NATO troops ready tackle Kosovo violence

NATO's chief says no one should be under the illusion they could use violence to influence talks on the future of Serbia's Kosovo province.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, speaking in Belgrade, said the alliance's 16,000 soldiers stationed in Serbia's mainly ethnic-Albanian Kosovo province are ready to react to any violence related to Kosovo's status, the Serbian B92 radio reported Friday.

Balkan analysts fear a U.N. draft plan on future province governance in Kosovo could lead extremists among Serbs and ethnic-Albanians to use violence.

Ethnic-Albanians, who make up 90 percent of Kosovo's population, insist on independence from Belgrade, while Serbs say Kosovo should be integral part of Serbia.

Formally still Serbia's province, Kosovo has been administered by a U.N.

civil mission and protected by NATO troops since 1999 armed conflicts.

Kosovo Serbs evacuate cemeteries

10 March 2007 | 11:41 | Source: Beta, Belgrade

PRISTINA -- Kosovo Serbs who reside outside the province are removing the remains of their loved ones from the Pristina cemetery.

On Friday, Sladana Draskovic organized the exhumation of her mother's remains, buried in the Pristina Orthodox cemetery 16 years ago.

"I am taking my mother's earthly remains from here today, and I have to do it without even the priest present, since they told me they could not guarantee him safety," Draskovic said.

"My sister and I have decided to exhume and transfer our mother's body since we are not allowed to visit her grave safely in Pristina," Draskovic said, adding no one was willing to guarantee them safe passage and a chance to visit the graves of their mother and other loved ones buried there.

Draskovic added she had undertaken the exhumation and transfer privately, without any official assistance, and will now lay her mother to rest in Belgrade.

"We will now be able to visit her grave without fear, without waiting for someone to provide escort for us, as was the case in Pristina," she concluded.

No quick exit for peacekeepers in Kosovo

BELGRADE (Reuters) - "We've got to get you out of here," President George W. Bush told the U.S. Army commander in Kosovo in 2001.

Six years on, U.S. peacekeepers are still in place and a summit of Serb and Kosovo Albanian leaders in Vienna on Saturday will lead to no instant exit from the southern Serbian province.

The summit is a last chance for compromise, but Kosovo is not about to be given back to Serbia or entrusted wholly to its Albanian majority. The West's task, now increasingly seen as unplanned "nation-building", will not end for some time.

United Nations envoy Martti Ahtisaari mediated fruitless talks in 2006 and 2007, and has said he expects no last-minute moves away from Serb insistence on sovereignty or Albanian insistence on independence for Kosovo's 2 million people.

But by displaying deadlock one more time, at the highest level, the two sides will clear the way for him to present his own plan for Kosovo to the U.N. later this month.

The deal he proposes gives neither side all it wants. But it would set Kosovo on course for independence and allow a shift of Western responsibility from NATO and the U.N. to the European Union. NATO could be moving out six months after it is signed.

The Vienna summit marks "the start of the real, final, phase in New York, at the Security Council," said Ivan Vejvoda of the Balkan Trust for Democracy.

"...above all among the Russians, the Americans and the European Union."

"There is speculation there may be some kind of agreement in June," he said, referring to a summit of the Group of Eight industrialised nations attended by Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country holds the EU presidency until the start of July.

The NATO allies bombed Serbia for 78 days in 1999 to stop Serb forces' violence against the 90 percent Albanian majority in Kosovo.

Intervention restored alliance credibility wrecked by the daily televised slaughter in Bosnia, where Serb forces rampaged from 1992 to 1995 making NATO look irrelevant.

Yet its full implications were not immediately acknowledged, and it won U.N. blessing only after the fact in Resolution 1244, which upheld the sovereignty of Yugoslavia, now a defunct state.

TURBULENT LIMBO

In Albanian minds, Serbia's 1,000-year hold on Kosovo was broken for ever when NATO troops moved in.

Kosovo has spent the past seven years in turbulent limbo under six U.N.

governors. The allies want to finish what they started by fixing its status, before Albanian impatience runs out and a new conflict erupts.

The likely solution is a promise of independence but with strings attached.

Ahtisaari believes European Union supervision and an international security force must be part of Kosovo's future for some time to come.

The Albanians embarrassed their Western saviours by taking revenge on their Serb neighbours when they got the upper hand in 1999, prompting a reassessment of their fitness to establish a multi-ethnic democracy.

But there was no question of handing Kosovo back to Serbia. The idea behind NATO's first war is that "humanitarian" concerns can overrule sovereignty, and this notion has not changed.

Nation-building in the Balkans was ridiculed by Bush in 2000. In 2001, he bowed to NATO solidarity by shelving his election campaign call for a U.S.

pullout. But an overheard aside to General William David during that year's Kosovo visit suggested he was still far from a true believer.

Overstretched NATO is already out of Bosnia. It can start planning an exit from Kosovo as soon as the EU has a legal basis for taking over in Kosovo, overriding Serbia's objections.

Serbia hopes the threat of a Security Council veto by its friend Russia will delay the decision. But a veto could ignite violence and create crisis, and is likely to be avoided.

Kosovo: What Can Go Wrong?

9 March 2007 | Source: United States Institute of Peace

Daniel Serwer, Yll Bajraktari, Christina Parajon
 
At the end of the NATO/Yugoslavia war almost eight years ago, the Albanian-majority Serbian province of Kosovo was removed from Serbia’s governance and placed temporarily under a United Nations protectorate, administered by the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).
 
Last year, UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari was tasked by the Security Council with resolving the question of Kosovo’s future status, with support from U.S. and European Union envoys (Frank Wisner and Stefan Lehne respectively).

Ahtisaari’s effort is now drawing to a close. He has delivered to both Pristina and Belgrade a plan that explicitly allows a great deal of protection for Serbs and their religious monuments in Kosovo but implicitly ends Belgrade’s sovereignty. His plan opens the prospect of a sovereign and independent Kosovo under continuing international supervision. It is anticipated that Ahtisaari will take his plan, with some revisions, to the UN Security Council this month.

This Peacebrief discusses potential drivers of conflict in Kosovo during the status decision and in the period thereafter. These drivers of conflict arise from the international community, the Kosovo Albanians, Serbia and the Kosovo Serbs. They have the potential not only to make Kosovo dysfunctional but also to destabilize the region.

Delay and uncertainty by the international community

Delay in the status decision could drive conflict in Kosovo: the 90 percent of its population that is Albanian has been patient so far, but that will not last forever. The Contact Group for the Balkans (the United States, UK, Germany, Italy, France, Russia, and the EU) has already postponed a decision, initially expected by the end of 2006, in order to accommodate a Serbian constitutional referendum and subsequent elections. Delay past the U.S. presidency of the UN Security Council in May could begin to generate serious pressures in favor of violence within the Albanian community.

Uncertainty could also drive violence. The guiding principles for Ahtisaari’s effort established by the Contact Group eliminated options like partition, return of Kosovo to its previous status, and union of Kosovo with contiguous territories, but they left open both final status and governing arrangements within Kosovo. Ahtisaari’s proposal clarifies the internal governing arrangements but does not resolve the status question explicitly. There have been suggestions that he will go farther in his recommendations to the Security Council, but if the ambiguity is allowed to remain it will drive efforts by radicals in both Pristina and Belgrade to resolve the status question in their favor.

A potential Russian veto in the Security Council could also cause both delay and uncertainty. While Russia has thus far played a constructive role within the Contact Group, Moscow has repeatedly stated that it will veto any resolution that does not take into account Belgrade’s views on the future of Kosovo. This has caused Western capitals to hesitate seeking a clear statement on status in the Security Council.

Without a clear status decision in the Security Council, the European Union is likely to split, not only on recognition of Kosovo but also on establishment of the international civilian presence to follow UNMIK. This follow-on international presence is vital to implementation of the Ahtisaari proposal. If no EU consensus is reached during the German presidency, it will be difficult to achieve during the Portuguese presidency starting July 1. 

Even if the EU manages to achieve consensus among its 27 members, there remains the question of how quickly the new international presence, led by the EU, will be put in place. UNMIK is already demoralized and exhausted. The Ahtisaari proposal provides a transition period of 120 days, during which UNMIK’s capacity can be expected to decline rapidly. If the EU is unable to build its capacity quickly, the risk of violence will rise.

The EU plans a mission with broad “Bonn-style” powers, analogous to those held in Bosnia by the High Representative. This would be a significant step backwards from the current situation, in which Kosovo’s Provisional Institutions of Self-Government (PISG) have held major responsibilities in all areas possible under the UN protectorate. Experience elsewhere in the Balkans suggests that the locals will exploit uncertainty about governing responsibility to get the internationals to take the more difficult decisions. While Kosovo needs supervision of those aspects of government that involve inter-ethnic relations, the EU risks taking a step backwards if it appears to take on responsibilities currently held by the PISG, thus decreasing accountability and enabling the Kosovo institutions to avoid tough choices.

The United States also risks introducing delay and uncertainty. It has never stated a clear position on the status of Kosovo, but it is widely believed that the United States will be among the first countries to recognize an independent Kosovo. The United States might fail to recognize Kosovo expeditiously—say, for example, because it preferred to wait for an EU consensus to emerge. This would cause major disappointment among Albanians and hearten nationalists in Serbia. The United States needs to make it explicitly clear to its European partners that Washington will move forward in unilaterally recognizing Kosovo’s independence if the UNSC is unable to make a decision. It should also encourage other like-minded EU countries to do likewise. This might divide the EU and corner Russia, but it would ensure that delay and uncertainty do not continue.

Disappointment and disunity of the Kosovo Albanians

The Ahtisaari proposal crosses many Kosovo Albanian red lines, providing extensive autonomy to Serb communities individually and jointly, protection for Serb monuments, and unrestrained subsidies from Belgrade.  The Kosovo Albanians have nevertheless generally supported the Ahtisaari proposal, believing the internationals, who have whispered that it will lead quickly to an independent and sovereign state.

If it fails to do so, radical groups like “Self-Determination,” which has sponsored demonstrations against the proposal, could gain support from war veterans and large numbers of unemployed. The Unity Team that has negotiated with Ahtisaari could quickly be swept into irrelevance by riots, civil disobedience, and violence against the UN and against Serbs. The international community has long worried about the Radicals coming to power in Belgrade; it is just as worrisome that radicals might seize power, or at least initiative, in Pristina.

The main reservations among Kosovo Albanians about the Ahtisaari proposal concern dismantling of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), the reduced and demilitarized version of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Kosovo Albanians view the KPC as their most trusted institution and the embryo of Kosovo’s future defense force. If the dismantling is not handled well, with retired KPC personnel unhappy with the outcome, conflict could result.  International donors will have to ensure that “security sector reform” satisfies the desire of Kosovo Albanians to have a visible security force committed to protection of all of Kosovo’s population. 

The Kosovo Albanians are notoriously disunited, despite the existence of the Unity Team. Each of their political parties maintains a separate security service, which under Athisaari’s proposal would be merged. Continued existence of the separate services could be a major security challenge, perpetuating disunity and threatening instability.

Another important issue of immediate concern is Kosovo’s economy. UNMIK has injected much needed financial stimulation into Kosovo’s economy, providing at least some Kosovars with jobs and income. UNMIK’s departure, if not followed by immediate assistance from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, could create an enormous economic and financial gap.

Additionally, Kosovo’s institutions have pledged to take over a duly apportioned part of ex-Yugoslavia’s international debt, which is close to $1.3 billion, once Belgrade recognizes Kosovo. While Serbia’s recognition seems unlikely in the near term, once it occurs international creditors will seek repayments that Pristina will be hard put to make. Major international assistance will be required (and the United States has wisely made provision for this in its future budget proposals).

Hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians still live as refugees in Europe. Many of the host countries would like to see them return to Kosovo as soon as status is decided. These refugees’ remittances are, however, vital to the Kosovo economy. Rapid repatriation would dramatically worsen Kosovo’s social and economic problems.

Serbia’s effort to maintain sovereignty or divide Kosovo

The Athisaari plan crosses few of Belgrade’s redlines, and it provides extensive protection for the Kosovo Serbs, who are the subject of most of the proposal. Belgrade could continue to finance Serb-populated territories in Kosovo (it currently provides about $150 million per year) and only inform the government in Pristina about the transactions.  The proposal provides Serbs with most of what they have asked for on decentralization, police, education, and protection of vital national (i.e. ethnic) interests in the Kosovo parliament.

Belgrade has nevertheless rejected the Athisaari proposal because it sees it as a step towards independence and sovereignty for Kosovo, even though neither is mentioned in the text. Belgrade seeks to maintain sovereignty over all of Kosovo, allowing the Albanians to govern themselves autonomously but without international recognition. Serbia’s new constitution seeks to make it impossible for future Belgrade governments to recognize Kosovo as an independent state, and Prime Minister Kostunica is seeking to ensure in the current negotiations over formation of a new government that it will regard Kosovo as an indispensable part of Serbia.

Belgrade is aware that it is unlikely to achieve its primary objective of maintaining Serbian sovereignty over all of Kosovo. Its fallback position has been delay and ambiguity. If a decision is nevertheless taken, Belgrade seeks to retain de facto control of that portion of the territory on which Kosovo Serbs live and on which Serb monuments and religious sites are located.

There is little prospect that these positions will change. The political scene in Belgrade is divided between less nationalist forces (including the Democratic Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, and G17) and more nationalist forces (including the Serbian Democratic Party, the Radicals, and the Socialists).  The latter still control two-thirds of the votes in Parliament. They set the tone of political discourse in Serbia and made Kosovo a main issue in the recent election campaign, following a constitutional referendum in which Kosovo was virtually the only issue.  The nationalist forces can form a government without the less nationalist ones, but the reverse is not true, thus putting Kostunica in the driver’s seat, at least so far as Kosovo is concerned.

What Belgrade hopes for is that it can cause further delay in several ways: by prolonging negotiations over its own new government, by blocking a UNSC decision through the threat of a Russian veto, or by preventing the EU from reaching a consensus at 27 on Kosovo’s future status. Serbia will also work hard to convince the Americans that independence for Kosovo will bring the Radicals to power in Belgrade and that a sovereign Kosovo will set an unwelcome precedent.

Belgrade is unlikely to precipitate violence openly, but it is not above hoping that Kosovo Albanians will become impatient and resort to violence. This would de-legitimize Pristina’s campaign for independence and cause further hesitation in the international community. It might also provide an excuse for open Serbian intervention, in particular to protect Serbs (or possibly UNMIK) in the north.

Some Kosovo Serbs have also threatened to respond to Kosovo’s independence by declaring independence in the northern, Serb-controlled municipalities contiguous with Serbia. If Kosovo becomes independent, it is likely that Belgrade will encourage those Serbs who live south of the Ibar River to leave their homes, thus demonstrating the failure of the international community and the Kosovo institutions to protect and maintain the multiethnic composition of Kosovo.

Other problems: education and freedom of movement

There are a number of additional problems affecting the prospects for a peaceful denouement in Kosovo that transcend ethnic lines: education and freedom of movement are two of the more important. 

Kosovo’s educational system could be an important driver of future conflict over the long term. Even when they go to the same school, Serbs and Albanians not only use separate languages but also separate curricula that promote negative stereotypes of the other group, using history and myth to perpetuate hostility. There is little prospect for integrating the schools unless classes are offered in English, which is the preferred second language for both Serbs and Albanians. This could be done—the economic advantages of speaking English well are enormous in Kosovo—but it would still require a concerted effort to eliminate negative stereotypes from the curriculum.

Neither Kosovo Albanians nor Serbs can travel or study readily in the rest of Europe. With the entry of Bulgaria and Romania into the EU, even these countries have become relatively inaccessible. This leaves young people in Kosovo isolated and resentful. Visa liberalization by the EU is a vital step in preventing Kosovo from becoming a virtual prison for its young and rapidly expanding population.

Conclusion: multilateral when we can, unilateral if we must

There are many things that can go wrong in the days and months ahead for Kosovo. There are forces working for delay and ambiguity, which will incite violence.  The time has come for clarity and alacrity.

Given Serbia’s effort to cause further delay and uncertainty, along with the EU penchant for slowness and Russia’s reluctance to allow a clear UNSC decision, the United States needs to consider its options if a negotiated, multilateral solution proves impossible within the next few months. In that event, the Ahtisaari proposal will be a dead letter—Serbia cannot expect its implementation if there is no Security Council resolution.

If Kosovo were to remain unrecognized, it would then have a status comparable to that of Gaza or the West Bank, with all that implies in terms of instability and prospects for violence. Only U.S. leadership in moving quickly to recognize Kosovo—along with as many other countries as possible—could prevent rapid deterioration of such a situation. While the NATO forces stationed in Kosovo can no doubt keep the lid on for a while, that is only a temporary solution—one that will not stand firm if 1.8 million Albanians decide to march.