Serbia had not officially lost the ICJ case yet and it had the diplomatic corps ready to reinterpret the case. But make no mistake, it lost it badly and anyone who has read the case can see this clearly.

The court titled the case this way: “Accordance with international law of the unilateral declaration of independence in respect of Kosovo (advisory opinion)”

Serbia through the United Nations asked this question:
“Is the unilateral declaration of independence by the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government of Kosovo in accordance with international law?”

The court’s general 10-4 conclusion?

“The Court has concluded that the adoption of the declaration of independence of 17 February 2008 did not violate general international law, Security Council resolution 1244 (1999) or the Constitutional Framework. Consequently the adoption of that declaration did not violate any applicable rule of international law.”

Ouch! That’s gotta hurt. And it did lead Serbs to believe once again that they were fighting against the whole world, just like in the good old days.

Serbia asked a relatively narrow but heavily leading question and got a thorough, exact answer to her question. This despite what Serbia might want to say. Serbia’s trap was in the “Provisional Institutions of Self-Government”, themselves a creation of Resolution 1244. The Court, however, looked beyond this and concluded that independence was not declared by the same institutions. Ouch!

Furthermore, it concluded that no applicable international law bans declaration of independence. This question was exactly what Serbia had asked the UN General Assembly to support five months after this declaration. We can safely assume that Serbia thought it had put the court into a corner by asking such a narrow, “technical” question.

This did not stop Serb diplomacy from wondering, as the Serb civic leader Vesna Pešic put it jokingly, “Where is the answer to the question we didn’t ask?”

We should not forget that the independence itself is a fact on the ground, not a question of legality, already defined by international law by the ability to carry out the duties of the state. This is why Serbia avoided it.

A 10-4 victory across the political lines of the judges’ respective state is proof of the independent action of this court. Does the court create legal precedent? Hardly. But if the respective countries that have looked at this case with much trepidation about what it could mean for their own sovereignties have doubts, they should fire their foreign ministers. Fire them immediately for taking such disastrous stances that could not have led to better conclusions. If they had recognized Kosovo and moved on, this would not have happened. On the other hand, Serbia’s Jeremic can stay, he’s such a tool to new Kosovo and may certainly continue to ask the court more questions, just in case one of them turns positive for him.

Moreover, the case indirectly concluded that UN Resolution 1244  and any other international institution derived from it is finished. UNMIK – ditto; NATO’s KFOR – time for Status of Forces Agreement with a sovereign government, boys; EULEX – are you sure you’re still status neutral?; OSCE – you get the idea.

Serbia lost militarily – the 1999 war; politically – the status talks and the 2008 declaration of independence; and legally – the ICJ case. Now the fight gets diplomatic. Minister Hyseni, it’s your turn to challenge the lying liars and the lies they tell. It shouldn’t be too hard.

This thing has been on my mind for a long time as the solution to the often left behind sq.Wikipedia.

The best way to spread it is to put it in schools and make students contribute.

It would be a great project to have – let’s say – every 9-13th grade student in Kosova create a Wikipedia article on a topic of their choice.

Overall, this would teach research, writing skills and usage of a collaboration platform that may well be part of the workplace in the future. All three skills need remedial work in Kosova.

Every student would write an article of 500-1000 words and team up with others to revise each other’s articles.

I know our friend Millosh had great success with something like this with the Philosophy Faculty students working on articles in their field, making it (Millosh’s claim) this part of sr.Wikipedia the best covered category even when compared with the major languages.

In Macedonia we heard that language students are being asked to translate articles as part of their coursework, a great way to be productive along the way instead of throwing away the results. And other volunteer students are being asked to write articles on assigned topics — the wrong way to go about it.

So now the plan is to do a project proposal, do a trial run with an understanding teacher and then convince the enlightened Minister of Education to put it in school programs.

Any takers?

Kosovo – the young Europeans campaign took an interesting turn yesterday by soliciting user-created videos for their planned second independence anniversary TV ads. Being the viral marketing guy, I finally began to get excited about all this. In fact, I had thought that the viral marketing and the web was the only way to go for a country such as Kosovo: it is cheap, it engages the audience, and the method goes along with the message.

But the excitement of that first Twitter message from the campaign yesterday faded out a bit when the instructions asked for the link to the video wishing happy second birthday to Kosovo from well wishers across the world to be sent to their email address. I see now that some of those videos are getting posted on their YouTube channel as they are filtered, and the campaign will likely get decent 60 second ads to broadcast on TV although they are missing the whole point of the web thing because they can’t let go of the control and allow the web part to become a goal in itself. For now we are competing with beautiful Croatia, timeless Macedonia, something or another Azerbaijan. If they took the web course, with little money and some creative brainstorming, which is plentiful in Prishtina, they would have created a wave of free marketing activity truly different from any of these. But as it stands now, the young Europeans’ YouTube page has less views than your average lolcat.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. The campaign has failed to deliver on the web in other ways as well. The website http://kosovo-young.com does not continue the story where it was left off in the TV ads, again does not say anything about Kosovo and uses Flash technology which is hard to navigate and won’t even register on search engines.

It should be said that the best marketing so far for the country was done by a couple of tons of steel cast into yellow letters spelling NEWBORN. It is doubtful the current campaign with millions of euros at its disposal can duplicate that.

Now to be fair, my American friend thought that the first bunch of ads were brilliant, which is odd considering that the Kosovars themselves were left wanting. In his eyes, those ads present a lot of young people screaming to be employed and do a fair representation of the reality.

Happy birthday Kosovo!

Republic of Kosovo Government has invited all potential bidders to submit their credentials by 23 September 2009 to qualify for the management and further development of its only commercial service airport, Prishtina International Airport. All potential bidders who will qualify in accordance with the minimum requirements specified in the Request for Qualifications (RFQ), will be invited to submit proposals for the project. The government aims to conclude the transaction by December.

“The Government of the Republic of Kosovo invites experienced airport operators, developers, and investors to submit qualifications for the purposes of being short-listed to participate in a competitive tender for the operation and expansion of Prishtina International Airport,” says a Government announcement.

“As is currently envisioned, the project will be a 20-year agreement of the type design-build-finance-operate-transfer (DBFOT) and contains the following: management, operation, and maintenance of Prishtina International Airport and the financing, design, procurement and construction of a program for expansion of infrastructure, which includes the building of a new 25,000 m2 landmark terminal, air traffic control facilities, new apron, taxiways, water treatment facility, and parking areas,” said in the announcement the Government of Kosovo.

Prishtina International Airport (PIA) is a vital component of the transport infrastructure of Kosovo and is one of the busiest airports in the Balkans, serving 1.2 million passengers and 14.000 flights in 2008.

PIA has growing passenger traffic marking an average annual increase of 11.4% in the period 2007-2008. The airport is currently profitable, but the government predicts that an experienced operator will be able to generate additional sources of revenue and improve the overall level of operation.

Source: htpp://pppkosova.org

Second biggest German airline, Air Berlin, will start regular flights to Kosovo capital Prishtina starting in November 2009.

Semi low-cost carrier will start flying up to twice weekly flights from Zürich to Prishtina on 25 October and from German cities of Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hannover and Munich with nonstop flights on 4 November. Air Berlin will also be operating a Saturday flight from Geneva to Prishtina.

Source: airberlin.com

The airline says these are regular all year flights and tickets can be booked on their website (airberlin.com) or with their local parter Kosova Airlines starting at 119 Euro, which includes taxes, charges and miles.