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| Article14
April
2004 | Kosovo: No UN solution
Whether ethnic Albanians or Serbs are allotted the role of victims, the international community’s interventions will make the tensions worse. | | by Philip Cunliffe |
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The inter-communal violence that convulsed Kosovo in March 2004 has been wiped out of the international headlines by the latest turmoil in Iraq. But the mayhem in both regions has once again shown the difficulties of using military force to resolve humanitarian crises.
| The violence in Kosovo left 19 dead and several thousand Serbs homeless, after ethnic Albanian crowds rampaged through minority enclaves. These events stunned the international community, and left many international worthies badly shaken. European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Javier Solana, the EU external affairs commissioner Chris Patten and the UN's governor general of Kosovo, Harri Holkeri, were disgraced under the glare of the international media, when an angry crowd of displaced Serbs prevented the international dignitaries from entering a building sheltering Serb refugees (1).
| An Associated Press journalist reports that 'interviews with UN officials, diplomats…speaking on condition of anonymity show [the UN] mission [in Kosovo] in uproar, shocked at the strength of extremist elements of the ethnic Albanian population' (2). A pensive Harri Holkeri subsequently divulged to a Finnish newspaper that 'this multi-ethnicity [in Kosovo] is not working as we thought it would' (3).
| The wretched plight of Kosovo's Serbs has evoked murmurs of sympathy from some unexpected quarters. NATO's local military commander, Admiral Gregory Johnson, openly called the Albanian pogrom 'ethnic cleansing', without using the word 'reverse' (the term usually used to remind us that it is only Serbs who conduct 'genuine' ethnic cleansing) (4). While far from universal, this newly found sympathy is certainly novel. Serbia's political elite, hammered by low voter turnout in recent general elections, has scrambled to exploit the international community's guilty conscience, and to forge a sense of national unity around the role of ethnic victimisation. Under the Eurocratic euphemism of 'decentralisation', Serbian prime minister Vojislav Kostunica has launched a diplomatic offensive calling for the ethnic partition of Kosovo (5).
| But although the media's acknowledgement of Serbian suffering marks a change from their preferred depiction of the Serbs as bloodthirsty nationalist ogres, Serbs would be wrong to welcome this new-found sympathy. It would be even more foolish to base a diplomatic strategy on the capricious sympathy of the international community - something that is borne out by the experience of the Kosovar Albanians themselves.
| The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the Albanian militia established in the 1990s to fight for Kosovo's independence, structured its military campaign around securing international support against Belgrade. A BBC investigation has established, for example, that it was the KLA forces who systematically broke an internationally monitored ceasefire (6). It was the collapse of this ceasefire that directly led to the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Serbia, and the eventual withdrawal of Serbian security forces from the province.
| Five years since the KLA called down the NATO thunder, it has succeeded only in gaining a military occupation of the province infinitely more powerful than Belgrade's ragtag militias and peasant conscripts. While UN Resolution 1244 nominally maintains Serbian sovereignty over the province, Kosovo is administered as a UN protectorate, the United Nations Interim Administration
Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), ruled over by a UN governor general with enough executive powers to make Milosevic blush. And now it is the Albanian 'extremists' who draw the opprobrium of Western diplomats, and the Serbs who are the hapless victims of ethnic oppression. But whoever fulfils these designated roles for the international community, the end result is the same: oppressive international intervention.
| With UNMIK's credibility battered, the argument for Kosovo's independence is gathering strength. Kosovo Albanians' calls for independence have been supported by leading international pundits, although they have yet to be endorsed by the international power centres responsible for the region (7). The international community's trepidation over the issue of Kosovar independence most likely flows from the fear of stoking secessionist claims in Bosnia and Macedonia, which would lead to further regional instability. Given that the KLA initiated its military campaign against Belgrade by attacking a refugee camp for Bosnian Serbs (8), it is ironic that the political fate of Kosovo should now be intertwined with that of the Bosnian Serbs.
| The argument for Kosovar independence seems superficially appealing. The ambiguity of Kosovo's legal status has consistently frustrated long-term economic planning and investment in the region. And the crushing burden of UNMIK's layers of bureaucracy has left Kosovo's indigenous political institutions supine and powerless. But would the Kosovar Albanians' calls for independence, or Belgrade's call for ethnic partition, really spell an end to these problems?
| Judging by the records of the other states that seceded from the former Yugoslavia, there is little ground to believe that an independent Kosovo will be a truly autonomous - let alone economically viable - state. Bosnia Herzegovina, for example, while it has a seat at the United Nations, is also administered by an international viceroy, Lord Paddy Ashdown. And the continued NATO occupation of Bosnia has been justified by the necessity of policing and keeping apart Bosnia's ethnic communities, whose partition was institutionalised in the 1995 Dayton accords that ended the civil war.
| Since the KLA expelled most of Kosovo's Serbs in 1999, ethnic conflict would presumably be less of a problem for an ethnically pure independent Kosovo. But even the record of the ethnically pure ex-Yugoslav states, Slovenia and Croatia, is hardly encouraging. While neither Croatia nor Slovenia are international protectorates, the independence that Slovenia and Croatia gained in the 1990s has been haemorrhaging away over the past decade, as they have become increasingly enthralled to international bureaucracies under the rubric of 'good governance'.
| Under the terms of the 1999 'Stability Pact', for example (9), swathes of national policymaking in the ex-Yugoslav states have been annexed by international bureaucracies such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. State machinery has also been increasingly colonised under so-called 'twinning' procedures, whereby bureaucrats expendable from their national administrations within EU member states are sent to 'oversee' the work of indigenous officials.
| As the former Yugoslav states sacrifice domestic policymaking for the promise of 'Euro-Atlantic' integration, EU domination inexorably creeps over the region, like a postmodern, but equally sprawling and ramshackle incarnation of the Habsburg Empire. The international protectorates of Bosnia and Kosovo represent only the most extreme manifestation of a regional phenomenon, whereby national policy and legislation is crafted and implemented without being mediated through the democratic process.
| In short, one way or another, the politics of secessionism, separatism and partition have only succeeded in entrenching international domination over the entire region. The only long-term guarantee of stability and autonomy for the peoples of the former Yugoslavia is if they are left to manage their own societies free from external meddling.
| Philip Cunliffe studies international politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (email ppc03@aber.ac.uk).
| (1) 'Kosovo Serbs jeer EU chief Solana', BBC News Online, 24 March 2004
(2) New Kosovo Violence worries peacekeepers, Danica Kirka, Associated Press, 28 March 2004
(3) New policy being sought for Holkerri in Kosovo, Annikka Mutanen, Helsingen Sanomat, International Edition, 30 March 2004
(4) Kosovo clashes "ethnic cleansing", BBC News Online, 20 March 2004
(5) Serb PM defends Kosovo carve-up, BBC News Online, 23 March 2004
(6) Kosovo Riots renew old debates, Jake Lynch, BBC News Online, 19 March 2004
(7) See for example Kosovo: Delaying is the least bad option, James Dobbins, International Herald Tribune, 1 April 2004
(8) Kosovo Riots renew old debates, Jake Lynch, BBC News Online, 19 March 2004
(9) See Governance: the Unequal Partnership by David Chandler in W van Meurs (ed) South Eastern Europe: Weak States and Strong International Support, Prospects and Risks Beyond EU Enlargement, Vol. 2 (Opladen: Leske and Budrich/ Bertelsmann Foundation, 2003), p79-98
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