Self-determined
I spent a couple of hours yesterday afternoon with the leading lights of Kosovo’s “Self-Determination” movement, Albin Kurti and Shpend Ahmeti. They appeared with Albanian flag lapel pins at a SAIS panel moderated by Mike Haltzel, with our colleague Ed Joseph (formerly OSCE deputy in Pristina) and me commenting. I apologize in advance for an inadequate writeup: I find it hard to take notes on an event in which I also participate.
I had to admit being out of my intellectual depth, as Albin launched with reference to a decade-old speech of Carl Bildt and an equally obscure reference to Robert Cooper’s (don’t worry if you don’t know who he is) work. I confess I lack such erudition. But his point was that these luminaries concern themselves not with building states but improving relations between them. Albin and Shpend view the international community as too focused on short-term stability. They would prefer to devote their energies to the economic and social development of Kosovo and its entire population, rather than its relations with Belgrade or its relationship to the Serb-occupied northern bit of the country. They fear creation of an autonomous Serb “entity” in Kosovo (like Republika Srpska in Bosnia) and want reciprocity with Serbia, not Serbian interference in how Kosovo governs itself. There is a risk that the agreement will separate rather than integrate.
That would all be dandy, but circumstances have not allowed those who do govern the luxury of ignoring Serbia, which is Kosovo’s biggest neighbor, greatest security threat, largest potential market and occupier of 3.5 of its northern municipalities. There really is reason to be concerned about stability. So the Kosovo government negotiated an agreement with Belgrade that Albin and Shpend dislike, claiming it obligates only Pristina, not Belgrade, and fails to get Kosovo either recognition or UN membership. The EU is not a neutral third party, they claim, because it also plays an executive role in Kosovo through its rule of law mission (EULEX).
Belgrade will be surprised to discover that the EU favors Serbia and that the agreement only obligates Pristina, as Serbia has been required to give up its control of the north in exchange for a still uncertain date to begin negotiations for EU membership. It is true that the agreement stops short of recognition and gives Pristina nothing on UN membership, but it states clearly that Kosovo and Serbia will apply and enter the EU separately and on their own merits, which only independent and sovereign states can do. It also says that Kosovo’s constitution and laws will be applied on its whole territory, including the now Serb-controlled north. You don’t get much closer to sovereignty than that without having it. When President Nikolic says he is not the president in Pristina, you are almost there, as Mike pointed out.
I am reminded of Zeno’s paradox, which in my undergraduate days was stated this way: if a couple halves the distance between them every second, they should never meet. But for all practical purposes, they do.
Albin and Shpend were also concerned about corruption, which Albin insisted is a “system,” not a “culture.” I agree with this and think it is the proper role of of opposition politicians to criticize and expect independent judicial investigations when there is evidence of wrongdoing. Kosovo’s reputation is critical to its efforts to get international recognition and to satisfy the aspirations of its people. But you can’t just gripe–you’ve got to deliver evidence to back up allegations and be prepared to meet your own standards when you come to power.
Ed, Mike and I all challenged our visitors on the subject of their advocacy of union with Albania, which is a proposition ruled out by the Kosovo constitution. They seemed surprised by our vehemence on this subject, but I don’t regret for a moment telling them (and the others listening) that Kosovo would lose its support in Washington if it headed down this road. Mike was at pains to point out that Albania would be unlikely to welcome the proposition either, as it would mean losing its membership in NATO as well as its place in the queue for the EU. Kosovo itself would also lose its EU chances and risk de-stabilizing both Macedonia and Bosnia, with catastrophic risks for the Balkans as a whole.
I had argued with several generations of American ambassadors in favor of a US visa for Albin, whom they have regarded as an inciter of violence. I was glad to see him in Washington getting challenged with something approaching the intellectual vigor that he himself brings to politics. It was fun. But I hope he and Shpend return home with an appreciation for how problematic the idea of greater Albania is and how important it is to make a success of the Belgrade/Pristina agreement. Elections are next year. They could find themselves in positions of serious responsibility.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
10 thoughts on “Self-determined”
Comments are closed.
RSS - Posts
“Albin and Shpend were also concerned about corruption, which Albin insisted is a “system,” not a “culture.”
I have to disagree on this point. While the corruption in hand may be systemic – and it certainly is – it is essentially a result of culture. States and their institutions do not come out of thin air. They are made by and consist of people. Politicians are just the tip of the iceberg.
And to be clear, this does not pertain only to Kosovo but to all Balkan states, as well as to many others across the world.
This is where the Scandinavians could be helpful – platoons, or maybe brigades, of Lutheran pastors to be deployed throughout the Balkans to start holding two services every Sunday, with a mid-week reminder, to inculcate whatever it was that seems to be working itself out so well up north. A couple of hundred years should do it. Based on the movie Babette’s Feast, this won’t do much for the local cuisine, but I gather this is fairly simple as it is.
As it might seems that everything works well on the North, all of the Nordic counties are mono ethnic in nature. It is much easier to agree things and organize in countries like that than what was Yugoslavia, one of the most multiethnic countries ever existed in Europe.
For e.g. in Finland, Swedish speaking population is called “Swedish speaking Finns”, even many of those have Swedish names and surnames and they feel more Swedish. For e.g. Aland islands belong to Finland but nobody there knows to speak Finnish. They want to be part of Sweden.
Just imagine “Albanian speaking Serbs” and vice versa.
Speaking of Finns, they should be asked for teachers – theirs achieve outstanding results, at least in part by avoiding the tracking and competition characteristics of American schools.
Thaci BTW has made improving the quality of education in Kosovo a priority, which means once this worldwide slowdown ends the country should be in a position to take advantage of its demographic dividend. Luckily, Kurti doesn’t seem interested in the Ministry of Education – let him have foreign relations, where he really can’t do much harm beyond tormenting candidates for ambassadorships.
The VV people apparently never heard of the idea that the best is the enemy of the good. They seem perfectly content to ruin whatever it is that less single-minded people are creating in Prishtina, one law, one round of negotiations at a time, assuming that if only they are insistent enough themselves on preventing them from working that the result will be Switzerland in the Balkans. Somehow, it just doesn’t seem likely.
To be fair, the international community did spend a lot of time and money on running “trainings” (is that a word in English?) devoted to the most boring parts of government – setting up systems, counting things (small ruminants, for example) – where Kurti always thought it would be better if they concentrated on getting the economy going again, but 1) it was their money, and 2) many of them have been through this before and know how complicated it be to get an economy functioning, especially where the government doesn’t work. Kosovo wasn’t Germany or Japan, where there had been smoothly functioning systems in place for generations (and a disciplined population) until the buildings all came down. And wishing away your main problem, Serbia in this case, doesn’t usually work.
I was surprised to note in the events listing that Kurti would be speaking in Washington, since the fact of his receiving a visa didn’t make the headlines. It always seemed that he had been insulated from the real world for way too long and mistakenly believed that if he could simply tell people in the West his side of he argument he would find support. People get some strange ideas about what others think if they never get a chance to interact with them – in Albania, for example, his counterpart, Edi Rama, thought that Americans would be impressed by his refusing to call off massive demonstrations against Sali Berisha (for simply being bad) because “Americans respect firmness.” It seems that after the last big demonstration, where people got killed, he received a thorough course in what others think during those frequent meetings he’s had with the Western diplomats in Tirana – he’s been a lot less agitational during this election season, at any rate. So I’m glad that Kurti had an opportunity to hear first hand in what I hope were unvarnished terms that official America is not just waiting for a chance to bring Greater/Natural Albania into existence. (Berisha seemed to pick up on that a long time ago.)
It will be interesting to see how Kurti presents the results of his trip once he returns home to the pressure cooker of Kosovo. It sounds like he may want to confine his comments to the weather – that there were no tornadoes in D.C. while he was there, for example.
It’s an interesting group, this Vetvensodje movement of Kosovo. I heard Albin few times, and he is definitely charismatic of the Alexis Tsipras and ΣΥΡΙΖΑ mold. Leftist, rather nonsensical and theoretical, completely useless in what politics is about: running a state and management. Running a state also implies having good relations with neighbors. Vetevensodje movement seeks to unite all Albanians under one roof, a policy that is 100% going to piss off, well all Albanian and Kosovo neighbors. But this doesn’t seem to compute with Albin. He is an ideologue of the belle époque of activism when you could be trotskist or enverist or fascist anti-communist on the margins of mainstream and sound cool for girls. But, thats not what world is about in 2013.
Godd title: “self-determined” as these guys do not fully understand what self-determination is (as a principle of international law). I have had debates with these guys, (Shpend Ahmeti included) and asking them about self-determination they were unable to show a single example worldwide that one people got independent or joined another country by simply calling to that principle. Shpend, unable to give proper answer (during the debate in facebook) blocked me.
Interestingly, these guys either do not understand constraints in real world, in regard to self-determination, or know them and manipulate the mass.
Kurti’s visit got a big write-up in most the Albanian-languare newpapers (the same one, copied), but so far just a short notice in Gazeta Express (which pointed out that he was, unusually, wearing a tie). VOA even had a video clip (http://www.zeriamerikes.com/content/albin-kurti-sais-kosova-serbia-dialogue-/1675782.html) which shows both the tie and the Albanian (as opposed to Kosovar) label pin. The accompanying text is an abbreviated version of the shared article.
The common headline: “Kosovo is being sacrificed to allow Serbia to join the EU,” Kurti’s take on this being “it’s not at all fair.” He would prefer each country to be “normalized” individually and relations between them be dealt with afterwards. (He apparently did not go into detail about how he thinks the North of Kosovo should be normalized.) The noted American experts on the Balkans on the panel, it is pointed out, did not agree with him that the Brussels Agreement is either useless or that it violates Kosovo’s sovereignty.
This is apparently beside the point for some people – a comment at Express claimed that Kurti’s speaking at this panel and meeting with members of congress (his get-together with Eliot Engel rated a separate article) means that the U.S. government is grooming him for leadership in Kosovo as an uncorrupted politician, pointing out that the current U.S. ambassador had never met Thaci before arriving in Prishtina. On the other hand, the old charges that Kurti is a Serbian plant, out to ruin the chances of an independent Kosovo, also resurface. So – Kosovo is a democracy, opinions differ. The trip may have given him some undesirable additional respectability at home, but it is after all up to the country’s citizens to elect their own politicians and learn to live with the consequences.
Amer,why do I get the feeling that you are some fake internet troll working you of the Kosovo’s foreign ministry ?
Otherwise, why would anyone thing of using Gazeta Express as a source to quote ?
Amer isn’t a troll, he’s genuinely on the pro-Albanian camp. His zeal (probably coupled with his political views and age) however takes him too far, making him really believe what he says about Albania and Kosovo under the monster Sali Berisha and Hashim Thaci although his posts on the matter are as much out of touch with reality as those of Serbian nationalists.
Oh, and Ben, nowadays even Gazeta Express, H. Thaci’s only friendly newspaper finds it harder to print something positive about his (mis)deeds.