peacefare.net

Pleasant surprises but no firm conclusions

So I’ve returned to Pristina after an absence of eight years.  What have I found?  Let me say up front:  not much, as I’ve been here for two days.  But I’ll offer at least my initial impressions, based on a dozen or so conversations.  I’ll reserve the right to revise once I’ve heard a good deal more.

The variable weather–one moment pouring rain, the next moment pouring sunshine–has kept me wary.  Kosovo when I last visited had a government:  there were ministers, ministries, directors general and the rest.  But there was little of what I would call a state:  that is, a set of institutions that could be relied upon to maintain some reasonable level of continuity and objectivity regardless of who was elected.  More than one reader has assured me that I wouldn’t find the situation much improved.

I haven’t of course been able to test the services the state provides to ordinary citizens, other than to walk briefly in the main street and enjoy its conversion to a pedestrian mall. Mobbed with young people enjoying intervals between rainstorms, the atmosphere is certainly upbeat among those who can afford to enjoy a coffee in one of the many cafes that line Pristina’s main “Mother Teresa” drag.

I spent the day yesterday mainly in the foreign ministry.  The people I dealt with there–admittedly among the best–would measure up as intelligent and well-trained professionals in the State Department or elsewhere.  They have studied the issues we were discussing carefully and have prepared comprehensive dossiers that were informative, objective and up to date.  This was a great leap forward from eight years ago, when there was a kind of necessary conformity to government policy that shaped every conversation and prevented the preparation of honest assessments.

I also had the opportunity to meet with some of the political leadership in the state and government.  I first entered what is today the President’s office in 1998, when I called on the Serbian administrators of the then-province of Kosovo.  I had just come from the Council for Human Rights and Freedoms, only a hundred meters or so away, where I had seen careful and extensive documentation of the abuses committed by the Serbian security forces.  The authorities of the time denied there were any abuses and declined to join me in a visit to the Council.

I later visited Bernard Kouchner and Hans Haekkerup (UN mission chiefs) in 2000 and 2001 in that same room, as they struggled to try to administer post-war Kosovo, removed from Serbian administration by UN Security Council resolution 1244 after the NATO/Yugoslavia war.  Theirs was a difficult role, which they played with whatever skills and resources could be mustered in a thoroughly broken society only recently traumatized by war.

Today that same room is a lot brighter and cheerier, not only because of the redecorating.  The soft-spoken President Atifete Jahjaga joined the post-war Kosovo police in an effort to reverse the abuses of power that she had witnessed under the Serbian administration.  Determined she says to protect and serve, she was one of the few women to break with the practice of male dominance in the security forces.

Whatever your stand on the status of Kosovo, it is important to recognize that her elevation to president represents a real break with the past.  She is a non-politician whose candidacy it is said was favored by the American Ambassador.  Elected by a wide margin in parliament in the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision that invalidated on procedural grounds the narrow victory of a more traditional politician, she is trying hard to project an image of stability and inclusivity.

On the basis of a couple of other meetings with ministers, it is appears that the government gives unequivocal verbal priority to law and order, perhaps because it faces investigations and accusations that are embarrassing and potentially damning.  This situation is made doubly difficult by the requirement to cooperate with the very international officials who are at the same time investigating the government.  But everyone says they are ready to cooperate and see the investigations run their course.

The view from the government’s critics is harsher.  Some of them feel strongly that little is done about serious corruption allegations against high Kosovo government officials, whose claims to probity they view as less than truthful or sincere.  Yes, there are corruption investigations, but they are selective and not sweeping.  Too many allegations go uninvestigated.

I don’t envy the internationals who are still here trying to help Kosovo’s institutions build their capacity to act effectively.  At a certain point only locals with democratic legitimacy can really govern effectively, or deal decisively with organized crime.  The Kosovo authorities will err–the recent decision to raise salaries in defiance of the IMF will be counted as a blunder by many–but when it comes to learning there really is no substitute for making your own mistakes.  At least in the case of the IMF, those who made the decision will now need to fill the budget hole that they themselves created.

So I admit that I may regret tomorrow what I’ve written today, as I learn more about the realities of life and government today in Kosovo.  But if so I’ll try to admit that honestly.  For today, I am happy to have found some pleasant surprises, including the strong dissent of the government’s critics, which makes any firm judgment on the merits of its law and order stance premature.

Half a Big Mac is not a smorgasbord

Jerry Gallucci over at Transconflict says Serbia is offering Kosovo a smorgasbord of possible solutions to the status question.  Looks more like half a Big Mac to me.  Not something I’d be interested in.

Anyone who thinks the European Union will accept Serbia as a member without settling the issue of Kosovo status, as Gallucci suggests, is living in a different reality from mine.   That would require twenty-two European states that have recognized Kosovo as sovereign to go mad, suffer amnesia or more likely brain damage.  Even if twenty-one of them did, the Dutch can be relied upon stay sane, remember and insist, as they did with the arrest and transfer to The Hague of Ratko Mladic.  Several EU members have already stated that settling Kosovo’s status will be a precondition, and those that haven’t will rely on the EU requirement of “good neighborly relations” to make the same point.

Gallucci’s smorgasbord consists of one basic idea:  Serbia retaining control of northern Kosovo.  To agree to that, Pristina would have to gain control of the Albanian-majority areas of southern Serbia.  After all, Kosovo has its political pressures, too, including from the Self-Determination movement Gallucci mentions.  And Serbia would have to recognize Kosovo’s sovereignty and territorial integrity before any territorial exchange, since Kosovo could only engage in such an act as a sovereign.

In the unlikely event such an agreement could be reached, Pristina and Belgrade would then have to figure out how to guarantee  that it would not destabilize Bosnia and Macedonia.  This would be particularly important for Belgrade, since instability could of course spread from Bosnia to Sandjak, a part of Serbia in which many Muslims (they call themselves “Bosniaks”) live.

Gallucci wonders why ethnic states are such a bad thing.  They aren’t.  The problem is that forming them often entails a process known as violent conflict.  It did in the 19th century, it did in the 20th and it would in the 21st.  It’s admittedly difficult, but best to avoid war whenever possible.  And fighting, or even quarreling, over half a Big Mac would just be ridiculous.

It is time for Belgrade to accept reality.  Kosovo Serbs as well as the Serbian religious institutions in Kosovo can and should be treated properly.  Putting forward a smorgasbord of ideas on how to satisfy those requirements would be a good idea.  A one-way partition of Kosovo is not.

Preparing for the Balkans

I confess I haven’t done a lot to prepare for my next two weeks in the Balkans, apart from one or two subjects I need to be up to date on, but maybe my fans there will find it interesting to know what I’ll be reading to get ready. I’ll also be delighted if they would make some suggestions.

I was inspired to this blogpost by reading Ted Galen Carpenter’s piece in The National Interest.  Ted does not quite merit the “Srebrenica denier” category, because he doesn’t really deny it–he just doesn’t mention it, preferring instead to refer to Ratko Mladic as “repulsive” and responsible for “repulsive” acts.

Instead he attacks inflated figures for overall civilian deaths in the Bosnian war and claims the Muslim/Croat fighting has been ignored.  The civilian casualty figures were corrected many years ago, but that correction really has no bearing on the issue Ted raises of whether genocide was committed, which depends more on intent than numbers.  I don’t use the G-word myself except for Srbrenica, where the Hague Tribunal has made the determination.  I hardly need mention that the United States paid a good deal of attention to the Croat/Muslim fighting and was instrumental in bringing it to an end–I was the special envoy responsible for maintaining that peace from October 1994 to June 1996.

That short, disappointing piece was just an accidental read, but it reminded me of how polarized opinion on the Balkans can be.  No one ever wants to let anything rest, even the Americans.

My more intentional reads are these:

• B92 (English service), which I use regularly to stay up to date with regional events–my hat is off to Veran Matic and his team for their decades of hard work;
• Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, which is a bit less every day events and more broader issues and commentary–a tip of the hat to them as well;
• Foreign Policy Initiative papers, especially their recent piece on the “myth” of closure of the Office of the High Representative;
• Matthew Parrish’s latest tirade against what the “international community” has done in Kosovo and Bosnia, published in  the Journal of Eurasian Law;
• Anything interesting I find on the website of the Kosovar Stability Initiative;
• The Coordinator’s Office for Strategy Regarding the North of Kosovo, “Report on Parallel Institutions:   Belgrade – with a foot on the north and an open hand in Brussels”;
• My own “Albanians in the Balkans” published more than 10 years ago (!);
• Ditto Bosnia’s Next Five Years: Dayton and Beyond;
• As an antidote, whatever strikes my fantasy on the TransConflict website;
• Everything Tim Judah has published lately;
• Anything friends–some unnameable, so I won’t name any–in the Balkans send me.

ICG’s stuff is the obvious omission, but unless they put out something new before I get to the region, I think I’ve read it all.

Some people will see obvious bias in my reading material.  I like to think that I am reading broadly and gathering diverse perspectives.  And I’ll welcome more if you send me links or attachments!  Best to do that to daniel@serwer.org, since daniel@peacefare.net does not see to be working perfectly these days. With appreciation for those who respond,

After Pristina, Sarajevo

After Pristina, where I’ll visit next week, I am headed for Sarajevo.  I confess I’ve lost track of how long it has been since I was last there, but it may be 10 years.  My friends at European Stability Initiative would tell me that is why I am so out of touch and worry about things like the possibility of violence resuming, which they think highly unlikely (but Paddy Ashdown disagrees).

Important as that question is, I agree with my ESI colleagues that policy should not be set on the basis of threats to peace and stability but rather on the basis of what is good for the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  So the questions on my mind as I begin to prepare for the trip are these:

• Are Bosnians serious about getting ready for NATO and the EU?
• What is holding them back?  Are there serious alternatives?
• How can the obvious obstacles in the Dayton constitution (discrimination, lack of central government authority to negotiate) be overcome?
• What other obstacles are there?  How can they be overcome?
• How can governance in Bosnia be made more functional?
• What can be done to reduce corruption and improve the rapport between citizens and their various governments?
• How serious is the obvious financial difficulty of Republika Srpska?  The Federation?
• What is generating the Croat push for a separate entity?
• Why has civil society in Bosnia not developed as fully as many of us would like?
• What should be done about the High Representative?  Can the EU handle Bosnia, and does it have serious plans to do so?
• How can international community performance in Bosnia be improved?

As some readers will know, my familitarity with Bosnia stems mainly from my time as U.S. Special Envoy for the Bosnian Federation during and immediately after the war (October 1994-June 1996), followed by more than a year directing the State Department intelligence office that followed Dayton implementation and a dozen years at the U.S. Institute of Peace following the Balkans.  I confess to a good deal of Bosnia fatigue–it sometimes seems to me talking with Bosnians here in Washington that they haven’t noticed the world has changed a great deal since they held the spotlight in the mid-1990s.

That said, nothing that has happened in these last 15 years would make the world happy to see Bosnia and Herzegovina break up into Croat, Serb and Muslim ministates.  The question Bosnia faces is therefore the one my Sudanese friends failed to answer:  what will make unity attractive?  The Dayton state is proving inadequate to that task.  So what state would do the job better, and how can the Bosnians come to terms and agree to create it?

This was taken on my last trip into Sarajevo during the war:

Heading for Pristina

I am heading in June to Kosovo for the first time since 2003, when my colleagues and I at the United States Institute of Peace offered an OSCE-sponsored training workshop to the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government (PISG).  A number of ministers participated, including the then prime minister, Bajram Rexhepi (now Minister of Interior).  That’s leadership!  The idea was to prepare the PISG for negotiations with Belgrade that, as history would have it, only began earlier this year.  We delivered similar training to the Serbian Foreign Ministry.

The training was at the police academy in Vushtrri/Vucitrn.  One morning we watched the cadets line up in the yard.  The commandant welcomed them (remember this was four years after the war, and 90% of the cadets as well as the commandant were Albanian-speaking) in Serbian:  “dobro utro.”  That too is leadership, rewarded by a great deal of respect from the Kosovo population for their post-war police force.

I have seen enough of the Kosovo government people in visits to Washington to know that they have made enormous strides since 2003.  Eight years ago I would not have said that PISG was a real state–it was still more like an agglomeration of political trends with only a glimmer of consciousness of the need for an effective bureaucracy, an independent judicial system and civil society.  I trust I’ll find things much improved on this visit.

But I’m also going to be asking a lot of questions.  Here is a preliminary set that I’ll no doubt expand in the next couple of weeks before my arrival.  I’ll welcome suggestions from readers of other issues I should be exploring.

• Has the state established itself in a way that provides support to, and continuity between, different governments?  Is there a civil service worthy of the name?  Have the politicians learned to respect the bureaucrats and use them effectively?
• Is the state delivering services that are needed and appreciated?
• How well is Parliament playing its legislative and oversight roles?
• Why does Kosovo’s economy seem stuck?  Why has foreign investment lagged?  Why are jobs in the formal economy so hard to come by?
• Is the judicial system capable of handling high-profile cases involving Albanian bigwigs as well as inter-ethnic crime?  How much longer will EULEX be needed?
• How can more be done to reduce corruption and organized crime?
• How are relations between Albanians and non-Albanians, including but not limited to Serbs ?  How do non-Albanians, both those who live north of the Ibar and those who live in the south, regard the Pristina government?
• How has Kosovo’s once strong civil society fared since independence?  Is the press free?  Is it responsible?  How can civil society be strengthened?
• What role do Greater Albanian aspirations and their proponents play in Kosovo today?

A few days visit is of course not sufficient to answer all these questions in detail, but I am hoping that putting them out for public scrutiny will allow my many friends in Kosovo and elsewhere to offer answers, both in person and in cyberspace (answers as comments on this blog are welcome, as are answers addressed to daniel@peacefare.net).

I am looking forward to seeing Pristina again.  My only real regret about this trip is that I won’t make it to Belgrade, though I am also going to Sarajevo.  Some questions about Bosnia and Herzegovina in an upcoming post.