ANALYSIS:Sense of d�j� vu as NATO tiptoes into
Balkans morass
Carole Hodge
THE death of a British soldier in Macedonia just hours before the start of Operation Essential Harvest will serve as a warning to NATO’s political and military leaders that putting lightly-armed troops on the ground in a war zone is doomed to fail - and failure could provoke a wider Balkan war, forge divisions amongst NATO member stages and threaten the Alliance’s credibility in the region.
This episode is not, on the other hand, reason for military disengagement, as some no doubt wish, but rather for a parallel full-scale review of international involvement and objectives in the entire region.
The mission is hazardous from any perspective. It is possible that it will go as planned and lay the basis for longer-term peace in Macedonia. The chances are, however, that either renewed hostilities will prompt NATO to withdraw precipitately, or that a limited force will linger on in an undefined role, in the hope that its mere presence will prevent the conflict from escalating further.
Past experience in the Balkans demonstrates that weak or fudged mandates do not work, and can compromise both the negotiation process and the troops on the ground.
In the worst case scenario, the Alliance could find itself wedged between Scylla and Charybdis, with Macedonian and ethnic Albanian forces not all necessarily signatory to the Ohrid agreement who perceive that more is to be gained by war than peace.
NATO has already been snookered by Macedonia’s prime minister, Ljubco Georgievski, who waited for troops to be deployed on the ground before declaring NATO’s estimate of weapons collection as "laughable and humiliating for Macedonia". He has cautioned that without "serious disarmament" war will continue.
The mission could also find itself at the sharp end of a fractured political response amongst NATO states as they wrestle, not for the first time, with competing priorities and agendas. Some contributing members are clearly wary of this latest British-led mission, while others, Greece and Turkey in particular, already have conflicting interests elsewhere. The area is also of future strategic importance as a scheduled conduit for Caspian Sea oil.
But Macedonia cannot sort out its internal problems alone, and international assistance is needed at various levels. The collection of weapons from the National Liberation Army (NLA) on a voluntary basis is mainly a symbolic act. Weaponry is easy to come by in the region, and verification virtually impossible to achieve. Much must be accomplished on the basis of trust, a component little in evidence after a six-month conflict in which over 100 people have died and 150,000 been displaced.
The promise of an internationally-backed agreement, which includes a substantial increase in rights for Albanians at constitutional, parliamentary, education and public service level, whilst ensuring the continuation of the Macedonian state, might just be enough to edge the peace process forward.
But a number of factors are likely to undermine any agreement which does not take the wider picture into account.
Most of Macedonia’s neighbours have a potential stake in its collapse as an independent state. Serbia has already offered assistance to the Macedonian government to counter Albanian "terrorism" and many in Serbia still regard Macedonia as "southern Serbia".
Bulgaria and Greece also have historical claims to Macedonia, although both are watching current developments from the sidelines. Greece has long harboured objection to the name of Macedonia, managing for several years to obstruct EU recognition. Albania is keeping a low profile but presumably would not object to an expansion of its eastern border in the event of Macedonia’s implosion.
In the interests of regional stability, and longer-term EU integration, it is vital that Macedonia survives.
Yet it is an issue which the international community has only recently begun to face seriously in all its facets. Until early this year, praise was heaped on Macedonia as the only "multi-ethnic" state which had survived without war. Considerable efforts were invested in securing its national boundaries; and it was one of the first former Yugoslav states to be included in EC funding programmes.
But little attention was paid to the increasing ethnic tensions within Macedonia, exacerbated by external developments.
International sanctions on Serbia from 1992 led to a thriving black market, but with little relief to the majority of Macedonia’s citizens. In 1999, the massive influx of Kosovar Albanian refugees caused further destabilisation in a country which already discriminated against its own Albanian population.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports in 1996 and 1998 documented physical and psychological abuse by police in Macedonia against ethnic minorities. A further HRW report out last week confirms the continuation of such practices.
These and other signals went unheeded by the international community, and there is now a price to be paid.
Even at the onset of hostilities last February, the situation was misread, and encouragement initially given to the Macedonian authorities to use disproportionate force against a group of rebels who were seeking, albeit by illegal means, to secure the basic political and civil rights which all European citizens have come to expect.
The crux of the problem may be that, in addressing the intricate problems arising from the break-up of Yugoslavia, a number of declared values which were understood to be the foundation for a civilised Europe have often been compromised in favour of short term solutions. This has led to confusion as to final objectives and to scepticism on the ground. The current mission, to be strictly limited to 30 days, illustrates the point.
Half-hearted international responses throughout the area over the last decade have resulted in increased hostilities or, at best, stalemate situations. In Bosnia and Croatia, genocide and ethnic cleansing were permitted, and even facilitated with impunity, for several years and the main political and military instigators are still at large.
In Kosovo, ethnic "apartheid" continued for a decade before decisive international action was taken to bring it to an end. And in Macedonia, the so-called "model" state of inter-ethnic harmony, ethnic discrimination was condoned until military insurgency forced international engagement.
Although full-scale war has ended in most parts of former Yugoslavia, societies are stagnating, and resentments still smoulder, presaging further unrest.
Bosnia is an ethnically-partitioned state with ineffective central institutions, engendering corruption and mismanagement at local and international level; the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia exists in name only, with Montenegro, Vojvodina and Kosovo all working towards varying degrees of separation from the Serbian mother state; and the situation in the Presevo valley in southern Serbia, despite claims of success both from the international community and Serbian officials, is far from resolved.
Above all, in regional terms, is the burning issue of Kosovo’s unresolved status.
The latest plan, initiated by the Serbian deputy prime minister, Nebojsa Covic and backed by the Serbian government, is to partition Kosovo into Albanian and Serbian entities, Serbia claiming the rich mining area surrounding Mitrovica in the north.
This is not a new plan. Acknowledging that it was unsustainable to integrate the 90 per cent majority Albanian province into Serbia proper, the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, now awaiting trial at The Hague, had long viewed with favour the province’s division.
The territory allocated to the Albanians would be economically unviable, whilst the province’s main economic resource, the mineral-rich Trepca mines, would fall to Serbia.
If put into practice, the plan would be likely to have far-reaching consequences throughout the region.
A number of further international initiatives are required before peace in the region becomes a realistic prospect.
Recognition of the independence of Kosovo, with guaranteed rights and protection for its Serbian population, is a solution which the international community still draws a line at.
But it would secure a stable environment in the longer term from which Albanians throughout the region would benefit.
It would also alleviate the growing pressure on Macedonian institutions in the face of continuing demographic change, and curtail the arms flow from across the border. Serbia would eventually come to accept the loss of Kosovo as inevitable.
The move should be seen not as a redrawing of international borders, but as part of the dissolution process of Tito’s Yugoslavia, in which Kosovo enjoyed full autonomous status and a seat on the Yugoslav presidency.
It would take vision, courage and commitment on the part of the international community to set the procedure in motion and see it sensitively through the teething stages.
Unfortunately, though, these are the very qualities which have been in such short supply over the last decade.
Carole Hodge is co-author of A Test for Europe: Confidence Building in Former Yugoslavia (University of Glasgow 1996)
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=102992
Carole Hodge
THE death of a British soldier in Macedonia just hours before the start of Operation Essential Harvest will serve as a warning to NATO’s political and military leaders that putting lightly-armed troops on the ground in a war zone is doomed to fail - and failure could provoke a wider Balkan war, forge divisions amongst NATO member stages and threaten the Alliance’s credibility in the region.
This episode is not, on the other hand, reason for military disengagement, as some no doubt wish, but rather for a parallel full-scale review of international involvement and objectives in the entire region.
The mission is hazardous from any perspective. It is possible that it will go as planned and lay the basis for longer-term peace in Macedonia. The chances are, however, that either renewed hostilities will prompt NATO to withdraw precipitately, or that a limited force will linger on in an undefined role, in the hope that its mere presence will prevent the conflict from escalating further.
Past experience in the Balkans demonstrates that weak or fudged mandates do not work, and can compromise both the negotiation process and the troops on the ground.
In the worst case scenario, the Alliance could find itself wedged between Scylla and Charybdis, with Macedonian and ethnic Albanian forces not all necessarily signatory to the Ohrid agreement who perceive that more is to be gained by war than peace.
NATO has already been snookered by Macedonia’s prime minister, Ljubco Georgievski, who waited for troops to be deployed on the ground before declaring NATO’s estimate of weapons collection as "laughable and humiliating for Macedonia". He has cautioned that without "serious disarmament" war will continue.
The mission could also find itself at the sharp end of a fractured political response amongst NATO states as they wrestle, not for the first time, with competing priorities and agendas. Some contributing members are clearly wary of this latest British-led mission, while others, Greece and Turkey in particular, already have conflicting interests elsewhere. The area is also of future strategic importance as a scheduled conduit for Caspian Sea oil.
But Macedonia cannot sort out its internal problems alone, and international assistance is needed at various levels. The collection of weapons from the National Liberation Army (NLA) on a voluntary basis is mainly a symbolic act. Weaponry is easy to come by in the region, and verification virtually impossible to achieve. Much must be accomplished on the basis of trust, a component little in evidence after a six-month conflict in which over 100 people have died and 150,000 been displaced.
The promise of an internationally-backed agreement, which includes a substantial increase in rights for Albanians at constitutional, parliamentary, education and public service level, whilst ensuring the continuation of the Macedonian state, might just be enough to edge the peace process forward.
But a number of factors are likely to undermine any agreement which does not take the wider picture into account.
Most of Macedonia’s neighbours have a potential stake in its collapse as an independent state. Serbia has already offered assistance to the Macedonian government to counter Albanian "terrorism" and many in Serbia still regard Macedonia as "southern Serbia".
Bulgaria and Greece also have historical claims to Macedonia, although both are watching current developments from the sidelines. Greece has long harboured objection to the name of Macedonia, managing for several years to obstruct EU recognition. Albania is keeping a low profile but presumably would not object to an expansion of its eastern border in the event of Macedonia’s implosion.
In the interests of regional stability, and longer-term EU integration, it is vital that Macedonia survives.
Yet it is an issue which the international community has only recently begun to face seriously in all its facets. Until early this year, praise was heaped on Macedonia as the only "multi-ethnic" state which had survived without war. Considerable efforts were invested in securing its national boundaries; and it was one of the first former Yugoslav states to be included in EC funding programmes.
But little attention was paid to the increasing ethnic tensions within Macedonia, exacerbated by external developments.
International sanctions on Serbia from 1992 led to a thriving black market, but with little relief to the majority of Macedonia’s citizens. In 1999, the massive influx of Kosovar Albanian refugees caused further destabilisation in a country which already discriminated against its own Albanian population.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports in 1996 and 1998 documented physical and psychological abuse by police in Macedonia against ethnic minorities. A further HRW report out last week confirms the continuation of such practices.
These and other signals went unheeded by the international community, and there is now a price to be paid.
Even at the onset of hostilities last February, the situation was misread, and encouragement initially given to the Macedonian authorities to use disproportionate force against a group of rebels who were seeking, albeit by illegal means, to secure the basic political and civil rights which all European citizens have come to expect.
The crux of the problem may be that, in addressing the intricate problems arising from the break-up of Yugoslavia, a number of declared values which were understood to be the foundation for a civilised Europe have often been compromised in favour of short term solutions. This has led to confusion as to final objectives and to scepticism on the ground. The current mission, to be strictly limited to 30 days, illustrates the point.
Half-hearted international responses throughout the area over the last decade have resulted in increased hostilities or, at best, stalemate situations. In Bosnia and Croatia, genocide and ethnic cleansing were permitted, and even facilitated with impunity, for several years and the main political and military instigators are still at large.
In Kosovo, ethnic "apartheid" continued for a decade before decisive international action was taken to bring it to an end. And in Macedonia, the so-called "model" state of inter-ethnic harmony, ethnic discrimination was condoned until military insurgency forced international engagement.
Although full-scale war has ended in most parts of former Yugoslavia, societies are stagnating, and resentments still smoulder, presaging further unrest.
Bosnia is an ethnically-partitioned state with ineffective central institutions, engendering corruption and mismanagement at local and international level; the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia exists in name only, with Montenegro, Vojvodina and Kosovo all working towards varying degrees of separation from the Serbian mother state; and the situation in the Presevo valley in southern Serbia, despite claims of success both from the international community and Serbian officials, is far from resolved.
Above all, in regional terms, is the burning issue of Kosovo’s unresolved status.
The latest plan, initiated by the Serbian deputy prime minister, Nebojsa Covic and backed by the Serbian government, is to partition Kosovo into Albanian and Serbian entities, Serbia claiming the rich mining area surrounding Mitrovica in the north.
This is not a new plan. Acknowledging that it was unsustainable to integrate the 90 per cent majority Albanian province into Serbia proper, the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, now awaiting trial at The Hague, had long viewed with favour the province’s division.
The territory allocated to the Albanians would be economically unviable, whilst the province’s main economic resource, the mineral-rich Trepca mines, would fall to Serbia.
If put into practice, the plan would be likely to have far-reaching consequences throughout the region.
A number of further international initiatives are required before peace in the region becomes a realistic prospect.
Recognition of the independence of Kosovo, with guaranteed rights and protection for its Serbian population, is a solution which the international community still draws a line at.
But it would secure a stable environment in the longer term from which Albanians throughout the region would benefit.
It would also alleviate the growing pressure on Macedonian institutions in the face of continuing demographic change, and curtail the arms flow from across the border. Serbia would eventually come to accept the loss of Kosovo as inevitable.
The move should be seen not as a redrawing of international borders, but as part of the dissolution process of Tito’s Yugoslavia, in which Kosovo enjoyed full autonomous status and a seat on the Yugoslav presidency.
It would take vision, courage and commitment on the part of the international community to set the procedure in motion and see it sensitively through the teething stages.
Unfortunately, though, these are the very qualities which have been in such short supply over the last decade.
Carole Hodge is co-author of A Test for Europe: Confidence Building in Former Yugoslavia (University of Glasgow 1996)
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=102992
www.antic.org
