By Gordon N.
Bardos
Friday, August 23, 2002; Page A27
As the war in Afghanistan continues and military preparations for a possible
conflict against Iraq proceed, the overdeployment of the U.S. military becomes
more and more evident. This makes the importance of finding a viable,
responsible exit strategy for America's forces from the Balkans, and
specifically from Kosovo, all the more urgent. Based on a recent fact-finding mission to the region, the broad outlines of
an exit strategy from Kosovo are clear, but the most important issue facing the
United Nations, and particularly the United States, lies in providing the Kosovo
Albanian leadership with a clear road map of what it must do to ensure that an
independent Kosovo can become a responsible state and not a perpetual source of
instability in southeastern Europe. Despite Kosovo's superficial appearance of normality, scratching beneath the
surface reveals a U.N.-administered protectorate teeming with unresolved
problems. The Kosovo parliament is frequently at odds with the U.N.
administration of the province. What is euphemistically called a judicial system
is plagued by corruption (so much so that international judges must be imported
to handle a large number of cases), basic communal and utility infrastructures
barely function, and even the various factions of the Kosovo Albanian leadership
are hardly able to come to any meaningful agreements among themselves. Attacks
on local non-Albanian ethnic minorities continue at alarming levels, which
explains why fewer than 200 of the 230,000 non-Albanian residents of Kosovo
driven from the province after 1999 have returned to their homes (compared with
the 140,000 refugees and displaced persons returned to their homes in
Bosnia-Herzegovina at a similar point in Bosnia's postwar era). From Kosovo Albanian leaders, one hears that independence will be the
solution to all of Kosovo's woes. Yet this mode of reasoning is undoubtedly
putting the cart before the horse. Kosovo's Albanian leadership should be
spending more time laying the foundations for a democratic Kosovo and less time
trying to gain an independent Kosovo. Building a democratic Kosovo, however, will require a significant
international effort, especially on the part of the United States, to impress
upon the Kosovo Albanian leadership the need to reform Kosovo's government and
society. There are three areas in which progress has to be made: • Tackling crime and corruption. Since the fall of Slobodan Milosevic,
international officials have claimed that the greatest threat facing the Balkans
now comes from organized crime gangs that have made common cause with former
communist security services and paramilitary groups. This threat is especially
acute in Kosovo. During the past three years, Kosovo has become the European
capital for trafficking in human beings and the most important transit point for
drug smuggling on the continent. The dirty money being laundered through the
province is corrupting Kosovo's political, economic and social life. If Kosovo's
Albanian leadership is to have its desire for independence taken seriously, then
it must begin a serious struggle against organized crime, and it must begin
implementing the rule of law. • Ensuring the human rights and civil liberties of non-Albanian ethnic
minorities. International officials must convince the Kosovo Albanian
leadership that the continuing persecution of non-Albanians in Kosovo, which
most international officials believe is tacitly condoned by Albanian political
leaders, must stop. Apart from making it impossible for Kosovo to live up to the
entry requirements for organizations such as the Council of Europe, the
continuing attacks on ethnic minorities, particularly Serbs, strengthen the hand
of hard-liners in Belgrade who refuse any compromise regarding Kosovo, which
legally remains a part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under U.N. Security
Council Resolution 1244. • Cracking down on extremists intent on provoking conflict in Macedonia or
southern Serbia. The near outbreak of full-scale civil war in Macedonia last
year was the first case in history in which a member-state of the United Nations
was the victim of aggression launched from a U.N. protectorate. The Kosovo
leadership must understand that if the province is to be granted independence,
it must prove that it will not be the source of constant attacks upon
already-fragile neighboring states. Discussion of final status for Kosovo is meaningless without significant and
permanent progress in these three areas. None of Kosovo's neighbors, with the
possible exception of Albania, would accept Kosovo's independence given its
current state. But if Kosovo's leaders are able to show that they can seriously
tackle these problems, resistance to its independence from other states in the
region will be greatly reduced. A stable, democratic entity would be one from
which the United States could responsibly withdraw, and devote its military
resources to other, more pressing crises around the world. The writer is assistant director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia
University's School of International and Public Affairs.
