Year after Kosovo “independence”?

Year after Kosovo “independence”?

By Dr. Ing Ana Milosevic, director of Serbian Institute for Public Diplomacy

Sadly enough, the laconic and short sighted attitude by the US and some EU member states, culminated with the recognition of illegal partition of our country. Bypassing UN Security Council, the Worlds’ Order and Law will be fundamentally violated and World stability threatened.


Last February Kosovo declared independence, with support of Washington The culmination of America's war against Serbia a decade ago in a region of, apparently, no strategic interest to America showed that peace has proved to be much tougher than the war! The number of recognitions has stalled, despite U.S. pressure on friends and allies. Last October Serbia won a United Nations General Assembly vote to take its case to the World Court, which is now considering the issue. The conflict remains frozen, only with new flashpoints, most notably the status of the Serbian community in Kosovo's north.

Even more embarrassing, Russia cynically used the Kosovo precedent to justify its war with Georgia in support of South Ossetia. Who was Washington to whine about the violation of Georgia's territorial integrity?

Unfortunately, with Hillary Clinton at the State Department, little change is expected in U.S. attempts to micromanage Balkan affairs. Indeed, Secretary Clinton is set to meet with Kosovo's "president" and "prime minister" ,"in order to reassure them of the U.S. promise of friendship and support for Kosovo," according to the State Department.

RECALLING THE FACTS

The U.S. should have ignored the conflict, but former President Clinton saw the Balkans as an opportunity to turn U.S. foreign policy into a form of international social work. Once NATO drove Serbian security forces from Kosovo, the final disposition of the territory was obvious. Although UN Resolution 1244 assumed continued Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo, providing for "a political process designed to determine Kosovo's future status," the allies never intended serious negotiations. Rather, ethnic Albanians understood that independence would be the final result. Negotiations were simply for show to disguise Serbia's expected surrender. Thus, the ethnic Albanians never considered settling for anything short of independence.

They did offer to respect the rights of ethnic Serbs — respect, however, not demonstrated when ethnic Albanians kicked out nearly a quarter of a million Serbs and other minorities, including Roma and Jews, after the war, and destroyed Serb homes, churches, and monasteries in another round of violence five years ago. Nevertheless, the ethnic Albanians expected to rule even in the northern areas heavily populated by Serbs.

Our government in Belgrade responded by offering a number of approaches with largely unrestricted autonomy. Nevertheless, the U.S. and leading European states declared Serbia to be the intransigent party, "obstructing" and "stonewalling" a settlement. In short, the "negotiations" were a sham designed to grant Kosovo independence. In negotiations over the status of Kosovo Serbia had offered Kosovo autonomy over and above any similar arrangements that exist in multiethnic status throughout the world. That these negotiations ended with a unilateral declaration of independence by Albanian leaders in Kosovo, bypassing the UN Security Council in spite of standing UN resolution 1244 is a travesty of International Law and a dangerous precedent that will inflame secessionist movement throughout the world.
Obviously, there was no perfect solution that would satisfy both sides.

THE PRESENT, TENSE

Minority Serbs have no more reason to believe Pristina's promise of protection or the West's promise to maintain outside oversight. After all, both spasms of ethnic Albanian violence occurred during the allied occupation. In mid-1999, even as tens of thousands of ethnic Serbs were fleeing Kosovo, Secretary Albright was telling the Council of Foreign Relations that the allied occupation force "takes seriously its mandate to protect Kosovars, including Serbs." The territory seemed no closer to ethnic reconciliation in 2004, when thousands more ethnic Serbs were killed, injured, and displaced. Derek Chappell, spokesman for the UN military force, UNMIK, observed: "some in the Kosovo Albanian leadership believe that by cleansing all remaining Serbs from the area...and destroying Serbian cultural sites, they can present the international community with a fait accompli."


Kosovo's record is at best disappointing after years of supposed tutelage in democracy by the "international community." The ethnic Albanian leadership has been implicated in the explosion of organized crime, including drug dealing, money laundering, and sex trafficking. Some have referred to Kosovo as the "black hole" of Europe. Of what exactly could consist the offer of Kosovo’s economy? The reality is that Serbia (with remaining 10% of Serbs in its province) is paying off 100% of the Kosovo debt, amounting 50-100 millions of US dollars PER year. Or 120.000 $ per day.

Let’s talk about privatisation model? How can we call it? Unfair, not legal?

The independence of Kosovo is a maximalist solution in which one side-the Albanian community – gets it all; and the other side-the Kosovo Serbs and Serbia- loses it all
Kosovo hardly sounded ready for prime-time.

Compromises were possible — overlapping EU, Kosovo, and Serbian citizenship and partition north of the Ibar River were two leading candidates — which might have won grudging agreement on both sides. No one would have been happy with the result, but both sides could have acquiesced. Rather than encourage genuine negotiations, however, the U.S. insisted that the ethnic Albanians win everything.

Other day I was reading an article by one young American researcher who interviewed one of very few women living in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo and Metohija. According to statistics now there are only 60 serbs living there. 4 male and 11 children.
They can speak their language only beyond closed doors of their home.
And they sometimes meet, in police station. Is this the rightful democracy which World politics want us to live in?

How many of you know that Serbia’s minorities for more that 50 years have their own democratic Medias, TV, newspapers, News on state television channels, their kids can learn their mother language in schools. How many countries can be proud of this kind of politics? Croatia who’s about to enter EU now, has much less liberty for its minorities and less respect to their freedom and rights….
The current number of recognitions is 55, only a few more than which recognize the Western Sahara (claimed by Morocco). Here we would have to underline even the role of media in this shameful self-proclamation. But this is another story.

Washington's claim that Kosovo's status is "unique" and thus not a precedent is too self-serving to take seriously. Serbia vows continued resistance and Russia insists that Kosovo will never join the UN. If the World Court rules for Belgrade, some nations might even reverse their recognitions of Pristina.
But Washington policymakers have had no apparent second thoughts. Some of their arguments verge on the ridiculous.

For instance, if self-determination is the essential principle, then ethnic Serbs in Kosovo have an obvious right to break from the new state and remain with democratic Serbia. Right?Last year Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns contended: "Kosovo is going to be a vastly majority Muslim state…. And we think it is a very positive step that this Muslim state, Muslim majority state, has been created today." Muslims have the same right of self-determination as do everyone else, but why should America's goal be establishing a Muslim government any more than establishing a Serbian government?

Moreover, last year President George W. Bush opined that "our position is that its status must be resolved in order for the Balkans to be stable." While an independence deal accepted by Kosovo and Serbia, as well as the U.S., Europe, and Russia would encourage stability, Kosovo's unilateral declaration has destabilized the region. The divide between Russia and the U.S. and EU has grown. Indeed, applying the West's "Kosovo principle" to the Caucasus resulted in more war.

U.S. policy retains an otherworldly quality. American officials seem genuinely bewildered as to why Serbs are so angry. While explaining last year how the U.S. was working to strip Serbia of 15 percent of its territory, Secretary Rice asserted: "The United States takes this opportunity to reaffirm our friendship with Serbia." Without apparent irony, President Bush claimed: "the Serbian people can know that they have a friend in America." That dismembering their nation would be viewed as an unfriendly act by Serbs apparently never occurred to Secretary Rice or President Bush.


FUTURE


Now the future of Kosovo is up to the Obama administration.
For more than a decade Washington has led the bungling in the Balkans. The U.S. torpedoed one of the early attempts to settle the Bosnian crisis, the Lisbon Plan. Years of war and tens of thousands of dead resulted: much of that blood was on the hands of Washington policymakers. But the governments continue to put ideology before reality.

Returning to the status quo in Kosovo might not be a viable option, but neither is pretending that Kosovo's independence claim has yielded regional stability. The U.S. and EU could still convene a conference, harkening back to the Congress of Berlin and similar international gatherings, to conduct genuine negotiations with the goal of achieving an acceptable compromise. Otherwise, Kosovo's declaration of independence is likely to prove to be just another step in continuing regional strife.

One issue that has often been seen from a glass half-empty, half-full perspective (depending on your point of view) is the recognition of Kosovo by the world community, in particular, the EU member states. Kosovo’s Prime Minister Hashim Thaci contends that “We will be recognised by the entire world” Such a far-reaching proclamation seem unrealistic at this time, as there are no signs that Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia, to say nothing of Serbia, will recognize Kosovo anytime soon.