open Democracy News Analysis - Kosovo: the day after, Timothy William Waters - Comments

Zoran Milutinovic on "Kosovo: the day after"

Zoran Milutinovic — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 23:40:20 +0000

When it comes to genocide and ethnic cleansing, Milutinovic is certainly not the only one who would be best advised to remain silent. If we were to turn it into a rule, you and I would have to cease our current exchange immediately.

I do not object to Dalmatia’s place in Croatia. On the contrary, I like it where it is. I agree with you and Mr. Hoare more than you realize. What I would like to see is some consistency on your part, and some moral strength to adhere to your own principles. Mr. Hoare claimed that carving new ethnic borders is not a solution – and I couldn’t agree more. Why shouldn’t this argument be applied universally; why is it applied only selectively? You claim that it is not possible to govern territories against the will of their populations while proclaiming adherence to democracy and legitimacy – and again I agree. Would it be too much to expect this principle to be applied, if not universally, then at least in what used to be Yugoslavia, and without exceptions? How would the process of Yugoslavia’s dissolution have appeared had this principle been applied?

I am looking forward to reading about this in your book.

Zoran Milutinovic

branka magas on "Kosovo: the day after"

branka magas — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:59:37 +0000

Kosovo's relationship to Serbia and Croatia's relationship to Dalmatia differ in three important respects, derived in part from the fact that the mediaeval Serbian state disappeared at the start of the 15th century, whereas the Croatian state has existed continuously from the early middle ages until the present day (as my recently published 'Croatia Through History: the making of a European state', Saqi, London 2008, demonstrates at length).

1. History. Dalmatia was a Croatian province de jure, if not always de facto, long before 1918, as was registered in the names of Croatian state institutions, state emblems, and official documents charting Croatia's status within the Habsburg Monarchy. Serbia's claim to Kosovo, on the other hand, is no better - or worse - than its claim to Macedonia, which it also took in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13; or for that matter its claim to Montenegro, which it seized in the closing stages of the First World War.

2. Ethnic composition. Dalmatia is overwhelmingly Croat in 'ethnic' terms. This is shown by all censuses conducted there since such data began to be collected: i.e. from the middle of the 19th century on. By contrast, when Serbia gained Kosovo in the early 20th century, the latter - according to Serbia's own findings - was already overwhelmingly Albanian in ethnic terms. Moreover, it has grown more ethnically Albanian since that time, mainly as a result of economic emigration of Serbs northwards and a higher Albanian birthrate: most estimates suggest that the Albanian proportion of the population was over 90% even before 1989. (The current Serb majority in Vojvodina, by contrast, has been achieved only since 1918 by ethnic engineering - expulsion of Germans, colonization policies, etc. - as is well documented.)

3. Democratic criteria. Dalmatia is part of Croatia by will of its population. This is proved by the fact that ethnic Croat parties dominated the Dalmatian provincial parliament in the second half of the 19th century, showing that Dalmatia was not just ethnically but also politically Croat. This became incontrovertible as soon as the suffrage became sufficiently broad to include the popular masses. On the eve of the First World War, the Dalmatian parliament was consequently dominated by Croat political parties, all of which insisted that Dalmatia belonged rightfully to Croatia. Croatia's possession of Dalmatia, in other words, rested not only upon a 'historical' claim, but was repeatedly confirmed in popular elections. This cannot be said of Serbia's claim to Kosovo, which never had any such democratic basis. Serbia gained and held onto Kosovo only by resort to brute force, when this was available to it.

Milutinović asks: 'For how long does a territory have to be part of a country in order for its status [i.e. the claim of the country in question] to be recognised?' This is a good question. A country may gain territory and keep it by will of its population, as is true of Croatia and Dalmatia, or it may try to hold onto the territory against the will of its population, as is true of Serbia and Kosovo. He omits to say that Kosovo as a territory with its current well-defined frontiers was established during the Second World War, even before the Republic of Serbia came into being; and that those borders were confirmed in all Yugoslav constitutions between that time and the final one of 1974.

Unlike all other Yugoslav republics, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, which were unitary states, the Republic of Serbia was a composite state made up of Serbia, Vojvodina and Kosovo. The last Yugoslav constitution made Kosovo de facto, and in all important jurisdictional matters also de jure, independent of Serbia. Milutinović asks: 'Why shouldn't we apply the Ohrid Agreement [in Macedonia] to the Kosovo question, instead of carving a new border?' But this is disingenuous. Kosovo's borders are neither new nor ethnic (as is testified to, inter alia, by the fact that before Milošević started his genocidal wars both Serb and Albanian were official languages in Kosovo). Although Milutinović carefully avoids the issue of Serbia's own multinational composition, which notably includes a fairly large and compact Albanian minority on the Serbian side of the border with Kosova, the Ohrid Agreement might in fact be more relevant as a model for regulating relations between the majority Serbs in Serbia itself and the minority Hungarians, Bosniaks, Albanians and Bulgarians, not to speak of the large Roma population.

Milutinović raises the question also of the Serb entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In view of the fact that this entity was created by ethnic cleansing and genocide, he would be better advised to remain silent on this.

It is possible in theory, and sometimes also in practice, to govern territories against the will of their populations. It is practically impossible to do so while proclaiming adherence to democracy and legitimacy. Tito's Yugoslavia realised that this was impossible, which is why it was constituted as a federal state, in which Kosovo with its Albanian majority was recognised from the outset as a distinct political entity and by the mid seventies as a constituent member of the federation in its own right. The European Union knows that it would be impossible to return Kosovo to Serbian rule without a war being waged against its Albanian population. Pace Milutinović, the European Union is clearly unwilling to do what Milošević failed to do: make Kosovo once again part of Serbia.

Branka Magaš, London

Zoran Milutinovic on "Kosovo: the day after"

Zoran Milutinovic — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:44:19 +0000

Zoran Milutinovic
Hoare’s arguments are self-defeating. Kosovo did become a part of Serbia in 1912 again, after being occupied by the Ottomans for several centuries – against the will of its population. But even Hoare recognizes the most important fact: Kosovo is a part of Serbia, as much as Dalmatia is a part of Croatia. Dalmatia only became a part of Croatian in 1918. Should this be questioned now? For how long does a territory have to be part of a country in order for its status to not be questioned?

The Albanian majority in Kosovo was also achieved through ethnic cleansing. The latest wave of ethnic cleansing wiped out two thirds of the non-Albanian population in Kosovo. Does this bother Hoare at all?

The Badinter commission’s conclusions were very clear: the republics were to become sovereign states, not provinces. There was no room left for creative interpretation.

Pandora’s box has already been opened by the partitioning of Serbia. Hoare lists the possible candidates for secession, to whom the right to secession cannot be denied (Albanians in southern Serbia and Macedonia, Bosniaks in Sandjak), but forgets the Serbian entity in Bosnia. Can they claim the same right now? Or Serbs in Croatia?

Yes: the solution is not in carving new ethnic borders. Not anywhere. Neither between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, nor between Serbs and Albanians in Serbia. Recognizing Kosovo’s independence is just that: carving a new ethnic border. Why shouldn’t we apply the Ohrid agreement to the Kosovo question, instead of carving a new border?

ianniscarras on "Kosovo: the day after"

ianniscarras — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:42:48 +0000

The above points by Quintin Hoare are valid. There are good reasons for pressing for Kosovan independence (not least for the Kosovans themselves, and I wish them well). And partition would have been an even more flawed outcome than the current one.

The problem is not the aim, but the way it has been achieved and endorsed by the UK, Germany, France, Italy etc. This creates a precedent in contravention of international law with implications far beyond Kosovo's borders. And if the major EU powers do not abide by the laws and UN resolutions they helped create why should anyone else?

The justification for such flouting of international law can only be (1) that the plan proposed by the UN was fully equivalent to other similar plans in respect to minority rights and (2) that all the other possible options were worse over the long term. I have not compared the proposal for Kosovo with, say, the Anan plan for Cyprus so cannot comment on (1). As for (2) I find this hard to believe, given that Serbia has chosen a path towards the EU and that both Kosovo and Serbia could have been integrated into EU structures. In such an environment a phased approach to independence would have been vastly preferable. Hence my view that the way independence for Kosovo has been endorsed shows up the worst of great power intervention in the region, exacerbating the potential for conflict rather than reducing it.

That the Serbs have been trapped by their own nationalist rhetoric is self-evident. That certain EU countries have abandoned their preference for the rule of law would also seem to be the case. What the consequences for the wider region may be remains to be seen. Probably not good.

I.C., Athens, Greece.

quintin on "Kosovo: the day after"

quintin — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:36:00 +0000

There are numerous powerful arguments for Kosova's independence, starting with the fact that it was seized by Serbia in the Balkan Wars less than a century ago against the will of its population, a large majority of whom were already at that time Albanians. Far from being premature, it is long overdue; it could and should have been recognized in 1992, when the Badinter Commission acknowledged that the former Yugoslav federation had dissolved, if the major powers had chosen to apply the Commission's findings to all eight members of the federation rather than just to the six republics.

As for ethnic partition, this is no solution, as the experience of Bosnia shows. There the British and French governments pursued partitionist solutions at the diplomatic level, even as Milosevic and Tudjman pursued them by military means. Then in 1995 the feeble Clinton administration - even following the military defeat of the Belgrade-backed aggression, a defeat to which US air power had made its own contribution - incorporated the discredited partitionist principles into the settlement that it brokered at Dayton. The dysfunctional result is there for all to see in today's Bosnia-Herzegovina.
That the lessons of this debacle have been learned is shown by the Ohrid agreement in Macedonia, which precisely respects legitimate national/minority rights without territorial separation.

To allow any partition of Kosova, however hard Belgrade may agitate for such a 'solution', would be a catastrophe and open a real Pandora's box. How could predominantly ethnic-Albanian municipalities in southern Serbia be denied the same right as predominantly ethnic-Serb municipalities in Kosova? That would certainly be their demand? How would the present Macedonian settlement be maintained? What arguments would be deployed to prevent Bosniaks in the Sandjak leaving Serbia to join Bosnia? And so on and so forth.

The current ethnic-Serb majority in northern Kosova is in any case itself the result of ethnic cleansing: just one small municipality, Leposavic, had a Serb majority in 1981, at the time of the last valid census, The solution does not lie in carving new ethnic borders, but in ensuring security and proper rights for minorities - in Kosova just as in Serbia and in Macedonia.
Quintin Hoare

ianniscarras on "Kosovo: the day after"

ianniscarras — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:59:06 +0000

If law exists to restrain the powerful, when the powerful, in this case the major EU countries, cease to enforce it, it ceases to exist.

It is evident that the actions of EU states breach international law (UN resolutions, the Helsinki convention) from any reading of the necessary documents and from the statements of EU leaders that this is a special case (in this the US is at least consistent unlike the UK or Germany). The more it is denied, the more everyone knows that the independence of Kosovo achieved in this manner is a precedent for many areas in the Balkans, the Caucuses and beyond. Look at the President of Georgia's protests at the recognition of Kosovan independence as one example among many to prove the point.

The tragedy is that Kosovan independence could have been achieved without such disdain for the structures that govern the interaction of states, by playing a waiting game and phasing in independence to coincide with Serbia and Kosovo being tied into EU institutions.

I fear much harm will come from the astonishing irresponsibility witnessed by this return to Great Power politics in the Balkans. Is this 1821 all over again? Or a return to the granting of independence to Yugoslav states without any checks and balances for minorities that proved to be a contributing factor in the Yugoslav wars? Who is next in line for special treatment? The Bosnian Serbs, the South Ossetians, the Kurds, the Muslims of Thrace, the Basques? Is the only wise course for countries in a such a lawless world to up their military budgets? Arm, arm well, or accept the consequences?

In sadness,

Iannis Carras, Athens, Greece.

Kosovo: the day after, Timothy William Waters

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 15:35:59 +0000

After a decade of waiting and months of intense manoeuvring, Kosovo's assembly unilaterally declared independence on the afternoon of 17 February 2008. The capital Pristina lit up with celebratory fireworks, reflecting the mood of the Kosovar Albanians who form 90% of the population. The United States, France and Britain recognised or announced their intention to recognise the new state on the day after the declaration, and a number of European Union countries will follow. But there are forces adamantly against independence: most immediately, the Serbs living in enclaves within Kosovo where they form a majority, notably around the northern town of Mitrovica; Serbia, which to no one's surprise has declared the assembly's move null and void; and Russia, which is pressuring the United Nations to reject Kosovo's statehood (and which will use its Security Council veto to block Kosovo's membership of the UN).
Timothy William Waters teaches international law at Indiana University (Bloomington), and helped prepare the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic for crimes in Kosovo.

This article was written by invitation from openDemocracy

This bitter dispute is the price of the unilateral path Kosovo's authorities felt compelled to take - even though unilateral independence was nobody's preference. On the first day of this new political reality it is worth asking: how did matters reach this point, and what happens now?

The cost of delay

Kosovo's status was supposed to be decided through a negotiated political process. In the first years of the international protectorate following the war of March-June 1999 which led to the removal of Serbian forces from Kosovo, little was done to move beyond strengthening interim institutions. But then the UN's dithering slogan of "standards before status" (i.e., reforms before independence) exploded in deadly communal riots in March 2004, when many Serbian sites were targeted in coordinated attacks and nineteen people killed on both sides. From that point, a new urgency gripped the western powers supporting the UN mission, impelled by the fear that war might break out if fed-up Albanians did not get statehood.

A new process of negotiations between Serbian and Kosovar representatives , however, led nowhere, as there was no common ground between Albanians' insistence on independence and Serbia's insistence that independence was the one thing Kosovo couldn't have. Still, at the beginning of 2007, the US and European policy establishment confidently assumed that Kosovo's endgame was in place: under UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari's plan, the Serbian province would be independent by summer. There was speculation about Russia's price for going along - a deal on missile defence? - but that Russia had a price was not questioned.

Among openDemocracy's articles on Serbia and the future of Kosovo:

Peter Lippman, "Kosovo: approaching independence or chaos" (30 October 2006)

TK Vogel, "Kosovo: a break in the ice" (2 February 2007)

Marko Attila Hoare, "Kosovo: the Balkans' last independent state" (12 February 2007)

Vicken Cheterian, "Serbia after Kosovo" (18 April 2007)

Neven Andjelic, "Serbia and Eurovision: whose victory?" (25 May 2007)

Eric Gordy, "Serbia's Kosovo claim: much ado about..." (2 October 2007)

Paul Hockenos, "Kosovo's contested future" (16 November 2007)

Juan Garrigues, "Kosovo's troubled victory" (7 December 2007)

Ginanne Brownell, "Kosovo's Serbs in suspension" (10 December 2007)

Mary Kaldor, "The Balkans-Caucasus tangle: states and citizens" (9 January 2008)

John O'Brennan, "Kosovo: the hour of Europe" (14 January 2008)

Unfortunately, no one checked with Moscow, which threatened to veto any deal not acceptable to both sides; this stymied western insistence that the only option was what would, after all, be partition of a sovereign state. At the time, US diplomats were so busy announcing that Russia had no real interest in Kosovo that they forgot to notice: America doesn't either. The Balkans - an obsession under Bill Clinton's presidency in the 1990s - are today peripheral to President Bush's war on terror; US commitment to Kosovo has been running on fumes. Russia's, on the other hand, has been running on oil (which, at nearly $100 a barrel, buys a lot of commitment). Russia has played its resourceful hand skilfully, yet political and diplomatic realities meant that ultimately it has had no way to forestall the unilateral option.

This may look like a diplomatic defeat for Russia, yet it is likely to leave America and (most of) Europe unhappy about the high price they may have to pay for their commitment to support Kosovo. For example, Russia will now exploit the "precedent of partition" to give even more open support to the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia which have broken with Georgia only to become Moscow's effective clients. Moreover, unilateralism will lock Serbia and Kosovo in tense conflict; an embittered Serbia's normalisation could be delayed for a generation, foreshadowing instability in the region and derailing reform in neighbouring Bosnia, whose Serbs view events in Kosovo as bolstering their own claims to reverse the progressive surrender of power to the central government.

Even apart from these external costs, independence will not solve the deep structural contradictions within Kosovo. In fact, independence changes very little: the highly qualified form of statehood Kosovo has accepted will leave it under international supervision. The biggest difference might be that it will get a lot darker: Kosovo gets its electricity from Serbia.

This points to a problem independence will make worse, or at least clearer. It's one thing for Kosovo to declare its independence, quite another to actually enforce its authority. The Serb-populated north of Kosovo does not recognise Pristina. Western diplomats hope to slowly draw local Serb institutions - which are funded by Belgrade - into accepting the new state, but that will take years, assuming the Serbs even stay.

The northern option

It is not evident that western governments' current decisions and preferences will help resolve these issues, nor indeed why they should be trying this hard. There are strong arguments for a different stance towards Kosovo: that while Kosovo's Albanians richly deserve independence, there is no good reason the Serb north must be drawn into the new state. On the contrary, allowing it to remain part of Serbia would have three concrete benefits.

First, it would give Serbia something in exchange for acquiescing in Kosovo's independence. At present, Serbia has no incentive to accept Kosovo's fait accompli: it has already lost the province, and the remaining Serbs (around half of whom live in the Mitrovica area, and half in enclaves dotted around the rest of Kosovo) have extensive protective guarantees - so why should it surrender its formal claim? But if in return Serbia could recover the north - more accurately, get recognised title back, since Belgrade already exercises more control there than does Pristina - it would have an incentive.

Second, it would simplify the governance of Kosovo. The Ahtisaari plan calls for an incredibly decentralised and fragile model of governance, and the only reason it does this is to placate the Serbs. With the largest, most radicalised Serb area (and the Serbs' only urban centre) no longer part of the state, the remaining Serb minority would be spread out among isolated rural pockets that are more reconciled to living in an Albanian-majority state. For the Albanians, that would make governance simpler - not easy, just easier than the nearly impossible task set for them under Ahtisaari.

Third, there is a humanitarian argument for limiting what is, in effect, the partition of Serbia. The reason the leading western states are supporting Kosovo's independence is because Albanians should not have to live under a regime that oppressed them. But if western intervention is protective, why should it extend to areas and people who (like the Serbs in northern Kosovo) neither need nor want such protection?

Kosovo's Albanians deserve to escape their constitutional limbo, but does that require hewing precisely to boundaries Tito drew in 1945, even if that means denationalising 100,000 Serbs? The latter were not subjected to Belgrade's policy of ethnic cleansing during the wars of the 1990s; they would prefer to stay citizens of Serbia - and to stay in their homes. The west's current policy may sooner or later force them to choose; indeed, there is a possibility that, within a few months or a year after independence, the entire remaining Serb population will have left. It may even be that officials in the US state department and European foreign ministries are fully aware of this risk, and simply view it as acceptable. What kind of victory would that be?

A time to rethink

It's late to be imagining alternatives, but therfore all the more necessary: the current deadlock arose in part because from the outset, the leading players in the international community have refused to consider anything but an all-Kosovo solution. That lack of creative diplomacy has cut off real options - and closed minds to the reality that even though independence is necessary and right, it doesn't solve Kosovo's problems. The root of the conflict is territorial, but the minds that have to be changed are not only in the Balkans, but in Brussels and Washington. Some European diplomats did float the idea of border adjustments, but an Atlanticist orthodoxy rules out territorial revision and with it the possibility of compromise. Yet the lack of a viable plan for the Serb areas just exposes the vacuum at the heart of western policy: even with independence, the best outcome is the status quo of international protection, modelled on Bosnia. But that is no resolution - it's barely a policy - and without one there will be at best a Cypriot-style paralysis, at worst renewed violence.

A decade's delay in resolving Kosovo's "final status", followed by the late haste in forcing a decision, mean that time is short. The next opportunity for the supporters of Kosovo's independence to consider their own interests and those of people in the region will come after the moment of recognition. At some stage, the US and Europe will have to come around to the idea that limited border adjustments could ensure that Albanians achieve the full independence they deserve while allowing as many Serbs as possible to remain in the country to which they feel allegiance.

Conflict is not inevitable, and chaos does not keep to schedule. But the same is true of agreement, and neither Kosovo's declaration nor western recognition will solve the territorial dispute inside Kosovo. In the larger perspective of the last decade, the current predicament represents the tail end of a crisis rooted in two overlapping national projects, but whose timing was determined by arbitrary deadlines and a panicked rush from "standards to status". Kosovo's Albanians have finally made their move, and today they are celebrating in Pristina. But after the last firework, they will recognise how little has really changed, how much real work there is to do - and how, if the potential for further conflict is realised, more than fireworks may light up the sky.

The recognition of Kosovo's independence by the United States and many European Union countries is now inevitable, and welcome, but the real question is what these states do next. Until they muster the political courage and imagination to confront the territorial and human dilemma at the heart of this conflict, Kosovo Albanians may find, when their day of joy is over, that they have a new and bitter slogan: after standoff, stasis.

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