Sovereignty

To a muddy field lashed by razor-sharp winds, about 50 brave Serbs have come home. Their houses here on the edge of an ethnic Albanian town have been repaired, or new ones built. A few rows of wheat and corn have been planted. But there are no jobs, no school, and danger lurks. Graffiti from shadowy anti-Serb militias scar the walls of nearby buildings.

The looming independence of Kosovo and promises of quick U.S. and European recognition have undercut and infuriated Russia at a moment when this oil-rich behemoth is eager to show that its global clout has been restored, analysts say. Russian officials have spent weeks issuing dire assessments of the United Nations-administered province's upcoming declaration of independence from Serbia, expected to be made this weekend.

Serbia will use economic, political and diplomatic measures to stop Kosovo from declaring independence Sunday, but will avoid violence, Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic told an emergency Security Council session Thursday. Jeremic said at the closed-door meeting that allowing the province to secede would do "irreparable harm" to the notion of sovereignty, and would trigger secession by other disaffected territories.

With the province of Kosovo expected to declare independence from Serbia this weekend, it is increasingly unlikely that Europe will offer a united pledge of support, officials and diplomats across the region say. There is unease in several countries over the precedent Kosovo's secession would set and over the ability of the corruption-plagued government in the ethnic Albanian province to rule.

Well-organized Serbian gangs torched buildings Tuesday along the border between Serbia and Kosovo in a defiant rejection of the breakaway province's declaration of independence. Huge flames and walls of black smoke engulfed border posts and United Nations police and customs offices in the most serious violence to date over Kosovo's unilateral split from Serbia, declared Sunday by the ethnic Albanian government. U.N.

NATO peacekeepers reopened two demolished border checkpoints between Serbia and northern Kosovo on Wednesday as thousands of Serbs protested Kosovo's independence. For three days, Kosovo's Serbs have shown their anger over Sunday's declaration of independence by the ethnic Albanian leadership, destroying United Nations and NATO property, setting off small bombs and staging noisy rallies.

As the world's most famous Buddhist, the Dalai Lama is a monk juggling two jobs. One is the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, and the other is the political head of his government in exile. He was chosen to serve these dual callings through an arcane process based on signs that he was reincarnated from a long line of Dalai Lamas who were considered embodiments of the Buddha of Compassion, the holder of the White Lotus.

In this half-abandoned place of rusting ports and skeleton homes, there is a land that is recognized by nobody. Fifteen years since its bloody war with Georgia, the breakaway republic of Abkhazia is a surreal spot where Soviet isolation lingers, the Cold War never ended and people cling to facades of statehood.

The Russian bombs and shells were falling fast Tuesday afternoon, dropping unseen through mist that clung to the mountains and wisped over the valleys. Panicked people pressed the gas pedal to the floor and roared toward the capital city of Tbilisi, trying to outrun the explosions. Russian helicopters hung low over the foothills. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had said that the "operation to force the Georgian authorities to peace" was finished. But here in Georgia, the war dragged on.

Once the most powerful of the former Yugoslav republics and a kingdom that reached from the Adriatic to the Aegean, Serbia is about to lose the only vestige of its days of glory: Kosovo. United Nations mediators say they will unveil their plan for the province, which is predominantly ethnic Albanian and Muslim, and has been governed as a U.N. protectorate since 1999, sometime after today's Serbian general elections.