INTERNATIONAL
Ending the impasse over Kosovo
Autumn 2007
The Kosovo crisis is an increasingly dangerous international muddle, warn Morton Abramowitz and Jacques Rupnik, that could all too easily spark fresh instability across the western Balkans. They set out the hard choices that now confront all the protagonists
The future of Kosovo has become a dangerous international muddle, and Russia has succeeded in turning the issue into a threat both to Balkan stability and the transatlantic relationship.
The people of Kosovo have been told since 1999, particularly by the US, that they would get independence. In April, the US and the EU supported a draft UN Security Council resolution endorsing UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari’s plan of supervised independence for Kosovo with strong protection for the Serb minority. In the face of Serbia’s strong opposition, backed effectively by a Russian veto threat, the West retreated and now appears divided and unsure about how to proceed. With the Security Council stalemated and to preserve unity the West opted for a 120 day period of resumed negotiations under the auspices of the six-nation contact group (including Russia) but with no agreement on what happens after negotiations end. Having long declared that partition of Kosovo was out of the question some senior western officials are now murmuring about it as a compromise. Welcome back to the Balkans.
Miss-steps, misunderstandings, division and delay have characterised western policy and heavily contributed to the present problem. The way the Kosovo war ended in 1999 contributed to making the problem even more difficult to solve. In its understandable hurry to stop the hostilities, the US along with its European allies approved Security Council resolution 1244 ending the Kosovo war and making Kosovo a UN protectorate, but giving Serbia nominal sovereignty until Kosovo’s final status was resolved. The assumption was that Serbia would accept “reality” once President Slobodan Milosevic was no longer in power. But the West failed to move ahead on Kosovo after Milosevic’s overthrow, and consigned independence to the indefinite future. That delay permitted the staunchly nationalist Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica to carry on an all-out campaign to undermine the UN’s management of Kosovo. Some western countries even encouraged Kostunica by downplaying his declarations of intent, labelling him a great democrat and, most important of all, allowing Serbia to believe that its own road to EU membership was separate from a resolution of the Kosovo problem − in other words, a repeat of the Union’s self-admittedly disastrous decision to admit into the EU a divided Cyprus with its territorial issue still unresolved.
Having left Kosovo’s future equally unresolved, the West now faces a resurgent Russia. Time and again, Moscow has declared its opposition to any Kosovo settlement that lacked Belgrade’s consent. It has also dismissed UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari’s proposal to the Security Council that would provide strong protection for Kosovo’s Serbs but would end Resolution 1244 giving Serbia nominal sovereignty, thus opening the legal door to Kosovan independence. Many Western officials and experts thought that Moscow was merely posturing and would accept independence when the time came. But the time came and Russia’s position remains unchanged. Moscow can only be chortling at the divisions they have created among the Western powers. So much for foresight.
In the face of this opposition, maintaining Western unity around Ahtisaari’s plan for Kosovo’s independence is critical, but will be very difficult. Many have forgotten Milosevic’s atrocities, and therefore why international intervention was so necessary. Some EU countries – Greece and Cyprus, but also Slovakia and Spain – are for their own reasons sceptical about Kosovan independence; others do not want to proceed without another UN resolution legally ending 1244. Some believe that Moscow can still be brought along; if Bush’s friendship with Putin didn’t work, maybe Sarkozy’s might.
Now, after years of believing Western promises and doing whatever they were asked, the Kosovo Albanians who make up 90% of the population see no clear road to independence. They fear that European abandonment can gather momentum in Brussels. Many even worry that the US – their most trusted ally − and despite constant assurances may now desert them rather than add new strains to the transatlantic relationship by recognising Kosovo’s independence without EU support. Having told their people that independence was imminent, the leadership has been undermined and discontent is on the rise. Other than playing on Western sympathy and promises, the Kosovars have little leverage except the risk of violence and the threat that the crisis will become regional through the involvement of Albanians in Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania and Serbia. These are steps they do not want to take.
Right now, the West prefers to wait. The latest proposal calls for four months of renewed negotiations. In the hope of winning Russian and Serbian support, the new draft eliminates the implementation of the Ahtisaari plan to end 1244 and Serbian sovereignty should the negotiations fail.
Serbia has declared its fierce opposition to renewed negotiations with a time limit and without specific reference to 1244. The Russians have expressed support for whatever Serbia will agree to. The EU has offered new negotiations under the rubric of the six-nation Contact Group on the Balkans, which would still leave Russia a veto power.
New negotiations makes some sense if they have a clear deadline and facilitates Western agreement to recognise an independent Kosovo in the case of the negotiations breaking down. Almost everyone knows that Serbian leaders are unlikely sign up to any agreement recognising an independent Kosovo, and no Kosovan leader would risk the wrath of his countrymen by accepting anything less. But resuming negotiations also entails great dangers − the risk of endless delay and the introduction of the only other possible path to agreement − Kosovo’s partition.
Partition burst into the open not long ago with the publication of an article by former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov recommending it as the only feasible compromise. Both parties would get something from a partition, he argued; Kosovo its independence and Serbia the north of Kosovo, which it already dominates. Many have read the suggestion as a Russian signal that this ultimately reflects the Serbian position. Just as Russia sees Kosovo independence as a precedent for other “frozen conflicts” in the Caucasus so the West tends to see partition as a dangerous precedent.
Until now, the West has ruled out partition because it has feared that partition would open up the question of borders elsewhere in the Balkans − notably Macedonia, Bosnia, and Serbia itself − and lead to profound instability. The West made the Kosovars swear not to pursue changes of borders or any association with other Albanian dominated areas. Although there has been no concerted Western discussion of partition, some countries may now be ready to support the idea providing both sides in the Kosovo dispute can agree to it. If it were to become Western policy, which is unlikely but cannot be ruled out, the West will have given its blessing to the birth of an ethnic state.
Belgrade and Pristina have so far rejected partition. That said, many Serbs apparently favour it (knowing a re-conquest of Kosovo is out of question), and the Kosovo leadership would also take a hard look if the West presented it as the only way to independence. They would insist on incorporating an adjoining Serbian area, the Presevo Valley that is mostly populated by Albanians, in exchange for northern Kosovo around Mitrovica. Adding partition to any new negotiations may therefore seem a reasonable solution, but is more than likely to instead produce endless delays while creating a destabilising precedent for Macedonia and perhaps for Bosnia. It would be another short-term fix for the West that would resolve not the problem but rather its contradictions.
If no agreement is reached in the new negotiation – as seems likely – the next step should not be more delay but for the west to united and proceed toward Kosovo independence. The main provisions of the Ahtisaari plan, particularly the deployment of an EU supervisory mission to Kosovo, could already be implemented now. Once negotiations end and if Russia uses its veto power the EU and the US should collectively turn the page and recognise Kosovo’s independence.
By-passing the UN Security Council, the great power division and unremitting Serbian opposition is hardly a great scenario for Kosovo’s path to independence. The truth is that so far we have concocted a huge morass, and any solution will at best be messy. So hard choices must now be made. Belgrade must choose between its future and its past; the alternatives are Brussels or Pristina as it cannot have both. Kosovo must choose a shared sovereignty and respect of minorities as one of the conditions of independence. The West must choose unity and clarity, resist the idea of partition, or we will have instability and likely disorder far beyond Kosovo. Ultimately, Serbia and Kosovo must eventually be integrated into Europe, and that will not be possible until we have dealt with the unfinished business left over from the wars of Yugoslavia’s dissolution.