is the latest outburst of rage directed at Hasina, who has been accused of cracking down on dissent and overseeing extrajudicial killings during her 15-year rule.
Hasina was ousted last year following student-led protests that ignited over a proposal to change public sector job quotas but later evolved into large-scale anti-government protests. Her administration launched a crackdown against demonstrators that resulted in hundreds of deaths.
In August, she fled to neighboring India and has been living there in exile, Al Jazeera wrote.
Wednesday’s violence erupted just before a planned speech by Hasina on social media, which demonstrators viewed as a challenge to the interim government of Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus.
In her speech, Hasina accused protesters of “erasing history” and alleged that the new government took power in an “unconstitutional” manner. She urged her supporters to stand up against the interim administration.
The new government has sought Hasina’s extradition, but Indian authorities have not responded to the request. The Dhaka-based International Crimes Tribunal has already banned the publication or airing of her speeches in the country.
Meanwhile, the student-led movement behind last year’s demonstrations has been calling for abolishing the country’s constitution which dates from 1972, which they claim preserves the legacy of her father’s regime.
Equality Under the Law
NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand’s parliament has granted a mountain the same legal rights as a person, an effort aimed at compensating Indigenous Māori people from the Taranaki region for injustices perpetrated during the colonial period almost two centuries ago, the BBC reported.
The legislature last week unanimously passed the Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill, which will grant Mount Taranaki a legal name – its original Māori name Taranaki Maunga – and all the rights, powers, duties, responsibilities, and liabilities of a person.
The bill also granted protection for the mountain’s surrounding peaks and land.
Four members from Māori iwi – or tribes – and four others appointed by the New Zealand conservation minister will work together to manage the mountain, acting as its “face and voice.”
Free access to the mountain will remain unchanged. But the law will also allow the Māori to protect the health and well-being of their mountain.
The Treaty of Waitangi – signed in 1840 – established New Zealand as a country and the British Crown guaranteed specific rights to Indigenous people concerning their lands and resources.
However, the Māori and English versions of the Treaty differed and the British Crown breached both, the Associated Press reported.
A part of Taranaki land – including the mountain – was confiscated from the Māori in 1865 as a punishment for rebelling against the Crown. This resulted in the Indigenous group losing all control over the mountain until a Māori protest movement in the 1970s and 1980s began pushing for recognition of Māori language, culture, and rights.
This new law aims to make amends for past mistakes and recognizes the Māori belief that natural elements are ancestors and living beings.
Co-leader of the political party Te Pāti Māori (the Māori Party) Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said Taranaki Maunga is finally free from “the shackles of injustice, of ignorance, of hate.”
Taranaki Maunga is not the first natural element to be recognized as a legal person as the parliament has granted personhood before to a native forest and a river.
The new legislation comes at a delicate time for race relations in New Zealand where Māori legal rights and cultural identity are at risk of being repudiated by a new law.
In November, tens of thousands marched to Parliament against a proposed law redefining the 1840 treaty, warning that it would erode Māori rights and undo decades of progress.
The bill is unlikely to pass, however.
Smoke and Mirrors
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
The Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group on Wednesday broke a ceasefire implemented only days earlier in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and advanced toward another key town in the mineral-rich eastern part of the country, the Associated Press reported.
Officials reported heavy fighting on the main road from Goma, which the rebels captured last week, to Bukavu, the capital of the South Kivu province. They took the town of Nyabibwe, which lies about 60 miles away from Bukavu, on that route.
On Monday, the rebels announced a ceasefire to allow aid to reach Goma, the capital of North Kivu region, where hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes because of the fighting. After declaring the ceasefire, they announced they had no interest in capturing Bukavu, Reuters reported.
Even so, the rebels said they would march south to take the capital, Kinshasa.
Meanwhile, the DRC government said the rebels were facing “fierce resistance” from the military around Nyabibwe. They also blamed Rwanda for the resumption of hostilities.
The Rwandan Defence Force/ M23 unilateral ceasefire “was nothing but a Rwandan lie,” Congolese officials said.
Also, Congolese authorities on Wednesday issued an international arrest warrant for Corneille Nangaa, one of the M23 political leaders, who is Conglose. International Criminal Court prosecutors also began an investigation into possible humanitarian crimes being committed in the DRC.
Rwanda, which is backing the M23 with some 4,000 troops, aims to take control of the eastern DRC for access to its mineral wealth, worth trillions of dollars. The rebels had already controlled some mines in the region.
Rwanda’s government, however, denies those claims, saying instead that its actions are in defense of Tutsis in the eastern DRC. During the Rwandan genocide in 1994, almost a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu extremists, who later fled to the DRC.
About 3,000 people have been killed in the rebel advance, officials said, while hundreds of thousands have been displaced in a region that had already hosted more than 6 million people displaced over the past decade by the ongoing conflict in the DRC. Goma is also currently grappling with shortages of food, electricity, and water.
DISCOVERIES
Prehistoric Puke
Most avoid vomit on the floor of a public restroom or a street sidewalk.
But one man, seeing some on a beach in Denmark, decided to take a closer look.
During a walk on the Cliffs of Stevns, a UNESCO-listed heritage site rich in fossils south of Copenhagen, said he noticed a “strange small cluster of lily pieces in a piece of chalk” while on his stroll, according to the Geomuseum Faxe, a local museum where Bennicke brought the fossil afterward.
John Jagt, a lily expert from the Netherlands, cleaned and examined the fossil, which turned out to be pieces of a sea lily encased in animal vomit dating back 66 million years, reported the Guardian.
Sea lilies are aquatic, plant-like animals related to sea urchins, while sea stars are crinoids. In the fossil, the hard-to-digest bits of the sea lily were encompassed in chalk, making it prehistoric puke, or “regurgitate” to use the scientific term, according to the Smithsonian Magazine.
Jagt said the cluster contains at least two species of lily combined in a round lump, likely the indigestible parts of the plants that were regurgitated by the animal that consumed them, museum officials said.
Jesper Milàn, a curator at Geomuseum Faxe, said that “lilies are not a particularly nutritious food, as they are mainly made up of calcium plates held together by very few soft tissues. But here we have an animal, most likely some kind of fish, that 66 million years ago ate lilies that lived on the seabed of the Cretaceous Sea and then vomited up the skeletal parts.”
“This type of find … is considered very important when reconstructing past ecosystems because it provides important information about which animals were eaten by which,” the museum added.
Fossils such as these help researchers better understand the organization of the Cretaceous period food chain. In the Late Cretaceous period, dinosaurs such as the Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor roamed the land, shortly before their mass extinction by the Chicxculub asteroid, the Smithsonian wrote.
Milàn speculated that a bottom-dwelling shark could be the vomit culprit, one with crushing teeth, similar to the Port Jackson shark currently found in Australia.
Though this may now be the most famous vomit in the world, it is not the oldest upchuck on record: Fossils found in Germany date back 150 million years.