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:
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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