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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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Having secured majority in the new legislative assembly of the nominally Serbian province of Kosovo, the separatist Albanian political forces are about to declare unilaterally independence as early as December 10 this year. Given the unilateral nature of this move, and the still unsolved territorial and other problems in this part of the Balkans, and the possible domino effect of unilateral decisions coming from other regional capitals, any travel or investment to this region should be avoided until some relative appeasement of the situation. The good news, if good news is the suitable name for the current events, is that the current unsustainable situation, requiring the presence of multinational military force just to keep the situation under control, will find hopefully some new equilibrium that won't require foreign troops on the ground anymore. Until then, however, some parts of the Balkans should be considered as dangerous zone. Which are these parts?

The epicenter of the quake will be Kosovo, without any doubt, although the tensions may rise elsewhere too. A unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo may, according to different scenarios, bring militarily two ethnic communities, the Serbs and the Albanians, one against another. The Albanian community will rely on its numerical superiority; the Serbian community will rely on Belgrade for support of any kind, form and size. This conflict may lead to a formal detachment of the province from Serbia, or to a partition of the province between these two ethnic groups, or to a situation that combines elements of the two, detachment plus partition, depending on the relation of forces on the ground. Once the diplomats are marginalized and the cannons speak, the situation may easily get out of control in a matter of days.

The periphery of the quake may touch upon Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia proper, Macedonia, and Montenegro too. The first country in this order may be partitioned between its Serbian and non-Serbian communities. According to this scenario, the Serbian community in Bosnia will use the same methods as the Albanian community in Kosovo. As the territory is almost perfectly separated between Serbs and non-Serbs, Bosnia may fall apart without much blood. In Serbia proper, there may be certain clashes between the army and some isolated ethnic pockets in the southern part of the country. Macedonia and Montenegro are two countries that may be affected not because of their voluntary involvement in these separate conflicts, but because of the spillover effect that hundreds of thousands of refugees may have on their ethnic balance. The destabilization of these two countries may be seen also as intentional policy from some regional and out-of-the region actors.

Hopefully, the domino effect stops here. Unless other countries from the region decide to get involved in these new conflicts by supporting directly one or another side, we can say that the geography of destabilization won't spillover to Croatia in the west, Greece and Albania in south, and Bulgaria and Romania in east. Economically, however, these countries will be affected to a different degree by the new wave of destabilization in the Balkans. The peace there will be preserved, but the economic cost of it may be high.

P.S. 17 February 2008. The parliament of Kosovo declared independence and asked foreign governments to recognize the new European state. The Serbian government rejected the declaration, but promised not to use military force to regain control over Kosovo.

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