Anatol Lieven: For the west to say Kosovo is a unique case is empty,
given the obvious parallels.

2008-01-15 18:49:00

ArmInfo. For the west to say Kosovo is a unique case is empty, given
the obvious parallels, writes Anatol Lieven, professor at King’s
College London and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation in
Washington in his article ‘Balkan unrest remains a recipe for disaster’
in The Financial Times.

Further in the article, the professors writes:’In their dealings over
Kosovo’s independence, the European Union and Russia need to take their
points of departure from reality and common responsibility for the
stability of the European continent, not from legalism or
self-righteousness.

The Russians must recognise that, whether they and the Serbs like it or
not, Kosovo will soon become independent and will be recognised as such
by the US, the EU and many Muslim states. If this is not granted soon,
the Kosovo Albanians will revolt.

By vetoing United Nations recognition and giving moral support to
Serbian intransigence, Russia can help keep Kosovo unstable and spread
in-stability across the region. In the worst case, it could help
produce a war that would destabilise not just the Balkans but Europe
and deal a terrible blow to Russia’s relations with the west; but
Moscow needs to ask itself how it can be in Russia’s interest to do
this and take actions that will drive western Europe closer to the
hardline antiRussian positions in the US.

EU governments also need to recognise two realities. First, that just
as trying to keep Kosovo in Serbia would lead to Albanian revolt, so
too trying to force Mitrovica, the remaining Serbian area of Kosovo,
into an independent Albanian state would lead to Serbian revolt. Given
the de facto "ethnic cleansing" by Albanians since the Kosovo war, to
ask the Serbs to accept either Albanian or western guarantees of their
future safety is absurd.

There have been veiled threats from the Albanian side that if Mitrovica
is separated and joins Serbia, this will lead to revolt by local
Albanian minorities not just in Serbia proper but also in Macedonia. To
this there should be a very firm western response. The EU and Nato have
rested their moral right to hegemony in the Balkans on the claim to
guarantee stability and prevent conflict. They have also given promises
to defend the stability and territorial integrity of Macedonia. The
other reality the west needs to recognise is that, just as it is
impossible to force Kosovo back into Serbia, so it is impossible to
force Abkhazia and South Ossetia into Georgia. Quite apart from the
backing of Moscow and coethnics in the Russian north Caucasus for these
republics, it should be obvious from recent history that their
indigenous peoples can no more trust the Georgian state than Kosovo
Albanians can trust the Serbian state.

Kosovo’s independence will inevitably have repercussions for the
Georgian separatist regions and Nagorno- Karabakh and Trans Dnestr. For
the west to say Kosovo is a unique case is empty, given the
obvious parallels.

To resolve these issues and restore elementary consistency to its own
position, the west does not need to recognise Abkhaz and South Ossetian
independence – something for which Moscow is in any case not asking,
given the obvious lessons for some of Russia’s own restive minorities.

Rather, the west should extend to these republics the same solution
that leading western countries have sought for nearby Nagorno-Karabakh
(though so far without success): namely a "common state", in which
Azerbaijan – or, in this case, Georgia – will retain de jure
sovereignty, and therefore the theoretical possibility of future
reunification by consent, while formally acceding to de facto
independence, including most notably, full control over local armed
forces and external borders. In all these cases, as in Kosovo, this
would have to be accompanied by limited partitions, in which certain
regions (such as Mitrovica, or the ethnically Georgian Gali and Svan
districts of Abkhazia) would remain with the former sovereign.

Before they go any further with their existing policies, the big powers
should remember this: the catastrophic first world war began with a
dispute over the status of Bosnia-Herzegovina, an area of no interest
to the vast majority of the Europeans who died.

The risk today from the Balkans and Caucasian conflicts is far less –
but none of the territories concerned is worth any serious risk to the
international system. What is more, the governments of 1914 could not
imagine the dreadful use to which Hitler and Stalin would put the
consequences of the first world war. Today, we do not have that excuse.
We know very well the uses to which Osama bin Laden and his Chechen
allies would put a serious clash between the west and Russia’.