Following Kosovo's declaration of independence on Sunday, Serb gangs torched UN border posts between the two countries that may be a harbinger of more violence and Serbian attempts to partition the northern part of Kosovo.

As reported in the LA Times, "Although Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica called Monday for Serbs to show restraint, his government Tuesday seemed to encourage the groups wreaking havoc along the frontier.

"Slobodan Samardzic, Serbia's minister for Kosovo, said the central government was not behind the gangs' vandalism. But he said Serbia intended to take over customs functions in northern Kosovo.

" 'Today's action is in accordance with general policy of the government to take over customs policy wherever it can in Kosovo, as well as all other policies, all other responsibilities. That is simply a process that is not going to be stopped,' Samardzic told B92 television in Belgrade, the Serbian capital.

" 'We saved the face. We saved a part of Kosovo,' Samardzic said. 'Serbia will never recognize the independence of Kosovo.'

"He denied that Serbia was attempting to slice off northern Kosovo. But he said, 'We preserved a part of Kosovo.' He said recognizing an independent Kosovo was 'total madness.' "

Kosovo's independence has been recognized by the United States, France and Britain, but Russia opposes Kosovo's independence and demanded an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to vacate Kosovo's declaration of independence, which did not happen at the meeting.

Russia and other nations who face separatist movements are not overjoyed with Kovovo's move.

However, Kosovo has been an autonomous region of Serbia since 1946 and an autonomous province since 1963.

Yugoslavia, like the former Czechoslovakia, had been a country artificially created after WWI by the League of Nations. 

After the breakup of the former Soviet Union, Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, having had enough of Serbia's dominance of Yugoslavia's republics and its egregious repression of individual republics' language, culture, governance, etc., for almost a century, declared independence from the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990's, as was their right under the constitution of the former Yugoslavia. 

Then Yugoslav national army, whose officer corps was overwhelmingly Serbian, and Serbian paramilitary units followed Serbian nationalist Slobodan Milosevic's Greater Serbia delusion and invaded Slovenia (briefly), Croatia, where they committed war crimes such as the massacre of Croats in Vukovar, and in Bosnia-Hercegovina, scene of the horrific Srebrenica massacre of Muslims by Serb General Ratko Mladic.

While Milosevic passed away during his war crimes' trial at The Hague, Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, war criminals, still remain free; Mladic living in Serbia and Karadzic in the Republic of Serbia in Bosnia-Herzegovina

In the end, Serbian forces, after killing hundreds of thousands in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina were defeated and the Dayton Agreement negotiated.  Serbs were left with their own landlocked, almost pre-WWI borders, diminished nation.  Serbia then went on the attack against separatists in Kosovo, another bloody conflict.

Now, Kosovo's independence is the final blow against Serbia's false pride and aggression in the name of a dream of Greater Serbia (a horrible nightmare for the other former Yugoslav republics).

So Serbia, using Serbian gangs to wreak havoc, will try and partition northern Kosovo which has a Serbian population and attempt to enfold it into Serbia.  This alone should disqualify Serbia from entrance into the EU.

Kosovo's independence will be the historical denouement of Serbia's 1990s invasion of, aggression against, and massacres in the sovereign nations of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina....the absolute end of Serbia's domination of the now defunct Yugoslavia.