Confusion over Kosovo
7 April 2008
William Montgomery
The dramatic collapse of the ruling coalition and the resulting call for
Parliamentary Elections on May 11 has highlighted the fact that there are
major conflicts in Serbia on the broad range of issues, which flow from the
Kosovo problem.
The elections truly will point Serbia in one of two very different
directions. What needs to be appreciated, however, is that despite these
differences, the governing coalition has crafted and carried out a Kosovo
policy, which has achieved certain successes:
-The Serbian public is united and energized in a common view of how Kosovo
was illegally and unjustly taken from it. Five hundred years from now, this
will still be the Serbian view.
-A vigorous diplomatic campaign has slowed and in some cases stopped the
recognition of Kosovo by many countries.
-In concert with Russia, strong diplomatic pressure at the UN has made the
UN Secretary General and his staff more cautious in his approach to Kosovo.
This is most notable in the increasing uncertainty over the termination of
UNMIK and its replacement by the EU Mission known as EULEX.
-The process of linking the northern part of Kosovo to Serbia in far more
visible ways, creating a de facto partition, is well underway. Kosovo Serbs
(at least in the northern areas) are solidly behind Belgrade's actions.
-Due at least in part to Serbia's actions, few Kosovo Serbs have left
despite the Unilateral Declaration of Independence.
Regardless of who wins the May 11 elections, these points will not
fundamentally change. The strength of this Serbian response has in turn
brought out divisions and uncertainty within the US/EU on the way ahead.
This is not too surprising as there was and is no agreed game plan on how to
respond to the Serbian challenge to create a de facto partition in northern
Kosovo and its refusal to deal with the EULEX Mission. Those who were
pushing hardest for Kosovo independence in the US and EU saw it as the "end
of the story, the goal." In fact, getting to this point has been the easy
part compared to what now follows.
There are three very different views among the Western International
Community in how to handle the Kosovo Serb question now. The first is to
take a hard line that Kosovo is an independent country within its current
boundaries and that any efforts to undercut that independence via parallel
structures, etc need to be firmly resisted. Based on their public
statements, this seems to be the view of both Pieter Feith, who has the
titles of the Special Representative of the EU (and Head of the EULEX
Mission) and the International Civilian Representative, and Joachim Rucker,
the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General.
At the other end of the spectrum are those anonymous European diplomats who
publicly and privately speculate about the value of a formal partition. In
the middle are those who advocate a soft "frozen conflict," gambling that
over time, emotions would cool; practical realities of everyday life would
lead to increased links within Kosovo; and the problem would ultimately go
away with eventual EU membership.
The problem is that these radically different viewpoints lead to mixed
messages as well as unevenness in handling of day-to-day relations with the
Kosovo Serb community. Deciding how to react to a provocation, such as the
occupation of the courthouse in Northern Mitrovica seems to depend not on a
clearly defined policy, but on the ad hoc views of individuals on the ground
(and perhaps some level of support from the countries they represent).
It was always a given that in the pre-election period, the Kosovo Serbs
would stage provocations, challenging UNMIK/EULEX/Kosovo Government
authority. The courthouse protest by judicial personnel was an excellent
gambit, because at its core, it was based on a legitimate grievance of the
Kosovo Serb community: so many of them have been prevented from returning to
their pre-war jobs.
The bottom line on the incident is that regardless of rights and wrongs and
what actually happened on the ground, the combined UNMIK/KFOR reaction
played exactly into the hands of Serbian nationalists. A quick review of
Serbian media coverage of the incident says it all. Anyone familiar with
events in Kosovo over the past several years should have been well aware of
what the consequences would be.
Another good example of the lack of preparation for post-independence Kosovo
is the status of UNMIK. During its nine years of operations, Serbia
consistently was one of its severest critics, followed closely by Russia in
the regular reviews on Kosovo at the UN Security Council. As much as two
years ago, the Western nations informally planned for a phase-out of UNMIK
and its replacement by a EU Mission. This was common knowledge in UN circles
and as a result, many of the best personnel in UNMIK moved on to other jobs.
Those plans all fell apart when Serbia and Russia fiercely resisted the
EULEX Mission and simultaneously began to "appreciate" UNMIK. In fact, it
became impossible to get rid of UNMIK, as a UN Security Council Resolution
doing so was impossible to pass due to a certain Russian veto. So we now
have the bridgehead of the EULEX Mission in place in Kosovo "co-existing"
with the remnants of UNMIK. The Serbs refuse to deal with EULEX at all and
insist on working only with UNMIK. This leaves EULEX making statements that
they "plan" to have staff all over Kosovo, while in fact they now have none
in Serb-controlled areas.
The EU is scratching its collective head, trying to figure out how to weave
through the legalities of operating in Kosovo and what the EULEX Mission
will actually be able to do. In any case, full deployment of EULEX personnel
will not even be attempted until well after the May 11 Serbian elections.
Even then, any attempt to insert members into Serb-controlled areas will
automatically bring about a confrontation.
The other significant factor in the whole equation is the reaction of the
Kosovo Albanians. Until now, they have wisely stayed on the sidelines and
apart from issuing statements of reconciliation, have allowed the
international community to take the lead in dealing with the Kosovo Serbs.
But they have done so, based in very large part on the assurances from
people such as Rucker and Feith that the International Community would use
its full force to enforce the sovereignty of the new State of Kosovo
throughout its territory; would stop the operations of parallel
institutions; and would prevent any sort of partition.
So the UNMIK/KFOR/EULEX Missions are squeezed between two determined ethnic
groups, both passionate in their beliefs and willing to go to extremes to
defend what they feel are their rights. All that we can be sure of is that
regardless of who wins the May 11 elections in Serbia, the conflict in
Kosovo will be played out over years and that for all of this time, the
region will not be fully stabile and the fires of nationalism will
consistently be given more fuel.
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