South Ossetia: The perfect wrong war

From Walid Phares writing for the American Thinker about the current war in Georgia. As for what caused it, he writes.

Five reasons led to transformations: One was the shift of Georgia to NATO and friendship to Washington; two was a shift in Moscow from good relations with the US under Yeltsin and the first years of Putin to more tense relations in the last Putin years; three was the active participation of Georgia in US-led activities in Iraq; four were the Ossetians' continuous aspirations towards self determination; and last but not least, the breakdown of friendship between the West and Russia since the Kosovo resolution few months ago, the real last straw.

How is Kosovo and Georgia linked?

Since 1999, the outcome of the Western campaign in Kosovo brought about a parallel status quo to the one established in South Ossetia and in Abkhasia. In short, NATO had created an autonomous area for the ethnic Albanians inside a sovereign country, Serbia; while Russia and the CIS have insured autonomous status for South Ossetians and Abkhasians inside another sovereign state, Georgia.

For a very interesting read, click here.

Kosovo declares independence from Serbia

From Yahoo via the AP.

Revelers fired guns, waved red-and-black Albanian flags and set off fireworks over Kosovo Sunday after parliament proclaimed independence in defiance of Serbia and Russia, which condemned the declaration of the world's newest nation A decade after a bloody separatist war with Serbian forces that claimed 10,000 lives, lawmakers pronounced the territory the Republic of Kosovo and pledged to make it a "democratic, multiethnic state." Its leaders looked for swift recognition from the U.S. and key European powers — but also braced for a bitter showdown.

For a full read, click here.