Was international intervention in Kosovo a mistake?

The recent allegations in Dick Marty’s Council of Europe report linking Prime Minister Hashim Thaci with organised crime, including the murder of people for their organs, were shocking. The levels of corruption and organised crime, and the involvement of leading political figures cast doubt on Kosovo’s fitness for inclusion in European integration. They have also added new grist to the mill of those who see the disputed international recognition of Kosovo’s independence, as well as the NATO bombardment and expulsion of Serbian forces that made it possible, as huge mistakes, and one more shameful episode in the record of ill-conceived international interventions.

First to the history. Let us be clear, the KLA was a terrorist organisation. Frustrated with the failure of the peaceful resistance policy of Ibrahim Rugova to bring about the goal of independence, the KLA sought to advance that goal by violent means. Its attacks were not only against Serbian security forces, but against Serb and other non-Albanian civilians and against Albanians who did not agree with their tactics. The KLA was responsible for serious war crimes, in which several of its leading figures were directly implicated. Its terror tactics continued after the departure of Serbian forces, as it carried out indiscriminate revenge against Serb, Roma and other perceived enemies.

And beyond that, facing elections to newly created representative bodies in the couple of years after the establishment of a UN mandate in Kosovo in 1999, the political parties the KLA spawned carried on their terror against Rugova’s Democratic League of Kosovo, with numerous cases of political violence. These were not heroes and liberators as still portrayed by many Albanians and their foreign cheerleaders. Many of them were vicious criminals. That they have continued their criminal activities to the present day, and, having gained political power, have used it to subvert political structures to their criminal ends and to undermine the development of democratic institutions, should surprise no one.

So was NATO wrong to take the KLA’s side in 1999 and bomb Serbian forces out of Kosovo? Given the nature of the KLA, the readiness of NATO forces to treat them as allies was to say the least distasteful. Yet the decision to use force to stop Milosevic in Kosovo was understandable. Whether there was any viable alternative will long be debated. If there had been another government in Belgrade, an international policy of urging restraint in responding to the KLA’s attacks and negotiations with legitimate Kosovo representatives, above all Rugova, would have been reasonable.

But Milosevic did not respond to the KLA with restraint. His forces embarked on a terror policy of their own, with massacres designed to panic Albanians into fleeing. Add to that evidence of a pre-conceived plan to drive out a large part of the Albanian population, and an international policy of standing by looked indefensible. And Milosevic had form, having sparked the earlier wars of ethnic cleansing in Croatia and Bosnia. The international community had indulged him during the Bosnian peace process, treating him as the indispensable factor for peace in the Balkans, despite his earlier warmongering record. But here he was at it again in Kosovo. Any notion of Milosevic as a peacemaker had surely lost whatever little credibility it had ever enjoyed.

Restraint in Kosovo was not on Milosevic’s agenda. Neither were serious negotiations or a fair deal for the Albanian population. Again, Milosevic had form. He was the instigator of the apartheid-like exclusion of Albanians from all public positions during the 1990s. If he had, thanks to Rugova’s pacific policy, largely kept the lid on violence for most of that period, as much of the rest of former Yugoslavia burned, the whole basis of his approach in Kosovo for a decade before the NATO bombardment was to humiliate Albanians and make their life there impossible. The greatest burden of responsibility for the surge in violence at the end of the 1990s lies at the door of Slobodan Milosevic.

The argument made in some quarters that it was NATO’s bombardment itself that sparked the greater conflagration and the flight of Albanians in early 1999 should be dismissed. Given the violence that the Milosevic regime was already employing in Kosovo, and his past record in Croatia and Bosnia, the decision to employ NATO force, rather than standing by and let Milosevic have his way with the Kosovo Albanians, was justifiable (although the liberal definition of legitimate targets for aerial bombardment throughout Serbia and Montenegro was far more questionable).

Once Serbian forces had been expelled from Kosovo, the whole picture was irrevocably altered. If until 1998 talk of negotiations for Kosovo’s autonomy within Serbia might have seemed plausible, after 1999 such ideas were wholly unworkable. Independence was the only possible outcome, as was privately acknowledged even by some wiser heads in Belgrade. Those who continue to dispute Kosovo’s independence should answer the question of how Kosovo’s Albanians would ever be forced back under Serbian rule, and who would force them? The nastiness of the KLA and of several of today’s leading politicians in Kosovo is not the issue here. It is just about what is possible and what is not. Kosovo cannot be made part of Serbia again.

Marty’s report is of great importance. Many things that were already known about the nature of the government in Kosovo, the prevalence of corruption and organised crime, and the involvement of leading figures, has now appeared with great and refreshing clarity in a document bearing the stamp of a credible international organisation. It cannot be ignored, and its findings must be addressed. There is something rotten at the heart of Kosovo that has its origins in the inclusion of unreformed terrorists and criminals in the new state’s public life.

That this came about is not just a result of the NATO bombing campaign. The real blame is with the failure over many years since 1999 of the international community to face up to and confront the real nature of the KLA’s successors, due to its fear of their capacity for violence and terror and its misguided belief that it could tame and control them, and coax them into normal democratic politics. What is needed is a much tougher and less indulgent policy towards Kosovo’s government, but not any wrong-headed notions that international intervention in Kosovo and Kosovo’s independence were mistakes.

What to do about northern Kosovo?

From Balkan Insight, 2 January 2011

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/europe-must-stay-the-course-in-north-kosovo

Europe Must Stay the Course in North Kosovo

The recent past shows EU pressure on Belgrade can deliver results in northern Kosovo. The question is whether Europe has the will to keep it up.

By Peter Palmer

Among the recent WikiLeaks disclosures, cables from Belgrade and Prishtina confirmed the unease US diplomats felt about the support of officials in Belgrade for the partition of Kosovo.

Frustration with the lack of progress in integrating the mainly Serb-inhabited north has led some international commentators to advocate Kosovo’s partition, perhaps as part of a mutually agreed territorial swap with Serbia’s Albanian-inhabited Presevo valley going to Kosovo in exchange.

But what are the prospects for such a solution, and is it necessary, or desirable?

Partition or territorial exchanges are not publicly stated policy in either Belgrade or Prishtina. When Serbia’s President, Boris Tadic, raised partition as a possible solution in September 2008, he faced condemnation in both capitals, leading him to reaffirm the official Serbian line that the whole of Kosovo remains part of Serbia.

Nevertheless, as the WikiLeaks documents show, some Serbian officials are interested in partition. While acknowledging that most of Kosovo is lost, they assert that the government in Prishtina will never rule the north.

Could Prishtina be persuaded to accept such a loss of territory? The answer would seem to be “no”, unless Kosovo were offered something in return. It is here that the idea of a territorial exchange comes into play. While it is certainly not official Kosovo policy, some officials in Prishtina are prepared to entertain the idea.

However, when considering a territorial exchange, problems of principle and practicality present themselves. International acceptance of the break-up of Yugoslavia has since 1991 been based on two principles, affirmed throughout the wars of the Yugoslav succession and the peace implementation process that followed. One is no change to the former internal boundaries between Yugoslavia’s federal units. The other is no acceptance of the logic of ethnic cleansing, or of the idea that multinational states are unworkable.

These principles remain valid and important, not least for Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose unity continues to be questioned. After the International Court of Justice’s opinion in July on the legality of Kosovo’s independence declaration, the Republika Srpska Prime Minister (now President), Milorad Dodik, drew a parallel with the Serbian position in Bosnia.

And in Macedonia, although relations between the majority and the Albanian minority have improved since the 2001 conflict, the relationship of the latter to the Macedonian state is far from settled. And, if we accept an ethnic redrawing of borders between Kosovo and Serbia, why not elsewhere, in the Caucasus, or in Moldova? Some would welcome the precedent.

Since the break-up of Yugoslavia, the international community has insisted that minority rights should be respected within existing borders. Serbia and Kosovo are both multinational states. If Serbs in the north cannot live in Kosovo, what place does that leave for the Serbs in the south? And what about the Albanians who live in the north of Kosovo and ethnically cleansed Albanians who would like to return there?

Then there are the practicalities. If Prishtina won’t give up the north without compensation in southern Serbia, would Belgrade accept such a swap? If it would, where would the new boundary be drawn? As when discussing border changes anywhere in former Yugoslavia, there is no clean ethnic boundary.

Of the three southern Serbian municipalities in question, Presevo is almost entirely Albanian-inhabited, but Bujanovac and Medvedja are ethnically mixed. Wherever the line would be drawn, some would be left on the wrong side.

Such playing with maps does not provide solutions. It just creates more disputes. By sanctioning partition, the problem of the north would not be solved. More likely, it would ignite the tinderbox of frustration felt by many Albanians, that nearly three years after independence their country has yet to establish control over all its territory.

The premise that partition is the only possible solution for the north of Kosovo is flawed. The main point is that the north’s non-integration in Kosovo is only sustained by institutional and financial support from Belgrade. That Serbia provides funding for Kosovo’s Serbs would be fine, if its purpose was legitimate support for Serbian cultural, educational, social and healthcare needs. But not when it is used as a political tool to undermine Kosovo’s integration.

Belgrade’s obstructionist tactics include enfeebling the EU’s rule of law mission in Kosovo, EULEX. Belgrade’s consent in December 2008 to EULEX’s deployment in the north followed EU pressure and its insistence that if Serbia wanted to proceed with EU integration, it should not undermine EULEX’s mission.

EULEX is now present in the north but is barely able to carry out its mandate. The courts are scarcely functional. EULEX police can do little more than sit in the police stations. Serbian interior ministry police, in plain clothes, continue to operate. On the border, EULEX customs officials are not able to collect duties.

Given Serbia’s EU aspirations, the European Union holds leverage over Belgrade to insist that it stop its obstructionism in the north. Following the ICJ’s opinion in July, that Kosovo’s independence declaration did not violate international law, the EU put huge pressure on Serbia, including high-level visits from key member states, to get it to agree to technical talks with Kosovo.

Whether such contacts go ahead has been complicated by the Council of Europe report naming Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, as an organised crime boss. But questions about high-level crime and corruption in Kosovo are separate from the issue of the country’s future relations with Serbia.

EU pressure will need to be stepped up anew, both to ensure the talks proceed, and to make sure they have meaningful content. Enabling the courts, police and the customs service to function properly in the north are key technical matters that should be addressed. Brussels should not allow its mission to continue to be humiliated.

If Belgrade were pressurised into taking a more accommodating approach, there is no reason why things should not change in the north. In more than a decade since the UN mandate in Kosovo began, the pattern has been one of gradual progress, with occasional setbacks, as things that had once appeared impossible became possible.

Who would have thought three years ago that one would see the level of Serb participation in Kosovo’s institutions in the south seen today? That was possible because Belgrade did not have the means to control Serbs in the south, whose daily reality is that they live among Albanians and unavoidably come into contact with Kosovo’s authorities.

And in the north, while Kosovo institutions are present only to a very limited extent, pragmatic accommodation by some Serbs there is already greater than many in Belgrade realise. From the contacts between Kosovo Serb police and their counterparts in the south, to the acceptance by many northern municipal officials of Kosovo salaries, some northern Serbs already balance between Serbia and Kosovo.

Such pragmatism should be encouraged. But the prerequisite is that Belgrade cease shoring up the hard-line, obstructionist holdovers from Slobodan Milosevic’s era who continue to hold sway there.

It is no time to despair about the integration of the north into Kosovo, nor to look for the type of solution that has rightly been rejected elsewhere in the Balkans. The EU has the means to secure a change of policy from Belgrade. It is true that the EU is divided over Kosovo’s independence but the five non-recognisers have all lined up behind the call for technical talks. None opposes EULEX’s mission in the north. Spain and Greece have taken a pragmatic line of late, making a more robust EU approach realistic, if the same will that was evident following the ICJ opinion is sustained.

Peter Palmer is a former Kosovo Project Director and Balkans Project Director of the International Crisis Group.