Day: April 24, 2013
Keep going in the right direction
Here is my full testimony this afternoon to the Subcommitee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The prepared oral version (I was limited to five minutes) is below:
Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to testify on the pathway to peace for Kosovo and Serbia, which has been a long and difficult one. With your permission, I’ll summarize and submit my full testimony for the record.
I’d like to make five points:
- This is a good agreement. If fully implemented, it would go a long way to establishing democratically validated institutions as well as clear legal and police authority on the whole territory of Kosovo while allowing ample self-governance for Serbs in northern Kosovo on many other issues.
- Implementation will be a challenge, one that requires Pristina to make integration attractive and Belgrade to end the financing that makes resistance in northern Kosovo possible. Belgrade and Pristina will need to cooperate to end the smuggling of tax-free goods that has enriched organized crime and spoilers, both Serb and Albanian.
- The agreement should end any discussion of exchange of territory between Kosovo and Serbia, which is a bad idea that risks destabilizing Bosnia, Macedonia and even Serbia proper. We should work to make northern Kosovo a model of win/win reintegration for the rest of the Balkans.
- Belgrade and Pristina have taken an important step towards normalizing relations, but they will need to do more, including eventual recognition and exchange of ambassadors. If that does not happen, neither will be able to get into the EU and both may try to arm themselves for a possible new confrontation. In accordance with this agreement, each will apply for EU membership as an independent and sovereign state.
- We owe props to the EU and in particular Catherine Ashton, not only for the mediation work she did but also for the vital incentives the EU provided. The US government shares supporting actor credit with leading Lady Ashton, which is as it should be.
Mr. Chairman, I am relieved that an agreement has been reached, but still concerned about the future. The Belgrade/Pristina dialogue is a classic case of elite pact-making without a broader peacebuilding process. The underlying drivers of conflict have not been addressed. Many Serbs and Kosovo Albanians still think badly of each other and rank themselves as victims. There has been little mutual acknowledgement of harm. Few Albanians and Serbs have renewed personal ties. It is becoming increasingly difficult to do so as many younger people lack a common language other than English. It is almost 14 years since the end of the NATO/Yugoslavia war. To be self-sustaining, this peace process is going to need to go deeper and involve many more citizens on both sides.
The road is long, Mr. Chairman, but we are near its end and we need to keep going in the right direction.
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Not ideal, but clearly a step forward
Lady Ashton’s patience has paid off. Belgrade and Priština have finally reached a compromise on integration of four Serb-dominated municipalities of northern Kosovo into the country’s regular institutions. Although the agreement is not ideal since it preserves ethnic-based political divisions, it is clearly a step forward, likely to resolve a number of currently burning issues.
What could prove a serious problem is implementation. Northern Kosovo Serbs have announced they will strongly resist any attempt to enforce the agreement on them. They can count on support from far-right extremists in Serbia who are already mobilizing. Even prime minister Ivica Dačić and his deputy Aleksandar Vučić are receiving hundreds of SMS messages with terrible death threats after their mobile phone numbers have been publicly revealed by members of Vučić’s former ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party. Moreover, a couple of days ago an extremist from the pro-Russian clerical fascist movement “Naši” approached and verbally attacked Dačić during the Belgrade marathon.
While militant nationalists in Serbia may not be as numerous as before, they still pose a considerable threat, in the first place to public safety. Now that Dačić and Vučić are also potentially at risk, they could use it as a well-grounded justification to finally crack down on the militants before it has become too late.
It is hard to say who among Serbian politicians will benefit most from the deal with Priština. Latest opinion polls indicate that more than 50 percent of the public support both the dialogue in general and this particular agreement, but they are at the same time feeling largely fed up with both Kosovo and the European perspective. People want to see a concrete improvement in their standard of living.
In terms of future relationships between Kosovo and Serbia, the dynamic between the two countries will be as important to watch as that within each of them alone. For full-fledged normalization the imperative must be to put an end to deep-rooted mutual distrust between ordinary Albanians and Serbs, not only in Kosovo but also in Serbia. That will require intensive cooperation and a great deal of good will on the part of both governments.
Even more important will be developments inside the European Union in relation to its own crisis, which seems far from over. It is only European integration that is somehow still keeping the Western Balkans relatively calm. The more the crisis deepens, the lesser will be the ability of Brussels to keep the region under control.
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The storm passes but clouds remain
Ganimete Asllani-Price, who is doing her doctorate at Queen’s University Belfast, writes:
On Sunday, Kosovo’s parliament convened to discuss and vote on the initialed agreement reached between Serbia and Kosovo on Friday. Getting parliament’s backing was hugely important for the government. Out of the 95 members of parliament (MP) who voted (there are 120 in total), 89 backed the agreement. This 74 percent approval gives Prime Minister Thaci a boost.
But the discussion in parliament was more nuanced. The majority of opinions expressed before the voting had the same message – members accept the agreement in principle, but worry about wording and implementation. The opposition parties (with one important exception discussed below) agreed on the need to negotiate with Serbia and reach an agreement, but they questioned some of the fifteen points and reserved the right to change their minds when implementation becomes an issue. We may well see more criticism during the next electoral campaign.
The Self-Determination Movement (Levizja Vetendosje) is not waiting. It continued its protest within and outside the parliament building against the negotiation process as a whole and the agreement in particular. They maintain that Thaci is selling Kosovo, that he is not the leader of Kosovo people but a coward and a traitor who serves the European Union and the United States.
For those who follow daily politics in Kosovo, the agreement has become part of the daily political abuse and personal exchanges that has characterized the negotiation process, not only in Kosovo but in Serbia as well. Thus discussion about next steps has not concentrated on the substance or implementation, but on personalities.
Out of the 5 votes that were cast against the agreement, there is one that Thaci and his government need to worry about. The co-founder of his political party and speaker of parliament, Jakup Krasniqi, voted against. Thaci and Krasniqi have been at odds for a while. If Krasniqi breaks with Thaci, it could endanger the majority coalition. Krasniqi’s main concerns are about possible future compromises that may have to be made in order to honor the current agreement. This was a carefully worded warning.
The immediate reaction of the Serbs in the north was decidedly negative, as expected. Serbia, which for the past 14 years has provided a lifeline to them, will have to play a major role in implementation there. Kosovo can do little in the north, as its unilateral attempt to seize border posts there two years ago demonstrated.
In Pristina, the storm is passing, but clouds remain. Any political damage will become apparent in the weeks, months, and possibly years to come, since the hardest part will unquestionably be the implementation of the fifteen points. Self-Determination continues to advocate a referendum on union with Albania, a proposition that Kosovo’s current constitution does not permit. The majority of Kosovo Albanians do not support it. But that could change. The Albanians displaced from northern Kosovo might rise in rebellion as Serbs in the north have. They are the ones who currently are the biggest losers in Kosovo. This agreement does not bring them any closer to their homes.
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