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Back to the future with the past in mind

This post will be “inside baseball,” so those who don’t care about the Balkans or are tired of talking about the region’s problems are hereby forewarned.

In addition to the current brouhaha over where the mayors of four northern Kosovo municipalities should sit, Washington and Brussels are pressing Pristina hard to start negotiation with Belgrade on proposed Association of Serb-majority Municipalities (ASMM). The Americans and Europeans point to the 2013 Brussels agreement that introduced this innovation. They insist it is a legal obligation and want Pristina to prioritize it.

No unilateral commitment

Memories are short in the US and EU. They should go back and read the 2013 agreement. It involved a quid pro quo, not a unilateral commitment. It obliges Kosovo to create an ASMM, in exchange for the extension of Kosovo’s constitutional order, in particular its judicial system and police, to northern Kosovo, where three Serb-majority municipalites lie.

The fourth and most substantial one, Mitrovica, is Serb-majority now, but only because the Serbs have prevented Albanians and others from returning to their homes north of the Ibar River since 1999. Any serious extension of the Kosovo constitutional order to the north would allow all the displaced people to return to their homes.

The Kosovo parliament approved the 2013 agreement and Serbia’s did not. That undermines the argument that it is morally binding on Pristina. I’m no lawyer, so let’s assume it is legally, even if not morally, binding. Where do we stand on extension of the Kosovo constitutional order to the north?

The quid pro quo isn’t working

Nowhere is the right answer. Serbia has maintained its control of the four northern municipalities. It uses a combination of clandestine security forces and cooperating criminal organizations. It refused to accept Kosovo’s decision to insist on Kosovo license plates in the north. That was after the expiration of an agreement that temporarily allowed Serbian license plates. Belgrade instructed the Serb police and judges to leave Kosovo’s institutions.

The Serbs of the north boycotted the recent municipal elections on orders from President Vucic, which his minions enforced with intimidation. The few citizens who turned out elected the non-Serb mayors. Rent-a-mob rioters have prevented three of them from entering the offices Kosovo Prime Minister Kurti insists they should occupy.

This reminds me of Kosovo during the period of Serbian rule in the 1990s. Then Albanians boycotted elections, but they also accepted the consequences, which were severe. Serbia appointed Serb mayors for Albanian-majority communities and ejected Albanians from their jobs in the supposedly autonomous province. The Albanians ran their own unofficial school and health systems for almost 10 years.

The chicken and egg

There is as usual a chicken and egg problem. You can ask who started the downward spiral, but you’ll never get an agreed answer. All that really counts is that things are bad and getting worse.

Serbia mobilized its army and deployed it closer to the boundary/border, a military threat that violates the February agreement on normalization of relations.

Serbian police have detained three Kosovo policemen, claiming they were on Serbian territory but providing no evidence. Belgrade has refused thus far to release them, despite a KFOR request. Even if they did wander into Serbia, which is possible but unlikely, why would Belgrade not repatriate them as speedily as possible? Or were they snatched from Kosovo territory, like the American Albanian Bytyqi brothers Serbian police murdered after the 1999 war?

One sided diplomacy won’t work

The EU and US are making things worse. The American ambassador in Belgrade declared Kurti not a partner, while praising President Vucic just a few days after his agents had attacked NATO troops in the north. Even the State Department thought this strange. Deputy Assistant Secretary Gabe Escobar corrected the bizarre statement. NATO maintained its commitment to a military exercise with Serbia while canceling one with Kosovo.

The Europeans are fond of citing the 16 member states that have arrangements like the ASMM for numerical minorities. But in each and every one of those cases the neighboring country recognizes the hosting state. If Serbia were to recognize Kosovo, the ASMM would surely be less threatening to Pristina.

The EU has been sending detailed unilateral demands telling Prime Minister Kurti he has to withdraw his police from a territory they are entitled to be present in. Even if you think he made a mistake to try to install the mayors in the municipal buildings, you might want to show some understanding for his view that the Kosovo state has an obligation to enforce the rule of law as provided for in the 2013 agreement you are citing, or appreciation for his willingness to hold new elections in the north provided the Serbs will participate.

Back to the future

The 2013 Pristina/Belgrade agreement has real virtues in 2023. But they are not limited to the ASMM. The US and EU need to remember all its provisions, not just the ones that suit Belgrade.