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Pleasant surprises but no firm conclusions

So I’ve returned to Pristina after an absence of eight years.  What have I found?  Let me say up front:  not much, as I’ve been here for two days.  But I’ll offer at least my initial impressions, based on a dozen or so conversations.  I’ll reserve the right to revise once I’ve heard a good deal more.

The variable weather–one moment pouring rain, the next moment pouring sunshine–has kept me wary.  Kosovo when I last visited had a government:  there were ministers, ministries, directors general and the rest.  But there was little of what I would call a state:  that is, a set of institutions that could be relied upon to maintain some reasonable level of continuity and objectivity regardless of who was elected.  More than one reader has assured me that I wouldn’t find the situation much improved.

I haven’t of course been able to test the services the state provides to ordinary citizens, other than to walk briefly in the main street and enjoy its conversion to a pedestrian mall. Mobbed with young people enjoying intervals between rainstorms, the atmosphere is certainly upbeat among those who can afford to enjoy a coffee in one of the many cafes that line Pristina’s main “Mother Teresa” drag.

I spent the day yesterday mainly in the foreign ministry.  The people I dealt with there–admittedly among the best–would measure up as intelligent and well-trained professionals in the State Department or elsewhere.  They have studied the issues we were discussing carefully and have prepared comprehensive dossiers that were informative, objective and up to date.  This was a great leap forward from eight years ago, when there was a kind of necessary conformity to government policy that shaped every conversation and prevented the preparation of honest assessments.

I also had the opportunity to meet with some of the political leadership in the state and government.  I first entered what is today the President’s office in 1998, when I called on the Serbian administrators of the then-province of Kosovo.  I had just come from the Council for Human Rights and Freedoms, only a hundred meters or so away, where I had seen careful and extensive documentation of the abuses committed by the Serbian security forces.  The authorities of the time denied there were any abuses and declined to join me in a visit to the Council.

I later visited Bernard Kouchner and Hans Haekkerup (UN mission chiefs) in 2000 and 2001 in that same room, as they struggled to try to administer post-war Kosovo, removed from Serbian administration by UN Security Council resolution 1244 after the NATO/Yugoslavia war.  Theirs was a difficult role, which they played with whatever skills and resources could be mustered in a thoroughly broken society only recently traumatized by war.

Today that same room is a lot brighter and cheerier, not only because of the redecorating.  The soft-spoken President Atifete Jahjaga joined the post-war Kosovo police in an effort to reverse the abuses of power that she had witnessed under the Serbian administration.  Determined she says to protect and serve, she was one of the few women to break with the practice of male dominance in the security forces.

Whatever your stand on the status of Kosovo, it is important to recognize that her elevation to president represents a real break with the past.  She is a non-politician whose candidacy it is said was favored by the American Ambassador.  Elected by a wide margin in parliament in the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision that invalidated on procedural grounds the narrow victory of a more traditional politician, she is trying hard to project an image of stability and inclusivity.

On the basis of a couple of other meetings with ministers, it is appears that the government gives unequivocal verbal priority to law and order, perhaps because it faces investigations and accusations that are embarrassing and potentially damning.  This situation is made doubly difficult by the requirement to cooperate with the very international officials who are at the same time investigating the government.  But everyone says they are ready to cooperate and see the investigations run their course.

The view from the government’s critics is harsher.  Some of them feel strongly that little is done about serious corruption allegations against high Kosovo government officials, whose claims to probity they view as less than truthful or sincere.  Yes, there are corruption investigations, but they are selective and not sweeping.  Too many allegations go uninvestigated.

I don’t envy the internationals who are still here trying to help Kosovo’s institutions build their capacity to act effectively.  At a certain point only locals with democratic legitimacy can really govern effectively, or deal decisively with organized crime.  The Kosovo authorities will err–the recent decision to raise salaries in defiance of the IMF will be counted as a blunder by many–but when it comes to learning there really is no substitute for making your own mistakes.  At least in the case of the IMF, those who made the decision will now need to fill the budget hole that they themselves created.

So I admit that I may regret tomorrow what I’ve written today, as I learn more about the realities of life and government today in Kosovo.  But if so I’ll try to admit that honestly.  For today, I am happy to have found some pleasant surprises, including the strong dissent of the government’s critics, which makes any firm judgment on the merits of its law and order stance premature.