Failure has its consequences

Posted in Uncategorized - April 9, 2013 - 21 Comments

With Belgrade taking on the responsibility of blocking a positive outcome to the dialogue with Pristina, Kosovo Prime Minister Thaci is now enjoying the best of all possible worlds:  he doesn’t have to implement an agreement that surely included some things he did not like, and blame for failure is falling on Serbia.  He is even signaling willingness to return to Brussels for new talks, ensuring that he cannot be blamed for a breakdown of the dialogue.  Not a bad show of statecraft for a newcomer.

That said, he still faces some difficult issues.  Serbia may yet come to its senses and accept what is on offer, or some modified version.  A definitive written text has not yet surfaced to my knowledge, making it easier to jiggle.  We are not quite at the very last moment, as Catherine Ashton does not have to publish her report on progress in the dialogue, which is what determines whether Serbia gets a date to begin EU accession negotiations, until April 16.  She does not present it to foreign ministers until April 22.  Serbia could still decide to cave, claiming to have gotten satisfactory adjustments.

If that does not happen, Pristina still faces the reality of its northwestern 11%, which will remain in Serbia’s less than complete control.  I hope everyone in Pristina will remain calm, cool and collected, realizing that time and financial shortages will erode Serb resistance in the north and enable gradual reintegration. Any violence or disorder could deprive Kosovo of the advantages its statecraft has brought it.

There are two problems with that approach.  The smuggling and other criminal activities with roots in the north (but tentacles south of the Ibar river) really should be stopped, if only to regain lost revenue and reduce the staying power of the northern resistance to integration with the rest of Kosovo.  The northern Serbs will portray any crackdown as an ethnic attack.  To prevent this, Pristina really needs to begin with a crackdown south of the Ibar, where the northern traffickers sell many of their wares, leaving the northerners to the EU rule of law mission and Serbia’s own need to demonstrate to the EU that it can control its own border.

The other problem lies in domestic Kosovo politics.  While Thaci has wisely broadened his base of support by inviting one of the opposition political parties to participate in the dialogue process, failure of the talks on reintegrating northern Kosovo will redound to the benefit of those Kosovars who see the future of their state not in “good neighborly relations” with Serbia but in becoming a province of Albania.  This unlikely and anti-constitutional proposition (union with a neighboring state or part of one is prohibited in the Kosovo constitution) has some support, especially among younger voters.

The EU can counter the Albanian nationalist reaction by moving expeditiously on the visa waiver for Kosovo and opening negotiations on a Stability and Association Agreement, which were the carrots on offer in the dialogue process.  It is clear enough that Pristina has not caused its failure.  While Kosovo should have to meet the technical requirements, the political door to these goodies should now swing wide open.

What about Belgrade?  It already has the visa waiver and a Stabilization and Association Agreement.  It is also a candidate for EU accession.   All it lacks is that date to begin negotiations, which brings with it a bundle of money.  It has been clearly understood from the first that a successful conclusion of the dialogue on northern Kosovo was a precondition for getting the date.  In fact, the precondition was broader:  normalization of relations, which might not include diplomatic recognition but should certainly include an end to Serbia’s campaign against recognition and UN General Assembly membership for Kosovo.  Failure has its consequences.

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21 thoughts on “Failure has its consequences”

  1. why should someone that is a citizen of serbia be forced to become a citizen of kosovo,which has as you stated intentions of merging with albania?

    1. Peter,

      There are no citizens of Serbia being forced to become citizens of Kosovo. I don’t know who are such citizens.

        1. Citizens of Serbia???!!! I don’t know a single state in the world recognizing a state called Serbia up to 2006. So what about people from Kosovo born on 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s?? They were born as citizens of SFRY (Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) an not Serbia. Who is Serbia??

          Just for your information I am born as citizen of SFRY. On 1992 some people created illegal entity called FRY (Federal republic of Yugoslavia), changing in illegal way constitutional position of Kosovo although they couldn’t without CONSENT of Kosovo. They did it FORCIBLY end hence illegally.

          Nevertheless, you want to say that people in Kosovo like Serbian citizenship and being force to change that??

  2. Thaci a newcomer to negotiations? He led the delegation to Rambouillet and was on the team in Vienna. The Rambouillet outcome especially was highly unpopular at home and if things had gone differently it probably would have ended his political career right at the beginning – people wanted independence immediately, not a promise of a vote in three years. (Which it turns out they never did get.)

    Everyone seems to be making soft, coaxing noises to the Serbs right now, while the more rambunctious Serbs are enjoying their defiance of the whole world (-Russia) and the assumption that their neighbor’s cow died. Too. (I.e., that Kosovo will also be blocked on its path toward the EU.) The government is asking that negotiations be continued, and with good reason. Even if the pre-accession assistance from the EU through 2014 won’t be affected by the start of negotiations, they don’t want to be overlooked for the next round of funding, especially if the EU will be looking for ways to keep down expenses. The thought may help to tamp down talk about blackmail and humiliation and quicksand, anyway.

    In an interview yesterday Dacic sounded remarkably reasonable – Belgrade doesn’t want a separate Serb government within Kosovo, just rights for the Serbs living there. The problem is not what they want or not, it’s what the provisions potentially allow for. Considering the tenacity with which Belgrade is rolling back Vojdodina’s rights, claiming to be afraid of separatist tendencies, you might conclude that they see autonomy as automatically encouraging a drive to independence. There are precedents suggesting caution here. A journalist covering the war in Bosnia (Witness to Genocide – written prior to Srebrenica) claimed you knew what the Serbs there would be doing next by what they (falsely) accused the Bosnians of already doing. Based on their history, then, it’s probably a good idea to be cautious now and not to push the Albanians into making seemingly innocuous concessions.

  3. Another farce directed by US and EU. Serbia blamed for the failure (again).

    1. Of course that Serbia is to be blamed. That Serbia, which is opposing autonomy of Vojvodina, asked more for Serbs in Kosovo!!! Given the fact that Vojvodina had the same level of autonomy as Kosovo and other entities of former Yugoslavia (which become later independent states) this is very strange.

        1. Yes, Vojvodina is 70% Serbian but they want more autonomy. I read they are announcing a kind of declaration. Why Serbia is opposing Vojvodina’s autonomy although this entity had long history of autonomy almost 100% in the level today’s independent states such as Croatia or Slovenia have??

        2. The Vojvodina is 70% Serbian because of a long-standing government policy to settle groups of Serbs – entire villages in some cases – in the region in order to break up areas historically Hungarian. (Driving out large numbers of Hungarians and Germans at the end of WWII helped the statistics as well.) During the wars of the 90s, refugees were settled in Vojvodina (and Kosovo) rather than Serbia itself to help with the demographics, explaining why Ratko Mladic picked Vojvodina to hide out in – he was found in a nationalist Bosnian-Serb enclave.

          All this helps to explain why the Serbs in the north are insisting on being able to control housing permits – they’re already complaining about Albanians who were not the original owners of properties trying to rebuild on areas belonging to a former Albanian owner, which the Serbs claim is a Prishtina policy to jigger the ethnic makeup of the region. They saw no problem in the Serbian government buying up Albanian property in order to provide it to Serbians who had never lived in Kosovo, of course. In fact, one of the cases Insider reported on was a project to build a retirement complex in Kosovo to house Serbs from Serbia – a quick way to increase the numbers and provide ammunition for arguments such as yours based on population ratios. (The money was disbursed but the project never built.)

          After Serbia was granted the area by the Great Powers in 1913, the Albanians saw Kosovo “colonized” as Serbia sought to impose its rule, but with Serbia’s declining population there’s probably less to fear from it today, even in the northern municipalities.

      2. Then why the EU is offering Serbs even less rights than predicted by the Ahtisaari plan?! So hypocritical. Having in mind that Kosovo authorities are already trying to abolish the minority rights from the Ahtisaari plan. Obviously they only respect the ‘status’ part of the plan. Hope internationals won’t allow that.

        1. This is absolutely not true. There are things going beyond Ahtisaari such as some powers of association as well as extending of reserved seats at Kosovo Assembly.

      3. You are barking at the wrong door mate!

        BTW, Bojan Pajtic is Serb 100%.

      4. Rada Trajkovic: “Institution in Pristina are extremely discriminatory (towards Serbs)”. That much how Serbs south of Ibar are treated.

        1. She is discriminated but positively. She became MP at Kosovo Assembly with just few votes while Albanians couldn’t with 5,000 or more votes. She speaks freely her mother tongue Serbian at Kosovo Assembly while none of 100,000 of Albanians or 400,000 of Hungarians can speak in their mother tongue at Serbian Assembly. She says that she is “discriminated” since she can’t enter Kosovo Assembly with Belgrade plates in cars but somehow she “forgot” whether someone from Kosovo can do the same in Belgrade i.e with Kosovo plates. Rada is “discriminated” because she goes freely as lecturer at University of north Mitrovica while this is not a privilege for 100,000 Albanians in Serbia. Rada is “discriminated” because she works at medical facility in Gracanica in which Serbian flag is waving (not that of Kosovo) and there is a table in which one may read “Republic of Serbia, autonomous province of Kosovo and Metohia” and nobody from Kosovo goes to remove such illegal activity. There are too many other things that she is “discriminated”.

        2. It seems she spends more time complaining about how Belgrade is focusing solely on the problems of the Serbs in the north in the talks while ignoring those in the south. Perhaps you could specify exactly what discrimination she is referring to? She says Ahtisaari provides for a Serbian-language TV channel but that what they have is controlled by the government, and that with her Serbian license plates she can’t part close to the Assembly building when she drives in for sessions.

          1. What she says “You have to understand that institutions in Pristina are extremely discriminatory”. You should listen again.

  4. @Peter,

    The link you provided, in regard to Serbia being successor state from so called FRY, doesn’t say anything. It just says that “Serbia declared that it was the successor state to the union of Serbia and Montenegro.” So what if Serbia declared something?? Who cares what Serbia declares??

    Your link perfectly shows that you were wrong. The US recognized so called FRY just on November 2000.

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