The fury of explosions in Belgrade has subsided. NATO strikes on Serbs have stopped which presents new questions: Will this end the tragedies in Kosovo? Will peace once again reign in the plains and mountains of Kosovo? Opinions and analyses will of course differ. Or it may be too soon to give a correct reply. There remains, however, many doubts as to what is going to be the region's future. The terms of the secret agreement signed by NATO and the Serbs are not yet known. Whatever may be the case, the Kosovo experience teaches us several lessons. It may help us to understand certain painful facts about ourselves and how those unpleasant facts can be altered in order to raise our Ummah to a level that matches it.

The lessons from Kosovo are many and diverse. First and foremost of them is the simple truth that dependence on others will solve none of our problems. It is evident that Europe has several selfish motives behind launching a war over Kosovo. It would be naive to suggest that NATO swung into action in order to help the Muslims. Muslims in other parts of the world should have helped their brothers in Kosovo. The Muslim nations have failed conspicuously in playing an effective role in solving the Kosovo issue. Agreements to solve the issue were made and signed without any Muslim representation. Is it not strange that a community with over 50 member countries and with strong religious links to Kosovo had no part in drawing up the agreement? It is as though it were not a Muslim problem. Another lesson from the tragedy is the humanitarian aid that was late and slow in coming, defective and unorganized.

This is a chronic issue which indicates the absence of proper thought and strategic planning. Our response to events and challenges are instant reactions without any perceptions of the future or the implications of our reactions. The worry over the future of the people of Kosovo, after NATO forces withdraw, still remains. The Kosovo people are demanding their full rights, including self-determination while NATO earlier approved Serb authority over them. It is quite evident that NATO will reorganize the picture of the region, denying the Muslims of Kosovo any independent political existence.

NATO will, of course, repeat the old scenario of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Kosovo as well. Therefore, at least for the time being, the Balkan Muslims' hope to have a distinguished place in Christian Europe will have to be buried. It is unfortunate that our Ummah is plagued with this kind of weakness and impotence despite the vast potential at their disposal. We have become an inactive community living on the margin of events while momentous decisions about us are made without consulting or considering us. While in Srebrenica, Time stands still.

   TIME, they say, is a great healer, but for the survivors of the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the interminable wait for justice makes any talk of healing a very tall order indeed. Even as they trickle back to their former hometown, the slaughter of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys at the hands of Bosnian Serb troops remains embedded in their collective memory. Yesterday's prayer ceremony at Potocari village in memory of the dead and the missing served at once as a reminder of the horrific crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war and a wake-up call for an international community that is yet to bring the perpetrators to justice. If Bosnian Serbs are condemned forever as a people to carry the guilt of Srebrenica and other war crimes, then it is to wider Europe's undying shame that it allowed such atrocities to take place at all. For, in hindsight, the timidity and lethargy that characterised the continent's reaction to the outbreak of conflict in the Balkans, spurred the Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and his Bosnian Serb cohorts on to try to exterminate the area's Muslims. The United Nations gave a scarcely better account of itself when it came to stopping the Serb war machine, although, to its credit, it did set up 'safe havens' to provide protection for civilians.
But the UN-protected safe areas turned out to be veritable death traps for Bosnian Muslims trying to find their way out of war zones. The Dutch peacekeepers assigned for Srebrenica, finding themselves outnumbered by Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic's troops, called for Nato air support through the UN. Tragically, no such support materialised, giving Mladic's men virtually a free hand to separate the men and the boys from the women and the children and execute them over three days in open fields. The painful process of exhuming the bodies from different mass graves has been continuing for the last seven years, with only 309 having been identified so far. The survivors' inability to bury the bodies has further added to the pain that they have to live with. Meanwhile, the equally important task of putting the architects of the Balkans war crimes in the dock remains far from over. In 2001 a deputy of General Mladic was convicted of genocide, but the real masterminds of the Srebrenica executions - Mladic himself and the war-time Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic - continue to evade arrest. The two were convicted of genocide way back in 1993 by the UN war crimes tribunal for Bosnia; why a 19,000-strong Nato force has not been able to locate them till now remains a great mystery.