Summary:
From "Only one solution"
towards
democracy and peace
Kosovo
Solution Series # 10
PressInfo #
218
April
7, 2005
By
Aleksandar
Mitic,
TFF Associate & Jan
Oberg,
TFF director
Kosovo is moving up again on the
international agenda. The time to think about the
framework, the alternatives and the consequences of the
talks on the future status of Kosovo is now. Despite the
highly unlikely possibility that Kosovo will be able to
achieve in the next few months the key standards
necessary to initiate the final status talks, it would be
gullible to believe that these criteria will not be once
again downsized, shrunk to fit the path to the status
talks.
Pro-Albanian lobbyists such as the
International Crisis Group, Richard Holbrooke and various
US members of Congress argue that "independence is the
only option." However, this option can also be seen as
unjust, dangerous, archaic and anti-European. The option
of an "independent Kosova" implies that one of the sides
(the Kosovo Albanians) would achieve its maximalist goal
and that the other side (Belgrade and the Kosovo Serbs)
would leave a negotiation table with a complete defeat,
ashamed, and unready to accept the imposed agreement.
Full independence cannot be negotiated. It can only be
imposed.
Conflict-analysis and -mitigation
is about helping people in conflict findings a
sustainable solution with as little violence as possible.
The authors are not against independence if all the
parties to the conflict will voluntarily accept such a
solution and agree on its concrete modalities. We just
don't believe that there is only one solution to a
complex problem, and we believe that the
only-one-solution argument is indicative of the fact that
the international community is in trouble.
The political body language of the
international community in the 1990s, with the
side-taking bombings and with its missions ever since has
given the Albanian side all reason to believe that an
independent state was possible and would be handed down
to them if they behaved well ("standards"). Therefore, if
the international community cannot deliver on that
implicit promise soon, we are likely to see new serious
turmoil in the Balkans. If so, he Albanians would
certainly not be the only ones to blame.
An "independent Kosova" would set a
dangerous precedent for the region, not least in Bosnia
and Macedonia, for the international law, for European
integration, for the still feeble peace processes in the
post-war Yugoslavia. If Kosovo, why not Taiwan, Tibet,
Chechenya, Tamil Eelam, Kashmir, etc? The world has about
200 states and 5,000 ethnic groups. The future is not
about each having their own state, the future is about
living together globally!
Independence would breach the legal
framework of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 of 1999
that cannot even be even liberally interpreted to endorse
independence. It would reward those who have been behind
the ethnic cleansing campaign against the non-Albanian
communities ever since, encourage those who had exported
violence from Kosovo to the neighbouring southern Serbia
and western Macedonia.
It is time to stop hiding behind
the masks: no, Kosovo cannot return to its pre-1999
status; no, the UN mission and NATO have not created a
multi-ethnic, free and tolerant society they have
promised; no, there has been no return of more than
200,000 Serb and tens of thousands of other non-Albanian
IDPs; no, the Albanian leadership in Kosovo does not
inspire any credibility to the Serbs and other
non-Albanian communities; no, Kosovo cannot and should
not be an exception in the region, in Europe, in the
world.
The key objective should be to give
the Kosovo Albanians a maximum of opportunities and real
means to manage their future without feeling threatened,
but also without threatening the interests of other
groups, the security and the shaky stability of the
region.
A sustainable and just solution is
one that lies between the standard autonomy for Kosovo
unacceptable to the Albanian aspirations - and the full,
"conditional" or "immediate" independence - unacceptable
for the Serbs and the Serbian state.
Between these two, there is a
myriad of thinkable options - for Kosovo in the region
and internally inside Kosovo - e.g a citizens Kosovo
where ethnic background is irrelevant, cantonisation,
consociation, confederation, condominium, double autonomy
for minorities there and in Southern Serbia, partition,
trusteeship, independence without an army and with other
special modalities as well as various combinations of
some if these. Arguing for independence as the only
option may be psycho-politically understandable but it is
simply intellectually poor; it's a non-starter for the
forthcoming talks. True conflict-resolution - in which
very few diplomats have any professional training - is
about opening possibilities to the future and finding a
new structure that the parties voluntarily accept to live
with
But most importantly, the
international community should work hard with the actors
on the key fundamentals of conflict resolution, such as
reducing fear and working towards economic recovery of
the region. No status will work, also not independence,
if people keep on hating each other and see no
development opportunities. The international community
should learn that if we don't try to rebuild the souls
and the human communities and offer people a chance of
welfare, they are likely to take to violence again.
Indeed, that's a major lesson of the Balkan complex of
conflicts the last decades.
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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