Tag: Balkans
End threats to use military force!
Genc Pollo, former minister and member of parliament in Albania, writes from Tirana:
For the third time in the last two years Serbia last week put her armed forces on alert and has deployed them to the border with Kosovo. Apart from infantry and armor, fighter jets have been flying along Kosovo’s airspace.
Belgrade the arsonist
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has verbosely explained on each occasion that his military was ready to intervene in neighboring Kosovo to prevent the suffering of the Serbian community there. In the first two instances, the Kosovo authorities were attempting to get Kosovo Serbs in the north to use Kosovo plates rather than Serbian ones.
In the third and current instance, the Kosovo police were escorting four newly elected mayors into their offices. The Serb majority in the northern municipalities had boycotted the mayoral elections so the elected mayors had a different ethnic background. Furthermore the election was caused by the resignations of the incumbent mayors last December. Both the resignations and the election boycott happened at the behest of Belgrade.
The real problem is the threat to use military force
Such local crises are not a threat to Serbia. Nor are they a violation of Serb rights that should elicit a such a military response by Kosovo’s northern neighbor. The real problem is that the Serbian President threatens his smaller neighbor with the use of military force.
The 1945 UN Charter signatories vowed to “suppress aggression” and to “refrain…from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”. Stronger and more detailed language permeates the OSCE agreements of which Serbia is also a party.
The EU and US make it worse
Perhaps the most alarming development isn’t Vucic’s bravado but the Western response to it. The EU and the US, who are facilitating a “normalization process” between the two Balkan states, have not condemned in clear terms this breach of international law. Instead they have spoken softly of concern while simultaneously chastising Kosovo for the deployment of her police force on her own territory. According to press reports, US and European officials have quietly asked Vucic to withdraw his units.
Some are tempted to say that Serbia is merely gesticulating for domestic consumption. Belgrade knows it cannot match KFOR, the NATO-led troops stationed in Kosovo. That might be true. But this didn’t hinder Belgrade from instigating riot in northern Kosovo to violently attack deployed KFOR units, including with firearms. Dozens of hospitalized soldiers, some in critical condition, were the consequence. NATO had to send in reinforcements.
End appeasement
History teaches us that many past wars were deemed impossible until they broke out, in some cases unintentionally.
It would be in the West’s best interest to end appeasement of the would-be aggressor and to ensure that the threat of using military force is unacceptable, especially by states claiming to want to join the European Union.
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Something is stirring in Belgrade
Saturday’s fifth mass protest against Serbia’s President Vucic was the largest so far. People are “fed up.” Triggered by two mass shootings, the protests have widened their aim and now focus on getting rid of Vucic, freeing the media from government control, and ending a culture of violence.
They’ve got my sympathies, but…
I can’t help but be sympathetic with the peaceful protesters. Serbia re-elected Vucic with 60% of the vote just 14 months ago in a free but far from fair election. But it has been clear for some time that a large slice of Serbian society is displeased with his increasingly authoritarian rule, use of violence, and insensitivity to environmental concerns. While his political opposition is fragmented and ineffective, the protests are proving united and sustained so far.
The question is whether they are powerful enough to lead to his ouster. I doubt it. While it is common to cite the October 2000 ouster of Slobodan Milosevic, it is too often forgotten that those massive demonstrations were in support of election results. Milosevic had lost an election he had called early, thinking himself invulnerable. Vucic has talked about a Sepember election, but he hasn’t called it yet. Before doing so, he will want to be certain he will win it. He is good at using state resources and jobs to ensure political support.
…Vucic still has cards to play
Vucic also knows well how to play the other usual cards of Serbian politics. He staged his own rent-a-crowd demonstration last weekend featuring ethnonationalist tirades. He at the same time provoked clashes in Kosovo intended to distract attention. These gave him an excuse to mobilize the Serbian Army and deploy units to the border/boundary with Kosovo, claiming he needed to protect Kosovo Serbs. Never mind that they were in danger because they attacked Kosovo police protecting non-Serb mayors elected in polls that the Serbs, under Vucic’s instructions, boycotted.
Vucic no doubt has other cards to play. He can arrest and harass protest organizers. He can stage clashes inside Serbia requiring the police to intervene. The Serbian media, which mostly ignores the protests, can sing his praises louder and longer. They can also amplify alleged threats to Serbs in Kosovo. Vucic can rely on his now well-established allies in Washington and Brussels to worry about what would happen if he were to fall, leaving the way open for an even more ethnonationalist right-winger to take power. Beijing’s surveillance technology and Moscow’s assistance to the Serbian security services will do what they can to protect him. Many Serbs already blame the American embassy for propping up Vucic.
Something is stirring that the Americans could help
All that said, something is stirring in Serbia that may prove in the long run stronger than Vucic and the hand he still has to play. To be successful, it will need somehow to undermine pillars that keep the Vucic elected autocracy in place: his own political party, the army and security services, the Church, and support from Washington, Brussels, Moscow and Beijing. There would need to be a split in the ruling elite that is not visible today. Still more courageous citizens and politicians would need to challenge the powers that be, likely with a popular political program as well as protests.
Of course the Americans could help if they would hold Vucic accountable, the way they have Kosovo Prime Minister Kurti for not yielding to State Department diktats. But Washington still wants to delude itself that Vucic will bring Serbia westward. American diplomats appreciate his willingness to allow Serbian arms to reach Ukraine. Appeasement is their preferred approach. The chimera of Vucic choosing the West still has a strong hold on the State Deparment.
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Maybe it would work the other way around
I haven’t been able to make this video of the US Ambassador in Pristina to play, but the audio works.
Vesna Pusic, former Foreign and European Minister of Croatia,* tweeted today:
Let me get this straight: US is sanctioning Kosovo because:
1. The Serbian List political coalition, which by their own admission is completely loyal to Serbian President Vučić and follows all his instructions, has boycotted local elections in the north of Kosovo.
2. Because of that ethnic Albanians were elected mayors of the 4 municipalities with majority Serb populations in the north of Kosovo
3. The mayors tried to take the posts to which they have been elected
4. Kosovo state authorities attempted to secure the process
5. Ethnic Serb demonstrators attacked Kosovo state authorities
6. KFOR, NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo came in to prevent further escalation of violence
7. KFOR was attacked by Serb demonstrators and cca 30 peacekeepers were injured. All amply video documented
8. The tensions & violence in Kosovo coincided with mass antigovernment demonstrations in Belgrade triggered by 2 mass shootings & killings in Serbia
9. Kosovo is sanctioned by the US & reprimanded by NATO Secretary General
10. Please explain @JoeBiden @ABlinken @jensstoltenberg
The bad bet
The short explanation is that the US and EU have doubled down on a bad bet. By appeasing Belgrade, they hope to get President Vucic to abandon his growing links to Russia and China.
He isn’t going to do that. Vucic may send some ammunition to Ukraine and vote for a UN General Assembly resolution denouncing Russia’s invasion. But he is now an elected autocrat who sees his future in the East, with other autocrats. Money from China and security support from Russia are his current interests. The EU is a much larger funder and investor, but the Union’s failure to effectively condition its assistance on maintaining democracy has allowed Vucic to talk the talk without walking the walk. The Americans have been tweeting his embrace of democracy without ever insisting on it.
And pressure your friends
Instead, the State Department has decided to try to pressure Kosovo Prime Minister Kurti. His small, manifestly democratic, country has been perhaps the most pro-American on earth. It really has little alternative but to “bandwagon” with the US. The Americans know it. Ambassador Hovenier’s admirably calm but tough talk (above) aims to get Kurti to agree that the mayors won’t try to return to their offices and that the Kosovo police will not try to enforce the law in northern Kosovo. The diplomatic sanctions pinch but do not yet bite hard, as the Kosovo Security Forces have other things to do and the Americans haven’t done much lately for Kosovo’s membership in international organizations.
The illogic is blatant. The Americans mouthed support for the election but don’t want to implement the results. They support rule of law but don’t want the Kosovo police to enforce it. They want Kosovo to be sovereign but aren’t willing to see its institutions operate from the mayoral offices there. Secretary of State Blinken criticizes both sides when Belgrade-sponsored thugs attack and injure KFOR soldiers. The US said not a word about the heightened alert and deployment of the Serbian Army to the country’s border/boundary with Kosovo.
This isn’t really about the mayors
What’s worse is that this isn’t really a conflict over the mayors. The first issue is Belgrade’s determination to maintain its control of northern Kosovo. That’s why it required the election boycott and why it sent the thugs who attacked KFOR. Vucic fears that loss of control over the north will make real problems for him in Belgrade, both with the right-wing ethnonationalists who constitute his main opposition and with the security services that enjoy their no doubt lucrative role in keeping northern Kosovo a law-free zone.
A second issue is the domestic political situation. Vucic is facing massive street demonstrations against his increasingly authoritarian rule. Shifting the focus to Kosovo and appearing to defend Kosovo Serbs is a tried and true technique for distracting attention from domestic discontent. So too is calling an early parliamentary election, quickly enough that the liberal opposition will not have a chance to organize. Vucic knows that well, as he served Slobodan Milosevic in his heyday. He won’t be calling an early presidential election–that’s what brought Milosevic down.
Reevaluation is needed
In their effort to win Serbia for the West, the Americans have wrapped themselves in contradictions. It won’t be easy to break out. But it is high time that they re-evaluated, just as they are asking Kurti to do. Neither is getting what they want. Even if they bend Kurti with sticks, they won’t have bent Vucic with carrots. Maybe it would work better the other way around?
*My original identification was wrong, because I was thinking “Vesna Pesic.” That was my error. I know them both and should not have made it, even in haste! Apologies to them and to readers,
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Pristina, we’ve got a problem
These were the talking points I used this morning in a remote appearance at the Kosovo Leadership Conference in Pristina:
- Let me begin by telling you how much I regret I am not with you there in Pristina. I haven’t had the pleasure of a stroll in Mother Teresa Street in more than three years. My recent illness made the trip inadvisable even now, but I am glad to report that I am well on my way to full recovery.
- The bad news is that the Balkan region is not recovering. There is plenty of blame to go around but let me start with people outside the Balkans.
- There is no more important factor in determining what happens in the next few years in Pristina, Sarajevo, and Podgorica than the outcome of the war in Ukraine.
- It isn’t fair, but your fate depends on whether Ukraine is able to restore its sovereignty and territorial integrity, including Donbas and Crimea.
- If Russia is successful in getting a settlement that recognizes the annexation of any part of Ukraine, you can expect Serbia to redouble its efforts to create the “Serbian world.”
- This is well understood in Belgrade and Banja Luka.
- Aleksandar Vulin and Milorad Dodik were in Moscow just last week no doubt cheering on the Russian army and getting their own marching orders for continuing to disrupt the Balkans and block any more Western success in the region.
- President Vucic’s rent-a-crowd rally in Belgrade Friday manifested that Serbia is seriously pursuing “all Serbs in one country,” in cooperation with Dodik and allies in Montenegro.
- Belgrade’s reaction to the installation of elected Albanian mayors in northern Kosovo also demonstrated its hegemonic territorial ambitions.
- The “Serbian World” and the “Russian World” are the same idea meant to signal that no Serb or Russian should be subject to a liberal democratic order in which non-Serbs are able to gain a majority. Ethnic autocracy in a defined, unified territory is Russia and Serbia’s common goal.
- That is incompatible with existing state structures in the Balkans and Ukraine, which include ample protection for numerical minorities.
- That said, I am supposed to tell you what the US and EU can do about counteracting the Russian and Serbian efforts to deprive their neighbors of sovereignty and territorial integrity.
- The first thing they can do is declaratory. That much they have done: Washington and Brussels have been clear enough about their rhetorical support for not moving borders in the Balkans.
- The EU commitment, however, is tainted. The five EU member states that do not recognize Kosovo weaken the Union’s effectiveness in the Balkans.
- Nothing would strengthen EU Special Envoy Lajcak’s hand more than a few more recognitions.
- The EU could also make itself more effective by levying sanctions on Dodik and his coterie in Republika Srpska. And both the US and EU should prepare sanctions on political forces in Montenegro if they continue to head in the Russian direction.
- I don’t like to say it, but the American commitment to sovereignty and territorial integrity in the Balkans is also clouded.
- On Friday Washington supported the Serbian challenge to the elected mayors, condemned Prime Minister Kurti’s decision to have them take their rightful places, and failed to denounce the Serb violence and deployment of the Serbian armed forces to the border.
- Pristina, we’ve got a problem.
- I understand Prime Minister Kurti’s desire to proceed with implementation of the election results and to ignore ethnic differences. He wants to exercise Kosovo’s sovereignty in its whole territory and believes in equal rights for all citizens.
- I am sympathetic with those goals. But has he got a plan for how to proceed now that Belgrade has mobilized its rioters to resist?
- The ethnicity of the mayors is not the problem. The problem is capability, in two senses: installing the mayors needed both international and local acceptance.
- As public figures in Pristina as well as the Council of Albanian Ambassadors have said, Kosovo needs its US and EU friends. It doesn’t have them on its side on this issue.
- The Kosovo police seem to have done reasonably well on Friday, but things got out of hand yesterday as Serbs attacked KFOR. My sympathies are with the Italians, Hungarians, Moldovans, and any others who were injured.
- I won’t however presume to tell Albin that he made a mistake. That will depend on how things evolve.
- But I would like to know what his plan is now? How will the mayors be kept safe? How will they be able to conduct their business in these circumstances?
- And I ask that we identify clearly what the problem is. The problem is Serb resistance. There are no substitutes for a modicum of local acceptance if you want the mayors to be effective.
- Belgrade’s objectives are clear: it wants to partition Kosovo and Bosnia, de facto if not de jure, as well as swallow Montenegro whole. Russia backs those objectives, which would weaken NATO and the EU.
- Pristina’s objectives should be just as clear: to assert its sovereignty and territorial integrity and bring the whole country into NATO and the EU as soon as possible.
- Those are also Ukraine’s objectives, which I believe they will achieve, sooner and easier than many expect, with US and EU assistance as well as broad local support, including among Russian speakers. Military victory is not guaranteed, but it is within sight.
- I am hoping Kosovo will do as well on its nonmilitary battlefield. But I repeat: Pristina, you’ve got a problem. You can’t get there without US and EU support as well as local acceptance.
- Reconstructing both will now need to be major objectives for Kosovo’s leadership.
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Washington goes full bore Belgrade
Secretary of State Blinken today tweeted:
We strongly condemn the actions by the Government of Kosovo that are escalating tensions in the north and increasing instability. We call on Prime Minister @albinkurti to immediately halt these violent measures and refocus on the EU-facilitated Dialogue.
This condemnation was in response to the Kosovo government installing elected mayors in four Serbian majority municipalities in northern Kosovo. The Serb populations almost entirely boycotted the election, under pressure from Belgrade. The Americans had backed the elections without criticizing Belgrade but then opposed the (Albanian) mayors taking office. While Senator Murphy has claimed that Kurti’s move was unexpected, the Prime Minister announced it two days ago.
No US condemnation of Serbia’s moves
Busloads of Serbs from Kosovo were being transported to Belgrade today, unobstructed, for President Vucic’s rent-a-crowd rally this evening. At the same time, Belgrade has put its armed forces on alert, in clear and unequivocal contradiction of the EU-sponsored normalization agreement it has supposedly accepted. It has also mobilized its thugs in northern Kosovo to physically obstruct the arrival of the elected mayors there.
There has been no US condemnation of Serbia’s moves, only Kosovo’s. Washington has essentially abandoned all pretense of neutrality and adopted several of Belgrade’s priorities as its own. This is not only true for the installation of the mayors, but also for the proposed Association of Serb Majority Municipalities inside Kosovo and the Open Balkans initiative Serbia is promoting to extend its control over Serbs in neighboring countries. Backing Belgrade’s “Serbian world” ethnonationalist goals has become Washington’s policy on the Balkans.
Kurti has the logic, but does he have the capability?
I am not privy to Prime Minister Kurti’s current thinking on the specific issue of the mayors. But he is a died-in-the-wool liberal democrat who believes in equal rights under the law. He is also what I would call a “sovereigntist.” Kurti believes Kosovo is, and should act like, a sovereign state. Those two characteristics make the installation of the mayors a logical move.
Logic alone cannot however cannot dictate policy. Capability also counts. It is limited in two ways: Kosovo has limited police forces available with which to deal with Serb violence against the mayors and it has obviously all too limited international support for their installation. A small country like Kosovo cannot afford to act unaware of its own limitations.
The Americans have capability but lack the logic
The Americans can make Kurti’s life difficult. But their position is lacking in logic. How do you back an election and not its legitimate results? How do you support equal rights but oppose installing elected officials because of their ethnicity? How do you condemn police action to protect elected mayors but not the rioters who attacked them? How do you claim the normalization agreement, which includes a pledge not to use military force, is legally binding but doesn’t prevent Serbian mobilization of its armed forces in response to a political conflict inside Kosovo?
The United States claims to stand for equal rights and respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all the existing states in the Balkans. It needs to draw the logical conclusions.
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What the State Department forgot to say
This morning’s Chollet and Escobar pas de deux at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee demonstrated that the Senators who attended really know something about the Balkans. The questioning was pertinent and at times incisive. The responses were less so.
Of course the State Department Counselor and the Deputy Assistant Secretary with responsibility for the Balkans know what to say. They are for EU membership, democracy, sovereignty and territorial integrity. They are against Russian malfeasance, Chinese financing, corruption, and ethnonationalism.
It’s what they don’t say
It’s what they don’t say that really counts, starting from the premise: “Europe whole and free.” This 90s US foreign policy slogan is inapplicable today and for the forseeable future. Europe is not going to be whole and free any time soon. We’ll have to accept a line somewhere. That’s what the war in Ukraine is about: will Kyiv be on the Western side of the line, or will all or part of Ukraine be forced into a subserviant relationship with Russia?
While the Americans are trying to attract it with all the carrots they can think of, Belgrade has chosen definitively in recent years to move towards Moscow and Beijing. There is no sign of anything but rhetorical interest in EU membership. Progress in the EU accession process has ground to a halt. The political system in Serbia has veered towards autocracy. President Vucic and his minions, who include virtually the entire media landscape in Serbia, mouth ambitions to retake Kosovo (or part of it) and use the worst ethnic slurs available against Albanians. There really is nothing comparable happening in Kosovo.
As for the Belgrade/Pristina dialogue, Escobar claimed the February and March agreements on normalization are legally binding and being implemented, but when confronted with examples of President Vucic’s refusal to implement specific provisions he and Chollet retreated to bothsiderism. That was also their response on corruption in Belgrade as well. “We find it everywhere in the Balkans.” In recent memory, I can’t name a US official who has referred explicitly to the many and gross manifestations of organized crime and corruption in Serbia.
Chollet and Escobar were enthusiastic about the proposed Association of Serb Majority Municipalities (ASMM), claiming it would enable Serbs to integrate more into Kosovo and would have to be consistent with the Kosovo constitution. They ignored the Serb proposal for the ASMM, which is unequivocally intended to create an autonomous Serb entity, like Bosnia’s Republika Srpska, inside Kosovo, complete with executive powers. They were also enthusiastic for Serbia’s Open Balkans initiative, provided that it treats all the countries participating equally. They forgot to mention that Kosovo has not even been invited to Open Balkans because Belgrade doesn’t want to address it properly in the invitation.
Poor Bosnia
Bosnia suffered the worst from State Department amnesia. Yes, the officials said, the Bosnia constitution would need changes, in accordance with decisions by the EU and the Venice Commission. They forgot to mention that one of those decisions, by the European Court of Human Rights, was taken 14 years ago. The US gave up long ago on pressing for its implementation.
They liked the decisions of the HiRep that enabled formation of the government in the Bosnian Federation, but forgot to mention that one of them changed the way votes were counted after they were cast. The other was taken to iron out problems the first had created. The net result was to ensure that two ethnonationalist parties could rule in the Federation. Only one ethnonationalist party was dissastified with these decisions, Escobar claimed. He forgot to mention that that party and other dissenters just might represent more than a majority of the voters. Never mind the disgraceful act of changing the way votes are counted after they are cast.
The rest
I trust Macedonians won’t be too pleased to hear from Escobar that in order to join the EU they will have to change their constitution to mention their Bulgarian minority, which he failed to say numbers a few thousand (certainly less than 1% of the population). Nor will the Albanians in Serbia be pleased to hear that their numbers–almost certainly equal to or greater than the number of Serbs in northern Kosovo (and far more than the Bulgarians in Macedonia)–don’t merit mention of an Association of Albanian Majority Municipalities inside Serbia. Never mind Albanian seats in the Serbian parliament, to match the guaranteed Serb seats in the Kosovo parliament.
Escobar will be winging off to Podgorica for the Montenegrin presidential inauguration Saturday. No one bothered to mention that we owe the oderly and so far nonviolent change of power there to its current President, Milo Djukanovic, whom American and European diplomats have spent years deploring for alleged (but still unproven) corruption. The new President, Jakov Milatović, avows a pro-European stance but has more than warm relations with President Vucic in Belgrade. A lot will depend on June 11 parliamentary elections. I hope they are conducted as freely and fairly as those under Djukanovic.
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