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I’ll tell you about the genesis and topicality of the chronic crisis in Kosovo

12 months ago babelfish

I'll tell you about the genesis and topicality of the chronic crisis in Kosovo

"The way I lived the experience in the field for three years, the (very wrong) idea of ​​'exporting and imposing democracy' has nothing to do with international responsibilities in the chronic crisis of Kosovo". The speech by Marco Mayer, professor at the Lumsa Intelligence and National Security Course and at the Luiss Master in Cybersecurity

General Carlo Jean's article on the Kosovo crisis has the merit of getting to the core of the problem.

Almost 25 years later, Europe and the United States are paying for an initial error of an overly ideological approach which – as Carlo Jean rightly observes – was made in Kosovo and not in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The Dayton agreements for Bosnia in 1995 – coordinated with great energy and diplomatic acumen by Richard Hoolbrook – had, however, duly taken into account the historical-identity fractures that characterize the civil wars and internal conflicts of the Balkans and beyond.

THE EURO-ATLANTIC ILLUSION IN KOSOVO

In Kosovo, the inspiring principle of the Euro-Atlantic policy (although never declared so explicitly) was the illusion of creating from scratch a new and abstract multi-ethnic entity capable of suddenly erasing the histories and cultural identities of communities that are profoundly different in terms of language, religion, tradition and customs. In Kosovo the coexistence (with rare occasions of coexistence) of the large Albanian majority with the Serbian Orthodox minority and with the other minor groups (Bosnians, Montenegrins, Roma, Gorani, Ashkaly, Egyptians, etc.) has almost always been difficult and tormented .

Regarding the Serb population in Kosovo, it is also useful to recall a recent element. The number of Serbs living in Kosovo in the summer of 1999 fell sharply by half. The different factions of the Albanian UCK guerrillas – as soon as the NATO bombings stopped – with threats and violence drove Serbian families from their homes wherever they could.

THE CRIMES AGAINST THE ALBANIAN POPULATION, AND THE REACTION TOWARDS THE SERBS

I worked for the United Nations in Kosovo from October 1999 to December 2022. When I arrived for the first time (November '99) in Pec/Peja — headquarters of the Italian Command responsible for KFOR/NATO for the Kosovo area western -, the Serbian presence was reduced to a flicker.

In June 1999, the Italian contingent of the Garibaldi – led by General Mauro Del Vecchio – had managed to secure only a small part of the Serbian-Kosovar community: the Patriarchate of Pec, the Monastery of Decani, the village of Gorazdevac inhabited era of more than a thousand Serbian-Kosovar citizens (today unfortunately reduced to 450) and other very small realities. In the cities of Pec/Peja and Djakovica/Giakova practically nobody was left, except for four or five Serbian ladies overprotected by the Italian military.

First apartheid and then the crimes against the Albanian population in Kosovo committed by the regular forces and by Milosevic's ferocious paramilitary gangs were of unheard-of gravity, as also verified by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

However, no one expected a generalized violent reaction towards all Serbs, even against those who had a friendly and/or good neighborly relationship with fellow Albanians.

The exodus was really very substantial, if one considers that in the 1991 census there were 15,000 Serbs and Montenegrins in Pec/Peja out of the approximately 60,000 inhabitants of the city. As for the overall figures, it is estimated that at least 200,000 people of non-Albanian culture and language have left Kosovo.

These data confirm the political-ideological errors mentioned by General Jean. The most emblematic fact is the military intelligence's failure to predict the speed and pervasiveness of the ethnic "counter-cleansing" process implemented by the Kosovar-Albanian guerrillas.

WESTERN RESPONSIBILITIES IN KOSOVO

Western responsibilities in Kosovo are not linked – here I disagree with General Jean – to the fact that the United States and Europe wanted to "impose democracy". The way I lived the field experience for three years, the (very wrong) idea of ​​"exporting and imposing democracy" has nothing to do with international responsibilities in the chronic crisis of Kosovo. The export of democracy with weapons is also a later theory, of neocon origin, of which Paul Wolfowitz was the most influential supporter with the arrival of Bush junior in the White House.

What hasn't worked is the inability to find the right institutional balance between the majority and minorities, a problem that afflicts – albeit in different forms – both democracies and autocratic regimes (just think of the tormented history of Chechnya certainly not resolved with the protagonism of Kadyrov wanted by Putin).

THE DIFFICULTIES OF FINDING SOLUTIONS

To better explain the great difficulties of finding solutions, I will tell my direct experience in the four Serbian municipalities where the clashes have taken place in recent days.

In the summer of 2002, in agreement with the UN regional manager David Mitchels, I started negotiations and reached a good compromise which allowed the Serbian community of Mitrovica to participate in the municipal elections; our interlocutor was Dr. Marko Jaksic, intransigent and well-known leader of the Kosovar Serbs. The Serbian request – unthinkable at the time – was to divide the city in two (south of the river for the Albanians, north for the Kosovar Serbs). After a series of meetings, the hypothesis of mediation was to maintain a unitary municipal council for the entire city and set up two district councils. Under these conditions the Serbs would participate in the municipal elections.

We hadn't invented anything new, we had simply been inspired by the De Gasperi/Gruber agreement for Trentino-Alto Adige mentioned by General Jean in his article.

However Michel Steiner, at the time head of the UN Mission in Kosovo, flatly rejected our proposal because in his opinion it did not respect the principles of multi-ethnicity (sic), demonstrating an unforgivable short-sightedness.

What if Steiner's ideological vision were applied to Catalonia in Spain, Scotland in the United Kingdom, Quebec in Canada, etc.? Aren't we talking about democracies, and among the most advanced?

More than twenty years have passed and it is sad to think that we are still always at that point; actually, worse.

The situation got even worse. Continuing at this pace, the future of Kosovo will be mono-ethnic, it will be Albanian only; a paradoxical outcome, the exact opposite of the 1999 promises.

But it's never too late. The hope is that the special envoys for the Balkans of the United States and the European Union, who are currently holding operational summits, will adopt a very firm attitude towards Pristina.

If the municipal elections in the four northern municipalities are not reconvened as soon as possible, and if the Serbian minority of Kosovo does not have the instruments and institutions capable of protecting its cultural identity, the path of rapprochement of Kosovo towards the EU and the NATO will have to be suspended as well as the visa liberalization scheduled for January 1, 2024.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/crisi-kosovo/ on Tue, 06 Jun 2023 08:55:04 +0000.