The Providence Journal February 13, 2007 Editorial / COMMENTARY - Parastatehood - Kosovo: A future with no future
P. H. Liotta ON MARCH 24, 1999, the then-19-member NATO alliance launched its first and only assault in history on a sovereign nation-state. In the words of President Bill Clinton, NATO forces took this action against former Yugoslavia "to obtain a peaceful solution to the crisis in Kosovo." After 78 days of intense bombing, largely led by U.S. air forces, on targets inside Serbia, and after what was then considered an exorbitant cost of $10 billion, former Finnish president Marti Ahtisaari and U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke persuaded Slobodan Miloevic to agree to the cessation of hostilities in former Yugoslavia. Eight years later, Ahtisaari is still trying to find a solution to the crisis in Kosovo. His prospects for success seem no better today than in the past. As the United Nations special envoy, Ahtisaari recently unveiled a plan for Kosovo that, while not granting independence per se, does allow increased autonomy for the region and for its predominantly ethnic-Albanian population. In principle, the U.N. plan seems reasonable. U.N. administration of Kosovo would be replaced by an International Civilian Representative, who would have the power to veto any "government" decisions for an undefined period of time. The Kosovo Protection Force, the only equivalent today of a military force in Kosovo, would be disbanded. Ethnic Serbs in Kosovo would be granted autonomy, "protected zones" would be established around Serbian cultural and religious sites, and a Constitutional Commission would be established that would begin both the drafting of a constitution and the initial first steps toward Kosovo's independence. Not surprisingly, Serbia immediately rejected these U.N. proposals. Even Serbia's moderate and pro-Western president, Boris Tadic, dismissed Ahtisaari's visit out of hand, declaring that "Serbia and I, as its president, will never accept Kosovo's independence." Serbia's prime minister, Vojislav Kotunica, the political figure who challenged and defeated Slobodan Miloevic in Yugoslavia's "Bulldozer Revolution" of 2000, refused to even meet with U.N. representatives. Thus, despite new meetings between the European Union and the Russian Federation to come to common agreement, and to prevent a Russian veto in the U.N. Security Council, there is little hope for success. The U.N. proposal for Kosovo, pragmatic as it may seem, is dead on arrival. More radical "solutions" to the Kosovo problem, which some in the international community advocate, include the partition of Kosovo - ceding northern Kosovo and its Serbian enclaves back to Serbia and creating in essence a separate state for Kosovar Albanians. Such "solutions," of course, are not solutions at all. Such solutions overlook the raw truth that American forces are now in their sixth decade of deployment on the Korean Peninsula and U.N. forces are now in their fifth decade of deployment in Cyprus - and such deployments are the partial result of partitions that do not lead to resolution and peace. To the contrary, partition covers a bleeding wound, which never heals. It may be a clich but it is also true that after a conflict, you can have one of two things: peace or revenge. You cannot have both. None of the entities that collide over Kosovo - Albania, Serbia, the United States, the European Union, the Russian Federation - seem to accept this truth. Moreover, Serbia, a nation desperate to return to the fold of Europe after its foolish mistakes of the 1990s, has received virtually no incentives from the so-called international community to move from its intransigence. To the contrary, Serbia is threatened with punishment, removal of financial and development assistance, and assaulted for its insistence on the principle of sovereignty. Yet Serbia has every reason to be immovable on this subject. Kosovo is still a part of the sovereign nation-state of Serbia. But Kosovo is also an international protectorate, which the international community - not Serbia - bears responsibility for. Kosovo, in short, is no longer Serbia's problem. It's ours. Few dare to recognize as well that Kosovo, even if it were to achieve independence, would immediately become a "parastate" - a region rich in resource scarcity and rife for criminal networks and drug trafficking. (By some estimates, 90 percent of heroin and opium that transit from Central Asia to Europe today already passes through Kosovo, under the eyes of international "protection" forces.) Kosovo, at its worst, could become a para-state with Night of the Living Dead zombie-like characteristics, possessing some functioning aspects of statehood while at the same time missing an eye or multiple limbs, staggering into the future and unable to function without massive forms of continued international life support. Kosovo, sadly, could become a permanent dependency state. Ironically, Kosovo would also need to rely on its nemesis, Serbia, for trade, markets, and exchange. Eight years later, Kosovo's future seems to be no future at all. During the intervention of 1999, those who justified intervention saw it as an example for the NATO alliance to prove its mettle - and to do good. Today, it is not an idle comparison to suggest that if Kosovo cannot be solved, how could anyone - especially those vying for the presidency of the United States in 2008 - possibly believe that the disaster of Iraq, where the stakes are higher and the outcome more critical to our direct security, will fare any better? P. H. Liotta is executive director of the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University, and the author of Dismembering the State: The Death of Yugoslavia and Why It Matters. (c) 2007 Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
