Tag: Balkans
Anyone out there interested in Macedonia?
Here’s an interview I did over the weekend for Slobodanka Jovanovska of Utrinski Vesnik, a Skopje paper:
Q. Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski soon will travel in U.S. to have a meeting with the high officials in the State Department. It will be his first official visit after five years on power, motivated by political crisis in Macedonia. How do you see American-Macedonian relations and do you agree that, after the NATO summit, Macedonia is going in opposite [a negative] direction?
A. My sense is that Prime Minister Gruevski has not made a lot of friends in Washington, mainly because of his brandishing of Macedonian nationalism and his failure to come to terms with the Greeks on the name issue. I don’t say this is entirely fair, only that he is seen as more a problem than part of the solution in influential circles.
Q. Do you see potential for “Tunisian scenario” in Macedonia after almost all of the opposition parties left the Parliament, and after the instability in Albania? How do you comment the critics here that there is not democracy in the country and that the freedom of expression is threatened by ruling party?
A. I don’t think Macedonia is even close to Tunisia: Skopje may not be a perfect democracy, but it is a nascent democracy that is far ahead of Tunis. What the opposition lacks is not freedom, but votes. It would certainly be a mistake for Macedonia to follow Albania’s lead—it takes a long time for a country’s reputation to recover from that sort of instability. As for the threat to freedom of expression, that concerns me, but how do I know the accusations are unfounded?
Q. There is [the] impression in Macedonia that Obama’s administration is not interested about the Balkans as much as the previous one and is not doing enough about the name issue, which is blocking Macedonian membership in NATO and EU negotiations. What is your opinion on that?
A. Anyone can see that the Obama Administration has its hands full with many problems that come ahead of the Balkans: Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Sudan just to name a few. And I think there is a feeling here that it is up to the Greeks and Macedonians to settle the name issue, not up to Washington, which tried for many years.
Q. Macedonia was one of the countries which supported Bolivia about the controversial coca leaf, contrary to U.S. which supported the ban. The Prime Minister had a meeting with Robert Mugabe and got as a favor recognition of the constitutional name of Macedonia. The president Gjorgji Ivanov is sending messages for better relations with Russia…Do you think that this is wise policy instead of NATO and EU membership?
A. If it is instead of NATO and EU membership, I think it is not wise. But many Macedonians feel strongly about the name issue and I can’t blame them for that. It seems to me Gruevski may have decided he doesn’t want a solution (other than “Republic of Macedonia”). That is his right, but then EU and NATO membership are not possible, so long as Greece remains opposed.
Q. Do you personally believe that there is solution about the name dispute with Greece and where do you find, if any, optimism?
A. Optimism, no. But I am sure there is a solution. The question is how much more damage will be done before they come to it.
Q. Generally, do you think that the Balkan countries are going in right direction and are there any threats left?
The big threat in the Balkans today is lack of progress: on the Macedonia name issue, on Bosnia’s constitutional reforms, on Pristina/Belgrade dialogue. These are long-standing irritants that are being allowed to remain unresolved and are blocking progress towards NATO and the EU. This is a mistake—Brussels and the Balkans capitals need to find a way of moving forward, even if only slowly. Washington will help, but it doesn’t want to play the primary mover role any longer.
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Dodik’s next move: squeezing Brcko dry
Matthew Parish, who now practices law in Geneva with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, has kindly given me permission to publish this interesting analysis, which has already appeared in the Bosnian newspaper Oslobodjenje. From 2005 to 2007, Matthew lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he worked for the Office of the High Representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina (OHR) as the Chief Legal Adviser to the International Supervisor of Brčko.
While I think Matthew is overly harsh in his description of OHR officials, the careful dissection of what Dodik is up to merits attention, including from the OHR and other concerned internationals. As it is significantly longer than the usual blog posts, I’ve put the piece in the “From the field” section, where Geneva (and Brcko) are located from my DC perspective.
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Pristina and Belgrade need to move ahead
The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly has adopted a vigorous but reasonable resolution calling for a serious investigation of organ trafficking and inhuman treatment in the aftermath of the NATO/Serbia war. While I had concerns about the uncaveated and incautious way in which Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty presented his allegations, it seems to me appropriate that EULEX, the European Rule of Law mission in Kosovo, be charged with determining the facts, bringing any charges that may be appropriate in Kosovo, and ensuring the protection of witnesses.
At the same time, the re-run of elections in some Kosovo municipalities has apparently confirmed Hashim Thaci, accused in Marty’s report of directing the organ trafficking operation, as the winner of Kosovo’s parliamentary poll. To govern, he will need to form a majority governing coalition that includes Serbs and other minorities as well as at least one other Albanian political party. Kosovo Albanian voters appear disinclined to block Thaci from a new mandate because of the organ trafficking allegations, though his political rivals may well try to unseat him by forming an alternative majority.
In some societies, Thaci would be expected to resign while being investigated, but the more usual practice in my experience is to continue in office unless an indictment (a formal charge) is brought to court. I imagine that is what Thaci will do, though I hasten to add that I have not been in touch with him and believe that the decision on this issue belongs entirely to Kosovars, whose interests are most immediately at stake, not internationals.
The question is whether Thaci’s remaining in office will weaken Kosovo’s negotiating position vis-a-vis Serbia in the talks on practical issues that the General Assembly has called for, and that the EU is prepared to facilitate. Belgrade has said it is still prepared to meet with Thaci, but that doesn’t mean it is a good idea from the Kosovar perspective.
If the talks were best held at a political level, I would have doubts. But that is not the case. Pristina and Belgrade need to focus in the first instance on issues that are likely to be best dealt with below the political level. Looming in the background there will always be the issue of status, which the Kosovars regard as resolved in favor of independence and sovereignty but the Serbs would like to re-open, at least for the northern municipalities that they control.
The distance between a practical issue and a status issue is rarely more than a sentence or two. It would of course resolve a lot of things if Belgrade were to accept the facts and recognize Kosovo as an independent and sovereign state, albeit one in which Serbs have legitimate interests. But Belgrade is not going to do that, so the best we can hope for is some confidence-building progress on other issues. That can be achieved at the technical level, often between officials in the respective administrations.
Of course some might argue that miscreants may be present at that level as well, but that is true for both sides. It seems to me that if Albanian Kosovars are prepared to meet with Serbian officials, Serbian officials should be prepared to meet with Kosovan officials, whatever their ethnic group. It is time to get things moving, before Belgrade begins to get distracted by its own electoral cycle.
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Let’s be clear
“Europe may have reacted hastily” by recognizing Kosovo, a Member of the European Parliament is quoted as saying on Serbia’s B92 website. This sentiment has appeared regularly in recent weeks, based on unsubstantiated allegations by a Council of Europe rapporteur who opposed Kosovo’s February 2008 declaration of independence.
While the allegations require serious investigation, the efforts to call into question Kosovo’s independence are unjustified. Kosovo became independent because Serbia stopped treating its majority population as citizens. This was clearest in Milosevic’s attempt to remove Albanians from Kosovo in 1999, but it was no less damaging to Serbia’s claims of sovereignty when the post-Milosevic Serbian state did not count the Kosovo Albanians on the voter rolls for the 2006 referendum on its new constitution, thus denying them their right under the then existing constitution to block the adoption of a new one by not voting (the then existing constitution required that 50 per cent of registered voters participate in the referendum, a percentage that would not have been reached had the Albanians been counted).
Members of the Kosovo Liberation Army that fought for independence in the late 1990s now stand accused at the Council of Europe of heinous crimes. These allegations have been circulated for a long time: they are stock in trade in Belgrade, where officials have investigated them and spread rumors about them for 10 years. This does not mean they aren’t true–they clearly need to be investigated more objectively and professionally. It does mean we should suspend judgment and treat those individuals allegedly involved, including Prime Minister Thaci, as innocent until proven guilty in a properly constituted court with jurisdiction over the case. If the allegations are eventually found to be true, a possibility that cannot be excluded, that would still not bear on Kosovo’s independence any more than accusations of corruption against Croatia’s former prime minister bear on Zagreb’s bid for EU membership.
Much more immediately damaging to Kosovo than the unsubstantiated allegations are the claims, reported not only by B92 from EU sources but also by Albanian sources, that threats and fraud plagued not only the December elections in Kosovo but also the January 9 rerun in several municipalities. These elections were an ideal opportunity for Kosovo to demonstrate unequivocally its democratic credentials. Whoever has tampered with the voters and the votes has done his country serious harm.
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Bosnia still needs the U.S. as well as Europe
International Crisis Group, in a piece published today, urges a kind of unilateral coup by the EU to take over the lead international role in Bosnia:
European Union (EU) member states should make 2011 the year when the lead international role in Bosnia and Herzegovina shifts from the Office of the High Representative (OHR) to a reinforced EU delegation.
With scarce reference to coordinating with the United States or its future role, ICG claims Bosnia and Herzegovina has outgrown the OHR, the arbiter of Dayton agreement implementation, and will do just fine if current conditions for its abolition are dropped or finessed and the weight of the international community’s intervention is shifted to the question of EU membership, with no executive authority for the EU representative. Somehow conditions for EU membership will be much more effective, international community credibility in imposing conditions will not be reduced just because the last set is being ignored, and OHR can be left to tidy up its unfinished business and wither away.
I confess a serious temptation to support wholeheartedly ICG’s bold proposition. The Washington has too many issues on its shrinking plate today–getting rid of a few leftovers from the 1990s would be most welcome. Bosnia was never a vital U.S. interest. President Clinton’s intervention there in the 1995 was precipitated by an accumulation of secondary interests, combined with Senator Dole’s sharp criticism of the Administration for not intervening as it promised it would during the previous electoral campaign. Today, Bosnia lies way down the list of priorities. As a taxpayer, I would count Europe taking over as a big plus.
The trouble is that I doubt Europe can do it with anything like the forcefulness and clarity required, and nothing in the ICG report convinces me otherwise. The ICG report simply ignores Milorad Dodik’s many threats to take Republika Srpska (RS) in the direction of independence, as if they are not to be taken seriously (unless they present themselves in military guise, at which point the report seems confident the U.S. will join Turkey and the EU in preventing it from happening). The report treats the RS’s many acts of defiance as rightful and all attempts by the international community to block or blunt them, except the most discreet, as arbitrary, mistaken or unjustified. It is hard to imagine how the report would be much different if it had been written in Banja Luka, where RS’s masters call the tune.
The sad fact is that Europe and the U.S. need to act in close concert in Bosnia, where Europe’s voice is still weak and divided and the American voice is heard more loudly and clearly. A quick visit to Mostar, where the EU has achieved little since 1993, and to Brcko, where the U.S. has led a real effort at reintegration, would show what difference it makes.
My own worst fear is that Europe, left to its own confused devices, will begin to de facto negotiate EU membership separately with the RS, which will happily volunteer to implement the acquis communitaire without any help from Sarajevo. Already European ministers regularly call on Milorad Dodik in Banja Luka as if he is leading an independent state, something the Americans have generally tried to avoid. If Dodik can prevent formation of a government in Sarajevo for a few more months, as he likely can given his showing in the last election, he’ll be in a position to leave Sarajevo in the figurative dust when it comes to implementing European requirements.
I would not protest a well-coordinated move to shift more weight to a truly amped up EU Delegation, but that should include a plan for meeting the conditions for closure of the OHR (the ICG description of the current state of play on these makes interesting reading) as well as for strong American participation in the European effort. There is nothing unusual about this. The head of the International Civilian Office, who is also the EU representative in Kosovo, has a strong American deputy, and Americans have participated in many EU missions, starting to my knowledge with the European customs mission in Bosnia right after the war.
No effort that simply drops the Americans from the picture, or ignores the local political context as much as ICG’s does, will succeed. Bosnia still needs the U.S. as well as Europe.
NOTE TO THE PRESS: please cite www.peacefare.net when quoting or reproducing this piece in any language.
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Repeating the allegations doesn’t make them true
Chuck Sudetic, whom I know and respect, in his Washington Post op/ed Saturday repeats Dick Marty’s allegations about high-level criminal activity in Kosovo in 1999-2000, this time without the important reservation that no forensic investigation has been conducted and no claims of guilt or innocence can be made. This is pretty rich, coming from the co-author of Carla Del Ponte’s memoir. Carla was the Hague Tribunal prosecutor who failed herself to mount a serious investigation of these allegations but nevertheless saw fit to include them, briefly, in the memoir.
Marty’s report, Chuck says, does not attack Kosovo’s legitimacy, but as is now well known Marty himself took a strong stand against Kosovo independence, on legal grounds that have now been vitiated in their entirety by the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice. Are we to believe, as Chuck claims, that the Marty report “draws upon Albanian eyewitnesses and insiders as well as Western intelligence and police agencies, and not upon the Albanians’ foe, the government of Serbia”? There are clear signs in the Marty report of information coming from Serbia, whether directly or through those Western intelligence and police agencies.
I repeat what I have said previously: I do not know the truth or falsity of the allegations, precisely because no serious forensic investigation has been conducted. That is what is needed, complete with the latest scientific techniques as well as witness protection, which Chuck rightly calls for.
He is also correct in one other important respect: these allegations, even if true, are no grounds for calling into question Kosovo’s legitimacy as an independent state. Does anyone think Croatia less legitimate as a state because its former prime minister now stands accused of corruption? Or that Serbia should not be independent because it was led for many years by a president accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity? Those who have tried to open up this line of attack are doing their own cause a serious disservice, and making it difficult for both Pristina and Tirana to do what they should, namely cooperate fully with a serious investigation.
Chuck exaggerates American responsibility in this matter, referring repeatedly to the United States and its diplomats as if only what they say goes. But Washington and Brussels together can and should exert the pressure needed to get a serious investigation under way, with full cooperation from Pristina, Tirana and Belgrade.
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