FIXING KOSOVO
By Helle Dale

Washington Times, DC
Jan 16 2007

Memory fades quickly. Just shy of 10 years ago, the images of the
Balkans filled the front pages and television screens with the horrors
of ethnic cleansing. Then those images became dimmer in the public
consciousness, until the conflict became frozen in place. No resolution
of unresolved problems has been in sight during the intervening 10
years, and, as a result we may be headed for yet another crisis in
the next weeks and months. Indeed, the conflict may be about to be
unfrozen and back in the news again.

To recap briefly (if this is possible in the context of the tangled
history of the Balkans) in the late 1990s, Serbia attempted to
drive out the ethnic Albanians from the Kosovo province of Serbia
by the hundreds of thousands in the hope of preventing the province
from declaring independence. Albanians, who are Muslims, make up 90
percent of Kosovo’s population of 2 million. This followed a decade
of conflict, during which Serbia, the successor state to the former
Yugoslavia had fought against the independence of former Yugoslav
republics Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Slovenia.

A bombing campaign in 1999 by the United States and its NATO allies
finally intervened against the mass expulsions and murders committed by
Serbian forces in Kosovo. The bombing campaign had its hits and misses
– we hit an empty train and the Chinese embassy, among other things –
but it did put a stop to the atrocities on the ground. The Serbian
leader who had presided over the wars against Serbia’s neighbors,
Slobodan Milosevic, was toppled and placed on war crimes trial in
The Hague, where he subsequently died in prison of a heart attack.

On the ground in Kosovo, nothing much has happened for the past
10 years. The hostility between the majority Albanian and minority
Serbian populations remains intense. American and European troops
are in Kosovo to keep the uneasy peace between them so far with no
end in sight for their deployment.

The Albanian threat has been in the air for some time that if the
international community cannot negotiate a final-status agreement
for Kosovo, it will declare independence unilaterally. The province
has a very young population (50 percent are under 18), which is
growing restive. Sky-high unemployment ensures that there is very
little productively to keep their minds off the seething anger over
the past. Chances are that later this month, the Kosovo leadership
will take the fateful step of declaring secession from Serbia. The
trigger will be presidential elections in Serbia on Jan. 20 and Feb. 3,
which may move in a more nationalistic direction.

This will present major headaches for the international community,
understandable and justifiable though it is. And it is equally hard to
see how independence will actually improve the lives of the Kosovars,
who occupy one of the most economically depressed parts of Europe,
beyond offering psychological satisfaction. Will it rebuild Kosovo’s
still bombed-out ruined towns? Will it produce economic engagement
and foreign investment? Will it create jobs or build schools? Will
it root out rampant corruption at official levels? All of these are
desperately needed before Kosovo can be said to have a future as a
functioning state.

The international community remains stumped. Serbia, which adamantly
opposes Kosovo independence, has few supporters, mainly Greece and
Russia, both of which belong to the Orthodox Church like Serbia.

Within the European Union, Greece has been the odd man out against
accepting Kosovo independence.

Russia, meanwhile, has been the holdout in the U.N. Security Council,
where it threatens to oppose recognition of Kosovo, which is favored
by the United States. Russia for its part has seized the opportunity
to muddy the waters by threatening to tie the issue to the ethnic
conflicts in the former Soviet Union, such as Transdnester in
Moldova, South Ossettia and Abkhazia in Georgia and Nagorno Karabakh
in Azerbaijan.

The Russian argument is that if Kosovo deserves self-determination,
so do these other minority areas. Funnily enough, Russia has failed
to mention any impact a Kosovo precedent would have on Chechnya,
which tried to secede from Russia, only to endure a brutal military
Russian campaign (designed by President Putin none other) to beat
any such idea out of the Chechens.

Is there a solution? The most logical is for the entire Balkan area
eventually to become part of NATO and the European Union, which
will offer hope of economic development and integration into its
structures. How we get to there from here, however, is a difficult
road to envision.