KOSOVO

When is a country not a country? That sounds a bit like a riddle from the Hobbit, but for Kosovo the issue is a bit more serious.

Yugoslavia was cobbled together after the First World War as a combination of six republics; Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. Serbia had the added complication of two autonomous regions within its borders; Vojvodina in the north, added as part of the dismembering of Hungary, and Kosovo in the south. Both of these regions were dominated by non-Serbs; ethnic Hungarians in Vojvodina and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, who made up 90% of the population. Kosovo had the further wrinkle that it included the site of Serbia's most famous historical site; the battlefield of a mediaeval slugfest against the Turks, which the Serbs in fact lost. Imagine the Brits wishing to hold onto the Calais enclave because the Battle of Hastings had been fought there.

After the Cold War, Yugoslavia gradually - and very painfully - split up into its six constituent parts. The Albanians in Kosovo naturally wanted the same, but for Serbia this was a split too far. After severe repression, NATO forces intervened, bombing Serbia until they stopped. In 1999 Kosovo was placed under a U.N. protectorate. Then in 2008, after a period of - for the Balkans - relative calm, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence.

Does that mean that it is a country? Well, yes and no. More than 60 countries have recognised Kosovo, including the U.S., Britain, France and Germany. But a fair number of others have not. They include two permanent members of the U.N. security council (China and Russia, the latter bound by historical ties to Serbia), India, and five members of the European Union. Romania and Slovakia have Hungarian-minority problems of the kind that could flare up in Vojvodina, Greece is still upset about Macedonia's name, and Cyprus remains a divided island. But the biggest naysayer is Spain, worried that regional separatist movements in Galicia, Catalonia and especially the Basque Country could lead to the crumbling of one of the E.U.'s bigger states.

Kosovo's unilateral declaration has been referred to the International Court of Justice in the Hague. However, because of the balance of political forces in favour and against, any ruling is unlikely to be definitive. Kosovo's final legal status remains in limboland.

This clash between legal niceties and political realities has lessons for other would-be countries. Palestine, Taiwan and Cyprus all spring to mind; plus southern Sudan. There is no obvious answer to the riddle above.

Walter Blotscher