The United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), which still runs the country even after the November 2001 elections, has deliberately fudged the issue and put it outside the remit of the Parliament. Yet for the Kosovo Albanians, some 90% of the population, it remains a burning issue and is far from being a concern only of the tiny political class.
Index Kosovo, a research company linked to Gallup, undertook qualitative research to discover what people wanted from the political parties and what they cared about. I discreetly listened in, so that no one was aware that an ‘international’ (as foreign officials are called there) was present and the answers were not skewed. Naturally, in a country with unemployment at about 70%, the primary concern was jobs, with people wanting proper economic development. However, as soon as the future was mentioned, the immediate and unsolicited response was ‘independence’.
The timescale varies, but not the principle
No one in the group expected independence to arrive in the next three years, and the general feeling was that the politicians had to prove themselves capable of running the country – an interesting concept in itself. However, they did expect Kosovo to be an independent country within ten years. The suggestion of a federation with Serbia and Montenegro (the successor to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) was firmly rejected.
Montenegro, after all, has been offered large amounts of aid on the condition that it abandon a planned referendum on independence and remain in a federation with Serbia. While Kosovo is even more desperate for aid, with an estimated third of families dependent on money from relatives working abroad, such a measure would be seen as betrayal by the international community.
The strong feelings of all the surveyed groups were reflected in statements such as: “We didn’t make all those sacrifices to go back to that” and “We shall only accept independence”. People do not believe that there is a possibility of any other final status, and they have made it clear that nothing less than independence would be acceptable.
While the impetus for the NATO bombing in 1999 was to protect the human rights of the people of Kosovo, the Kosovans themselves have always been involved in a fight for independence, whether it be the passive resistance of setting up a parallel society or the active battles of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The strategy of the KLA, who knew that a badly equipped guerrilla force could never beat the might of the Serbs, was always to bring NATO in to join their battle. A KLA man who was recruited as early as 1994, before most people even in Kosovo were aware of its existence, told me that was the premise when he joined.
One of the reasons for the reluctance of the international community to allow Kosovo to move towards independence is, of course, the behaviour of the Albanians towards their Serb neighbours. After the war, there were dozens of revenge killings, and many Serbs are now forced to live in enclaves, guarded by international troops.
However, the mood is cautiously changing and the people who took part in the Index Kosovo research were unanimous that Kosovo Serbs were equal citizens and that those who had left out of fear had the right to return, provided they were not criminals. (It is important to remember that it was not just Milosevic’s troops from Belgrade who brutalised the Kosovo Albanians; they were ably assisted by many Kosovo Serbs.)
The will to change these relationships is being led from the top. In April, the Prime Minister, Bajram Rexhepi, spoke in Serb and Albanian to an ethnically mixed audience, stressing the importance of peaceful coexistence. The former KLA Commander of Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, who is now himself a Deputy in the Parliament, has recently said that the greatest mistake the KLA made was not to put a KLA soldier outside every Serbian house in Kosovo when the war finished, to protect them.
The dangers of delay
Of course, the real reason Kosovo cannot be given independence is global and regional politics. How can Kosovo be allowed to secede when China has Tibet and Russia wars with Chechnya? And in the Balkans, it is feared that the liberation of Kosovo might have a domino effect, disrupting the fragile peace in the region. But this is merely sitting on top of the pressure cooker. And Kosovans point out that there can be neither prosperity nor stability without a secure future.
Kosovo now has its own Parliament – but it is not allowed to discuss border issues, security or statehood. When Kosovans discovered that Macedonia and Serbia had done a land swap, exchanging parts of Kosovo with each other, they were understandably furious – particularly when they discovered it had later been ratified by the United Nations. A resolution ratifying the existing borders was condemned and ruled out of the Parliament’s competence by the UNMIK.
Giving independence to Kosovo would be the first step in the necessary journey to negotiating a lasting settlement for the Balkans, instead of regular flurries of fudge diplomacy that shore up the cracks until the next crisis. Mark Thompson of the International Crisis Group says: “Kosovo’s most precious resource may be the high hopes of its inhabitants. Unfortunately, the international community tends to see these as liabilities – as expectations that contain a potential threat. For what sort of backlash might follow if frustration over Kosovo’s final constitutional status should eventually turn those hopes sour?”
Over 90% of the population of Kosovo want independence. They have turned to the West and have willingly trod the democratic route. They are still grateful that NATO freed them from the Serbs and happy to be, in effect, an occupied country. But if the West should have learnt any lesson from the Balkans, it is to act sooner rather than later. Kosovo needs to go forwards with a defined vision of the future. This is a fledgling democracy that needs to grow up in a hurry. The best intentions of the West could smother its potential. The West must let go of its reins and allow the people of Kosovo to find their feet and their voice. Goodwill and hope could otherwise turn to apathy and despair.
