What's going on in Kosovo?
By James D. Zirin
Remember Kosovo? That was our last military engagement before September 11,
2001. In March 1999, we bombed Kosovo to blazes under the auspices of NATO,
ostensibly to protect the 90 percent majority Kosovar Albanians against the
"ethnic cleansing" savagery of Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbs.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed dismay that the NATO allies
had failed to involve the Security Council in its decision to use force in
the Balkans. Sound familiar?
Later, without any clear exit strategy, our forces entered the province
under the auspices of NATO and the United Nations to drive out the
Yugoslavian army that was murdering Albanian Muslim civilians. Security
Council Resolution 1244, mandating an international administration of
Kosovo, visualized a final political settlement within three years and
recognized that Belgrade, which had displaced 700,000 Albanian Kosovars, had
lost its right to sovereignty over the province. Ironically, we wound up
still there almost six years later mostly protecting the Serbian minority
against the repression of the Albanians.
With America's eye on Iraq, it is easily forgotten that Kosovo has since
1999 been a U.N. protectorate run by the Security Council at an annual cost
of $350 million. We now have a reduced force of some 2,000 troops
constituting 15 percent of the U.N.-NATO peacekeepers, pending resolution of
the province's final status.
At such low force levels, there is little political impetus to do
anything. Unfortunately, according to a recently released report of the
International Crisis Group, "time is running out in Kosovo," and there is
the distinct possibility of a return to violence and instability if a
settlement is not achieved. Kosovo Albanians are anxious over their
unresolved status. Kosovo's Serbs distrust the Albanian track record of
dealing with minorities and may invite Serbia's armed forces to help them if
agreement cannot be reached shortly. Deadly rioting broke out in March 2004
over independence-related issues. The looming specter is of renewed armed
conflict and regional instability.
Everyone agrees there are four basic elements to a settlement:
(1) Protection of minority rights.
(2) A guarantee Kosovo will not be partitioned.
(3) A solution that does not include making Kosovo part of a greater
Albania.
(4) And independence from Belgrade's rule.
The vexing problem is that it has been nearly six years since we bombed
Kosovo's capital Pristina, and there is not even a timetable or process in
place for resolving Kosovo's status. As Mr. Annan's Special Representative
observed last August when he arrived in Pristina, "I think there's a limit
to how long you can keep a place in limbo."
The way forward is easily limned but elusively achieved as it calls upon
bitter ethnic enemies to live together peacefully. The six-member "contact
group" - the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia -
which really controls our involvement in Kosovo, has the muscle to declare a
settlement framework for settlement and an independence timetable.
The contact group said last September that, "Kosovo would not return to
the situation prevailing there before March 1999." The Crisis Group report
suggests the United Nations should appoint a special envoy to consult all
interested parties on the form of a settlement and the process for putting
it into effect. Not a bad idea. Then, the usual stuff: a constitution, a
rule of law, providing among other things protection of minority rights and
enforced by constitutional tribunals headed by international judges and
meeting international standards, and an international monitoring commission
to observe and report if new Kosovo back downs on its internationally
crafted obligations. All it requires is international political will.
But nothing seems to be happening. Even if progress were made, the
lurking question is whether any settlement dictated by the international
community would work on the ground.
The scholar Niall Ferguson has shrewdly observed there are historically
"seven characteristic phases of American engagement: impressive initial
military success; a flawed assessment of indigenous sentiment (as in the
vice president's admitted miscalculation in Iraq, "We will be embraced as
liberators"); a strategy of limited war and gradual escalation of forces;
domestic disillusionment in a protracted and nasty conflict; premature
democratization; ascendancy of domestic economic considerations; and
ultimate withdrawal."
In other words, we seem to engage, get bogged down, abandon our premises
for going in the first place, declare victory and go home. This may
ultimately prove to be the case in Kosovo.
It has been nearly six years and the latest news out of Kosovo is that
the United Nations is dithering over where to find 3,000 corpses missing
since the initial conflict.
If we can't move toward resolving the small problems of the world, what
hope do we have for solving the big ones?
James D. Zirin is a lawyer in New York and a member of the Council on
Foreign Relations.
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20050129-095135-7449r.htm
Serbian News Network - SNN
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