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The Balkans are simmering

My ten days in the Balkans June 18-28 visiting Sarajevo, Skopje, Tetovo, and Pristina constituted my first trip there in more than five years. I’ll try to summarize my impressions/findings here. I won’t reveal sources and methods, but it is no secret that I have talked with prominent politicians in and out of power, government officials, diplomats, thinktankers, civil society people, and university professors and students. My focus is on the conflicts: are they over? getting worse? staying the same? metamorphizing?

Sarajevo is mostly looking good…

In Sarajevo I found the wars of the 1990s fading both in memory and in physical representation. The city shows few scars or even memorials from the siege of 1992-95. The young mayor is a woman better known for her work in academia than politics when the city council selected her. She and her family lived on the confrontation line during the war. The city is almost entirely restored, the confrontation line erased, and the metropolitan area significantly expanded, especially to Ilidza in the west. That is where the much-lauded Sarajevo School of Science and Technology resides (photo by DAVOR BILANDŽIĆ, a local guide, as I neglected to take one):

Serbs I talked with are living comfortably in the city. Many more are commuting from Republika Srpska to the east, where Bosniaks are also said to be buying apartments because they are cheaper. Bosniaks have even returned to Stolac in southern Bosnia, from which Croats ethnically cleansed them in 1993.

…but

But political life in Bosnia still revolves around ethnic identity. A big gap is opening between the society, where individuals speaking a more or less common language get along without much friction, and politics, which organizes and mobilizes around whether you are Serb, Croat, Bosniak (Muslim, whether religious or secular), or Other. The worst interethnic violence I heard cited was that someone had slashed tires on some Serbian-plated vehicles. Reprehensible, but not a war crime. It isn’t clear who did it, but it caused the Orthodox prelates to boycott the Inter-religious Council. The Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish members continue to meet.

Some pessimists suggest that the ethnic groups are just waiting for the next opportunity to slaughter each other. I hope that is not true, but we can’t be sure. The Dayton constitution under which the country is governed enshrines ethnic identity as a major factor in politics. Generations of living under that system has empowered ethnic nationalists, with consequences that could be catastrophic. Some think young people are even more nationalist than their parents. I find that hard to believe of the many 20- and 30-somethings noisily frequenting the bars in central Sarajevo until late at night, but that indicator may not reflect the rest of the country.

Skopje is restored too, but with a difference

In what is now officially North Macedonia, which never saw serious fighting in the capital, Skopje shows many signs of two conflicts that have plagued the country for decades. In 2014, the government launched a much-needed reconstruction of the center of the city. An ethnic nationalist government adorned it with grotesquely large statues of Greek heroes and a triumphal arch.

These monuments underlined the false claim that modern Macedonia, whose majority population is Slav rather than Greek, has roots in ancient history. That not only annoyed Greece but increased the sharp contrast between the mainly Macedonian part of the city and the more traditional other side of the river:

The construction of an Orthodox Church on the grounds of Skopje’s large, mainly Ottoman-era fortress remains stalled due to Albanian claims that the work is destroying an ancient Illyrian site. A colleague who has spent her career working on Macedonian/Albanian relations suggested to me that the “social distance” between citizens of different ethnicities is growing, due in part to separate schools, mutually incomprehensible languages, and little concern with inter-ethnic comity. But the politicians cooperate in coalitions that always include both Macedonians and Albanians. So the situation is the inverse of that in Sarajevo: the political class cooperates reasonably well, but ethnicity increasingly governs the society.

Pristina celebrates its own modern heroes

Pristina, which also suffered no widespread destruction, sports monuments to Kosovo’s conflict with Serbia. The monumental statues of Kosovo heroes, both nonviolent leader Ibrahim Rugova and Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, are prominent:

There are also now giant portraits of Kosovo’s former President Thaci and its former Parliament Speaker Veseli, both on trial in The Hague for war crimes. Statues of Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright, who supported Kosovo in the 1990s, occupy prominent spots, and Bill Clinton Boulevard interests with (Senator) Bob Doll (sic) Street. The commercial bustle distracts attention from all these monuments and portraits, but they are not hard to find.

Nevertheless, Serbs now circulate safely and freely in Pristina, despite the still high interethnic tension in the northern four municipalities, which are majority Serb and contiguous with Serbia. Few young Albanians learn Serbian. Even fewer Serbs learn Albanian. Physical separation is the rule rather than the exception. Most Serbs live in Serb-majority municipalities. There is little political cooperation at any level.

Ambitions are similar…

In all three countries, I found similar government goals. Economic development is the top priority. Politicians in the capitals all agree that their citizens want jobs created and corruption reduced.

Kosovo’s prime minister is generally regarded as having clean hands. The country’s rule of law scores have been improving. But more than one person suggested that the administration lacks expertise and competence, both at the national and the municipal levels. The prime minister seems to his opponents to value loyalty more than capability.

The new prime minister in Macedonia is proud that the mayors from his political party who gained election two years ago have not garnered criticism for corruption. The party he inherited in 2017 was both broke and corrupt. He has rebuilt it and would be unlikely to welcome back his predecessor, who has fled to Hungary. The new government will include Albanians who have mostly been in opposition, displacing an Albanian party that had been in power for all but two of the past 12 years. That party had garnered a lot of criticism for arrogance and patronage.

…but Bosnia is different

In Bosnia, the situation is more complicated, as usual. The US has sanctioned the President of Republika Srpska (RS), the Serb 49% of the country, for corruption, along with members of his family. The economy in much of the RS–which depends heavily on Russian financing–is moribund. Its eastern wing is depopulated. Corruption also plagues the main Croat nationalist political party, but evidence has proven hard to find. Its leader is careful not to leave his name on paper.

For reasons I find hard to fathom, the US and the international community High Representative preferred when they got a chance to torpedo the head of the main Bosniak party, not the Croat or Serb. The only explanation I heard was that its leader allegedly opposed meaningful state-building. A puzzling first choice for international ire, he is now in opposition but has maintained his command of a main Bosniak political party. The other two ethnic leaders are still on the target list.

Geopolitics heighten tensions

In all three countries, the US and EU are in competition with Russia and China. The Russian objective is to de-stabilize and thereby cause Washington grief. It does this using politicians in Belgrade, including the President, as proxies. Serbia seeks dominance of the Serb populations in neighboring countries. This “Serbian world” objective is a carbon copy of Putin’s “Russian world” that justified the invasion of Ukraine. The Chinese are looking to use the Balkans, especially Serbia, as a trade route into the EU, which is still the region’s (and Serbia’s) main trading partner.

The US declares that it wants to see all the countries of the Balkans in the Western camp. But Washington has turned a blind eye to Serbia’s definitive turn in the last couple of years towards the East. Belgrade happily takes weapons from Russia and investment from China. The EU claims to want all the states of the Western Balkans to become members, but that prospect is far off. In the meanwhile, Brussels fails to use sanctions and even verbal condemnation against those standing in the way of EU accession.

Macedonia in the middle

Moscow will be pleased with the new Macedonian government. It includes a deputy prime minister who is a vigorous Russophile, as well as two others close to Moscow. A Hungarian bank said to have Russian financing granted a 1 billion euro loan to the new government immediately after it was sworn in. The newly installed President has refused to use the country’s official name, North Macedonia. The 2018 agreement with Greece to use that name was a major EU achievement.

The new prime minister in Skopje is nevertheless at pains to emphasize his Western orientation, his ambition for EU membership, and North Macedonia’s fidelity to NATO membership. His Albanian coalition partners will insist on those points. A deputy prime minister can either be someone important or someone the prime minister wants to keep an eye on.

Macedonia’s biggest current international issue is with EU member state Bulgaria. Sofia is insisting that Skopje recognize in its constitution the fewer than 1000 citizens who identify as Bulgarians. The new prime minister campaigned against that. But he may be willing to do it in the final stage of EU accession, when the Bulgarians can’t afterwards raise additional issues. In the meanwhile, some optimists hope the Bulgarians will be willing to absent themselves from decisions on Macedonia’s accession process. That is what Hungarian Prime Minister Orban did on EU aid to Ukraine.

Bosnia is split, as always

The Russians will also be pleased with the current situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Serbs and Croats there combine often to do things Moscow enjoys, including the defanging of the judicial system. The Europeans have been reluctant to use their considerable leverage in Bosnia, thinking that the accession process will fix everything. Brussels has not sanctioned the Serb leader, despite Washington pressure. Moscow seems ready to continue giving him money, with little prospect of ever getting it back.

The Bosniak and other participants in the current government of the 51% of the country they control in condominium with the Croats owe their position to the Americans. But they are a weak reed to lean on. While the Federation’s economy is doing better than that of the RS, its politics are still far from functioning at what we like to think of as a Western level.

Pristina is bandwagoning without benefits

Unlike Belgrade and the RS, the authorities in Pristina have no option to hedge their bets. Kosovo necessarily “bandwagons” (that’s the technical term) with NATO and the EU.

But the current prime minister is unhappy with Washington and Brussels for appeasing Belgrade. The results are felt keenly in the EU-sponsored and US-supported “dialogue” between Pristina and Belgrade. Kosovo wants Belgrade to withdraw a letter disowning an agreement on political normalization reached last year. Pristina asks that Serbia sign the agreement and transfer for trial the self-confessed organizer of a September 2023 terrorist plot. The prime minister has made these legitimate desires a condition for re-engaging in a dialogue that has produced precious little. That angers the EU and US, which see the dialogue as an end in itself, not just a means.

The result is anomalous. Kosovo is in the dialogue mainly to improve relations with the US and EU. But its conditions for participating are doing the opposite. This is not the first time Pristina has displeased its closest friends. Somehow it needs to find a way to make demands of Belgrade without alienating Brussels and Washington.

American leadership is decisive, but so too is European vigor

Most everyone I talked with recognized that America’s November election will be decisive for the Balkans. President Trump favored partition of Kosovo and will no doubt continue in that direction if re-elected. His willingness to surrender part of Ukraine to Russia will re-open the partition question in the Balkans.

Trump’s reliance on Serbophile Richard Grenell for advice on the Balkans and his son-in-law’s investment in Belgrade will guarantee support for Serbia’s ambitions. That would precipitate challenges to Serbia’s borders as well as Bosnia’s and perhaps Montenegro’s and Macedonia’s. Such challenges will spark violence, ethnic cleansing, and ultimately war. The simmering Balkans will boil over into instability, and even regional war if Trump gets another chance to pursue ethnic partition.

President Biden, while in my view too soft on Serbia, has maintained nominal support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all the Western Balkan states. In a second term, he should correct course. He should give up on political normalization between Kosovo and Serbia, which is a bridge too far, and stiffen policy towards Serbia. He should also try to get past the Dayton constitution in Bosnia and pressure Bulgaria to postpone its hope for constitutional change in Macedonia.

The EU is appointing Estonia’s anti-Russian* prime minister as the new High Representative for foreign affairs. That will give Washington a stronger reed to lean on than the incumbent. He and his chief negotiator came from two countries, Spain and Slovakia, that do not recognize Kosovo. They both leaned towards appeasing Serbia. Kaja Kallas will be far more vigorous in countering Moscow’s influence. Biden will get along well with her. Trump won’t.

*A careful reader writes:

One small quibble – Kallas is not “anti-Russian,” she is anti-Kremlin or anti-Putin, or anti-Russian imperialism.

I accept that amendment.