Kosovo is ... Serbia?
Kosovo is ... Kosovo?
Kosovo is ... the match that will light the next Balkan war.

About the only thing the U.S./Kosovar and Serbian/Russian camps can agree on these days is the third statement in that list.

I've been living in Tanzania for almost eight months now; four months to go. I've put down some pretty solid roots in East Africa, temporary they might be, and I've become extremely comfortable here. But my heart is still in the Balkans.

And I always will.

I have a job, and thus a commitment, in Tanzania. But if I could go back right now, at this moment, I would. Without hesitation, I'd be on a plane to Belgrade. I want to be there. I want to watch history unfold in a place that has formed such a significant part of my life experiences. I'm here; O.G. is there. I'm here; Mladen is there. Dragana is there. Zivko. Ana. Ivana. All of my Serbian friends. They're all there, in the same city where a bunch of shabani are setting flame to the U.S. embassy, where people are looting the McDonalds', and the government is sponsoring 150,000 people to take to the streets of a place I used to call home, to protest the loss of a land that they used to call home.

I'm here, and they're all there. And the whole place looks like it could erupt at any moment.

The whole place as in, the entire Balkan Peninsula. Read your history, folks. Here we go again.

Kosovar independence was a long time coming. But it was almost like the speeding car you see approaching in your side mirrors on I-10, the one always driven by a guy with a fade: OBJECTS ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR. It always shocks you when that car catches up and just flies by you: "Hey, that object really was closer than it appeared."

It's the same with the Kosovar decision to declare its statehood last week, after months -- no, years -- of talking a talk that, until now, lacked the political support to come with a walk.

Well, look who's walkin' now.

With the support of the U.S. ("Greatest country in the world!!"), and a few notable EU states as well, the Kosovar Albanians have just upped the ante on what comes next in the former Yugoslavia. Russia is in no mood to get bitch slapped again, like they were the last time Kosovo was making the headlines with such ferocity, in 1999. That humiliation -- Russian concerns about the make up of a Balkan peacekeeping force were treated like a suggestion from the uncle that has dementia -- spelled the end of Boris Yeltsin's credibility; but Vladimir Putin, the new Czar, ain't going down like that. The Russians are back; we haven't gone anywhere; and the Balkans is where this new chapter in the game is going to unfold.

Tito has just officially rolled over in his grave for the 1,000,000th time since he died in 1980. His precious creation -- his dream of Yugoslav "Brotherhood & Unity" -- continues to rip itself apart, 13 years after Dayton, nine years after the NATO Bombing Spring, five years after the eruption of violence against Kosovar Serbs by the majority Albanian community of the former Serbian enclave known as the birthplace of the Serbian nation.

First comes Kosovar independence, and then what?

Definitely not this.

The Serb minority in Kosovo -- between five and 10 percent of the overall population, and almost entirely located in the north, abutting Serbia proper -- is talking partition. The crazy ass (think Gaza strip settler as opposed to a West Banker) Bosnian Serbs to the west -- the ones who form 49 percent of a country literally being held together by EU/NATO Band Aids, Bosnia-Hercegovina -- are talking secession; they'd be joining forces with their Orthodox brethren in Kosovo in breaking away from one country to join where they feel they really belong: in Greater Serbia.

First goes Kosovo, then goes the Serb enclave in Kosovo, then goes Republika Srpska in Bosnia. And then, my friends, we'll be watching history unfold all over again.

Let's all say a prayer.