Why
the solution in Kosovo
matters to the world
Kosovo
Solution Series # 1
PressInfo #
209
March
17, 2005
By
Aleksandar
Mitic,
TFF Associate & Jan
Oberg,
TFF director
This is the first in a
series of TFF
PressInfos about
Kosovo. It follows PressInfo
208 about the
United Nations praising the potential war criminal,
former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj. Relevant
background links for this series here.
EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
As Kosovo these very days marks the
anniversary of the massive anti-Serb violence of March
2004, the path towards talks on its final status appears
set.
The mainly Albanian populated
province of southern Serbia has extradited its Prime
minister Ramush Haradinaj, indicted for war crimes during
the Kosovo conflict, to the International War Crimes
Tribunal in the Hague. Belgrade is doing the same with
its own former generals indicted for war crimes during
the conflict, thus paving the way for a positive stance
by Brussels on its EU Feasibility Study. The roadblocks
towards a true, negotiated and long-lasting agreement on
Kosovo remain numerous, but should by no means prevent
the international community and the main parties in
conflict from finding a solution to the most unstable
zone of the 21st century Europe.
Crafting a viable agreement means
however rejecting solutions based on maximalist demands.
An intensive PR campaign launched by the pro-Albanian
lobby is trying to persuade the world that the
independence of Kosovo - immediate or conditional after a
year or two - is the only solution available for the
stability in the region. This option however neglects
completely the objections of the non-Albanian communities
in the province, primarily the Serbs, and particularly of
Serbia, of which Kosovo is a province under international
law. Undermining the role Belgrade must play in finding a
compromise on Kosovo would be a crucial mistake, a stance
which could kill any hopes of a negotiated agreement. It
would prolong indefinitely regional instability. As the
entire region moves towards a "borderless Europe",
creating new borders appears archaic, anti-European,
simply passé and dangerous.
This series about Kosovo analyses
the following issues:
- Why is Kosovo important not only
for the people there and the region but for the
world?
- The confict in the media, in the
1990s, at the bombing in 1999 and now. Why were the
Kosovo-Albanians so much better at winning the war in the
media?
- The main preconditions for any
settlement of the Kosovo conflict.
- The issues as seen from Serbs and
Serbia - a perspective seldom offered in the mainstream
media and thus not taken into account by Western
decision-makers.
- A closer look at Belgrade's
minimum conditions for a viable solution.
- Why the arguments for a quick and
total independence are not credible but serves particular
purposes that have nothing to do with finding the best
solution for all.
- Outlining an international media
strategy for Serbs and Serbia.
- Looking into the future,
possibilities and positive scenarios for Kosovo and the
region - mainly illustrating why there is never only one
solution.
The authors of this and the
following TFF PressInfos build on a longer experience
with and in Kosovo and on more systemic, integrated
approach to the Balkans in general and the Kosovo issue
in particular. TFF published its first report,
Preventing
War in Kosovo, in 1992; the
International Crisis Group's first report on Kosovo is
from December 1999, i.e. after the bombing.
We allow ourselves to be of the
belief that had anyone given comprehensive and impartial
attention to finding a negotiated solution to the Kosovo
conflict in the early 1990s, we would have seen neither
the local war and the manipulated, non-negotiations in
Rambouillet nor the bombing in 1999 which have only
increased the psycho-political distance between the main
parties where professional conflict-management seeks to
reduce it.
It is a basic professional
principle underlying the work of TFF that it analyses and
mitigates conflicts; it does not present its own
solutions. The philosophy is simple: since conflicts
belong to those who fight them, solutions should also
belong to them. All we can do as outsiders is to assist
parties in finding solutions acceptable for all.
So, whether the parties together
can find ways to create a Kosovo that is independent, a
Kosovo that is part of Serbia-Montenegro or something
else is not our professional concern. What we do
point out is that a conflict is solved only
when:
a) the parties themselves decide to
live with a new order of things and feel as stakeholders
in both the process and the solution,
b) the parties do so voluntarily
and not under someone's pressure or threats,
c) it can be assumed that the same
conflict will not come back later in the same shape or
form, i.e. that it is sustainable in that it does not
cause traumas, new hate or a wish for revenge by any
party in the future.
d) there is no risk that the
solution in and of itself will spark off conflicts or
violence elsewhere.
We see dangerous signs in Kosovo
and in powerful circles in both EU countries and the
United States that none of these criteria will be
honoured.
Perhaps it is time to finally make
good for past mistakes and look to the future together -
also for the international so-called community that has
been - and remains - more of a participant to than a
mediator in the Balkan conflicts and wars?
A few
words about the idea of conflict management and the
international community's rôle
Politics and media tend to focus on
one spot at a time. Issues surface and disappear, and
principles used to solve one conflict at one place may
well differ widely from those employed to solve the
neighbouring conflict. Remembering events or seeing a
pattern in developments over, say, 15, 5 or even 1 year
is increasingly unusual in a our modern, overloaded and
stressed "information" society - which is neither an
"understanding" nor a "deliberation" society.
How come that the international
community have put itself in the kind of political and
intellectual cul-de-sac it still is in there 6 years
after the bombing allegedly should have facilitated a
solution? The reader may perceive this question as based
on a counter-factual hypothesis and therefore worthless
since it cannot be proved. However, to deny a priori that
Kosovo could have been dealt with in better ways by the
international community is to forego every opportunity to
learn lessons and do better conflict-management in the
future. It also stimulates a dangerous thought pattern
along the lines that "since we did what we did, it was
right and therefore we shall continue along the same
road. If Kosovo manifestly does not move in the direction
we predicted it would after the bombings we will keep
silent about it and basically say that it is somebody
else's fault."
The classical interpretations
inside what could perhaps be called the Western MPM -
military-politico-media - Complex is that all conflicts
have basically two parties, one good and one bad -
resembling the Christian view of the world with the good
ones being ourselves and the evil ones being the others.
Conflicts are located in actors, not in structures,
situational factors or in the complexity of things coming
together at certain spots in certain moments in human
history. Someone is bad and acts badly, and
conflict-resolution is about punishing that party and
salvage the good victim. In a democratic setting with a
planning perspective of maximum four years, solutions to
conflicts that took decades or centuries to solidify and
harden into violence should be fixed quickly.
So, the West's self-appointed - but
professionally non-trained - conflict-managers make up a
peace plan, require signatures and threaten punishment
should some party hesitate or refuse. Add cultural
arrogance to this scheme and remember that underlying it
all is the assumption that people who quarrel or are
otherwise not "with us" are less civilized than Western
actors are. We therefore have a right to not only
interpret their conflict but also to monopolise the truth
about its essence, no active listening to all sides
needed. We also know what the solution should be and have
a higher-order right - sometimes even God's mandate - to
impose our solution. We regret of course in case there
are actors who do not see their own best in what we nobly
try to do for them without or with violence.
This intellectual construction
defies every textbook in peace and conflict research and
negotiation as well as the complexities of any conflict
in the real world. In addition, we treat countries and
nations in ways we know don't work at the individual
psychological level. The international community has only
noble motives and good will and sees itself as impartial
mediators.
The idea that its different actors
may actually be participants in these conflicts -
historically and today - and pursue their own interests
which they promote through somebody else's conflict is
equalled with swearing in the church and unworthy of
serious debate. Even hinting that conflict-management
could be a new type of post-Cold War power politics or
gunboat diplomacy isomorphic with the post-modern,
globalizing world order re-ordering is considered a
conspiracy-like absurdity by governments who practise it.
Why is
tiny Kosovo whose population is but a fraction of
London's of fundamental importance also way beyond
Kosovo?
1. It was the test case par
excellence of the idea of "humanitarian intervention." It
was aimed to create peace by violent, not peaceful,
means. Although different cases, this is the general
philosophy that has also been tried in Somalia,
Afghanistan and Iraq, but - does it work?
2. The 1999 bombing was done
without UN Security Council mandate but led to the UN
becoming the leading peace-builder in what was called a
controversial mission together with NATO, the European
Union and the OSCE.
3. Per capita it is the largest and
probably most expensive peace-building mission ever with
an unprecedented investment of prestige.
4. The solution to the Kosovo
conflict will fundamentally influence integration
processes into the European Union and NATO.
5. It is worth remembering that the
militarization of the European Union, its military and
civilian conflict management capacity was boosted
immediately after NATO's US-led bombing of Yugoslavia.
Europe felt humiliated. Kosovo is also about who was
right and wrong then and who is to carry the economic and
political burden it is, no matter the solution as such,
to build peace and stability. And mind you, the
international community is already over-extended by all
the crises it has on its hands.
6. Everything being done in the
Kosovo conflict and that mission has been done in support
of a secessionist minority; other repressed minorities
and units in former Yugoslavia (e.g. Croat Herceg-Bosna,
Republika Srpska Krajina, Hungarians in Voivodina,
Albanians in Macedonia) and secessionist
movements elsewhere - such
as, to mention just a fraction, the Basque Province,
Chechenya, Tibet, Taiwan, Kurdistan, Corsica, Scotland,
Quebec, Tamil Eelam, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Turkish
Republic of Northern Cyprus, Palestine, Somalia
(numerous), Kashmir (and numerous in India), Myanmar
(numerous), Southern Thailand, etc. - have not been
favoured with anything remotely resembling this attention
and support. Other secessionist movement around the world
will look to Kosovo as a precedent.
7. Kosovo can not be seen as an
isolated case. Careful assessment of the various options
for Kosovo in terms of stability for the wider region is
an absolute necessity. Any thinkable solution to the
Kosovo problem is likely to have mixed positive and
negative effects as seen from, e.g. Republika Srpska,
Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Sandjak and
Voivodina.
8. Europe's largest refugee and IDP
(internally displaced persons) problem is found in
Serbia; they are Serbs and Roma and others who have been
ethnically cleansed out of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. A
solution for Kosovo must offer the possibility for anyone
driven out of Kosovo (200.000+ Serbs and Roma) who so
wishes to return in safety and to a viable life in
Kosovo, no matter its status.
9. The problem complex of the
criminal economy, smuggling, trafficking, drug trade etc.
is probably larger per square kilometre in Kosovo than
anywhere else in Europe. Whatever Kosovo's future status
will be, this problem is Europe's problem and must be
solved - which will be more difficult to do if Kosovo
becomes a completely independent state with a right to
refuse foreign missions on its territory.
10. If Kosovo is declared
independent it must fulfil not only the special standards
set up by UNMIK but also the traditional criteria for
independence and sovereignty. In addition, the
international community will have, no matter the final
status of Kosovo, to discuss how to compensate Serbia and
Montenegro for the loss, by dictate, of its territory,
for the post-1999 use of buildings and land by the
international missions in Kosovo including the Bondsteel
military base, for ten years of sanctions against Serbia
that hit the people, not Milosevic and his leadership
elites and, finally, for the destruction done by the
bombing.
11. Kosovo will remain a test case
of the Western international community's philosophical
commitment and political will to practise what it
preaches all over the world: human rights, minority
protection, freedom of movement, equal opportunities,
rights to return and gender equality. Given the history
of Kosovo, these are particularly difficult issues in the
province. In the 1960s around 1/3 of the inhabitants
there were Serbs, today there are less than 5% left. If a
future Kosovo becomes practically mono-ethnic, the
credibility of Western human rights policies everywhere
else will be undermined, not least in the perspective of
this being the case par excellence, as stated above, of
humanitarian intervention.
12. Ordinary Kosovo Albanians have
suffered decades of repression; when the US, EU and NATO
intervened the way it did, they were justified in
perceiving that as an active siding with them and as an
implicit promise to help them make their dreams about the
independent Kosova finally come true. Their leaders, from
Dr. Rugova in the late 1980s to Ramush Haradinaj of
yesterday, have never been contradicted by Western
diplomats when the said that Independent Kosova was the
only solution. Anything less, therefore, will be seen as
unacceptable by the Albanians in Kosovo; it's a young
population who have never heard anything else but
promises about that dream coming true. The international
community's very serious dilemma is that there exists no
way it can deliver this dream without creating more
conflicts in the Balkans and in the wider international
community. And neither does it dare break what
Kosovo-Albanians have all reasons to see as a promise.
Why is
Kosovo important right now?
March 17, 2005 marks the first
anniversary of the anti-Serb riots in Kosovo that also
shocked the internationals there. It was generally
interpreted as a sign that the Kosovo-Albanian patience
with the situation is running out. Observers are
convinced that there has been no real disarmament of
Albanian extremists and that Kosovo can be set on fire
and the last non-Albanians and many of the international
missions sent running, should an independent state not be
declared sooner rather than later.
It may well be difficult for people
who have never been to Kosovo to understand that a
comparatively small minority is able to
psycho-politically deter and scare the mighty
international organisations there with close to 20.000
NATO troops and thousands of civilians who have done a
lot to support the independence cause. But such is
reality, and in addition the international community
needs to turn to other, more urgent, matters such as
Iraq.
Now former Prime Minister Ramush
Haradinaj is in the Hague; understandably he is
considered a hero and not a criminal by most Albanians.
They see it as deeply unfair that he has been indicted,
and international diplomats tell the world that he was
the best politician Kosovo has ever seen. Six Serb
generals have gone voluntarily to the Hague within the
last two months, and Belgrade has extradited all those
indicted for Kosovo (Lukic and Pavkovic to be transferred
soon).
This summer - 2005 - will spark off
the evaluation of the degree to which Kosovo lives up to
international standards. The Special Representative of
Kofi Annan and the highest authority of Kosovo,
Søren Jessen-Petersen, takes for granted that
Kosovo will pass this exam and that the process of
deciding the final status of Kosovo will begin in
September and last not years but months (according to his
statement March 14, 2005). So, a quick fix is in the air,
a settlement to be decided if not this year, then in
2006.
An international pro-independence
campaign is conducted by the International Crisis Group
and others. In short, the Kosovo drama is approaching its
final stage. Anyone concerned and responsible must ask
today: what is the chance it will be a happy end and, if
small, what defines the least unhappy end?
The TFF Kosovo
Solution Series
# 1
Why
the solution in Kosovo matters to the
world
# 2
The
media - strategic considerations
# 3
The
main preconditions for a sustainable solution to the
Kosovo conflict
# 4
The
situation as seen from Serbia
# 5
The
arguments for quick and total independence are not
credible
# 6
What
must be Belgrade's minimum conditions and its media
strategy
# 7
Nations
and states, sovereignty and
self-determination
# 8
Positive
scenarios: Turn to the future, look at the broader
perspectives
# 9
Many
thinkable models for future Kosovo
# 10
Summary:
From "Only one solution" towards democracy and
peace
NOTE
Relevant
background links for this series.
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