Talk:July 18, 1998, Albanian–Yugoslav border clashes

This review is transcluded from Talk:July 18, 1998 Albanian–Yugoslav border clashes/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: FunkMonk (talk · contribs) 13:39, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

• Hi, I'll review this. FunkMonk (talk) 13:39, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
• The first sentence of the intro is very complex and information-packed, I'm wondering whether it could start out a bit "softer". Perhaps some of the info could be moved to a new sentence after the first one.

All done so far, FunkMonk. 23 editor (talk) 01:31, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

• "who formed a majority there before the mid-19th century but by 1990 represented only about ten percent of the population." Will it be too much to briefly explain how this happened?
• "Once Kosovo's autonomy was abolished" Which was when?
• "fueling the Kosovar uprising that eventually erupted in the spring of 1998." Anything this can link to?
• "foreign mujahideen fighting" Could be explained what this means. "Foreign Islamist fighters" or some such, just to be completely clear.
• "subsequently seized by the authorities." Which authorities?
• "Over the course of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Wars, a rump federation consisting of Serbia (including Kosovo) and Montenegro proclaimed itself the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." Perhaps clarify whether this means it was a de-facto Serbian state?
• Was there no international reaction to the role of mujahideen in the clash?
• The intro doesn't explain that the Yugoslav Army was apparently a Serbian force. The article body doesn't make this clear either.

All done, FunkMonk. Some points:

• "Once Kosovo's autonomy was abolished" (the article states this was in '89 just a few sentences earlier)
• "fueling the Kosovar uprising that eventually erupted in the spring of 1998" (unfortunately no article at present, if there were it would probably link to 1998 Kosovo summer offensive)
• "Was there no international reaction to the role of mujahideen in the clash?" (unfortunately I haven't been able to find any via Google, Newspapers.com, etc. The EU issued a condemnation but didn't explicitly mentioned the Islamists, though US officials were no doubt pleased given they had requested that the KLA limit the influence of foreign mujaheddin in their ranks).

Regards, 23 editor (talk) 17:40, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Nice, seems all that could be done has been done, so will now pass the article. FunkMonk (talk) 22:27, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

There is an overarching framework about a group of Mujahideen in the article led by an "Ali Rabici" or "Alija Rabic". The sources about the Mujahideen and Alija Rabic are:

• Shaul Shay (2007). Islamic Terror and the Balkans. Piscataway, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. p. 89. ISBN 978-1-4128-0931-3.
• Christopher Deliso (2007). The Coming Balkan Caliphate: The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood Publishing. p. 41. ISBN 978-0-275-99525-6
• Serbian tabloid NIN

This Ali Rabici literally does not exist outside the abovementioned sources and some reproductions of original piece in NIN. NIN was a nationalist tabloid and propaganda was everywhere. Albanian sources and media do not even mention the existence of an "Ali Rabici" and gives 9 results on google including wikipedia mirrors. Shay and Deliso themselves have received very negative reviews. [1]: Deliso’s thesis of a ‘coming Balkan caliphate’ embraces Bosnia, Albania, Kosova, Macedonia and Turkey. Deliso’s animosity in particular is directed against the Albanians, and he faithfully upholds anti-Albanian stereotypes popular among the Balkan Christian peoples. He writes of ‘the opportunism they [the Kosovo Albanians] have shown in siding at various times with the Turks, the AustroHungarian Empire, Mussolini, Hitler, and, most recently, NATO’ (p. 51), thereby repeating the myth popular among Serbian nationalists, of the Albanians as stooges of repeated foreign invaders, though the Kosova Albanians’ record in this regard is absolutely no worse than that of other Balkan peoples I propose to remove all mention of the "Ali Rabici" which may not have even existed and remove the paragraph Serb sources assert that the first mujahideen..Rabiçi's men. Durraz0 (talk) 20:07, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I'll concede that NIN probably can't be considered WP:RS in this context since the magazine (not a tabloid, as you wrote) appears to have been hijacked by the Socialist Party during this period and its editorial independence for the years 1991 to 2000 was therefore compromised. So it can go. Regarding Shay and Deliso, there are no entries at WP:RSN for either of them, so your assertion that these sources aren't WP:RS is just that, an assertion made by you. Shay is a professor and lecturer at Israel's military academy and Deliso has written half-a-dozen books on the region, some of which have been published by academic presses. A negative review here and there isn't sufficient to justify a blanket removal. Amanuensis Balkanicus (talk) 23:52, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Summer never states that Serbs formed an ethnic majority in Kosovo prior to the mid 19-th century. "Albanian-speakers are likely to have formed a majority in Kosovo, at least, since the mid-nineteenth century, though the process by which this majority was formed has been fiercely contested.8" from page 8-10 in Clark there are no mentions of "tens of thousands of Serbs leaving kosovo" nor are there any mentions of "serb emigration" or of "high Albanian birthrates", when it comes to demographics, p 8-10 of clark focus on how Serbia and subsequently Yugoslavia tried to change the demographics of Kosovo via ethnic cleansing and failed colonisation programs. page 36 mentions birthrates of both serbs and albanians being high but the serbian one declining due to the slower urbanisation of albanian inhabited areas. Durraz0 (talk) 20:15, 20 December 2021 (UTC)