Tag: Balkans
Ending the Kosovo conundrum
The Conflict Managment program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies sponsors a trip every January to a conflict area, after a semester of related study and briefings in DC. This year we did the trip virtually (via Zoom) to Pristina and Belgrade. You are cordially invited to attend our presentation of research results and recommendations for the future, 4:30 pm May 18, register here:
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The one-sided war of dreadful non-papers continues, mine next!
Koha Ditore has published a non-paper on the EU-sponsored dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina. The origins of the paper have not been verified, though it is widely referred to as French and German. They deny it originates with official Paris and Berlin.
I’m not worried about the origins of the paper. It clearly reflects ideas discussed within the EU. I comment below on its dreadful contents.
While asserting the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence of both Kosovo and Serbia, in practice this proposal requires that Pristina surrender practical application of sovereignty over economic development, health, urban and rural planning in Serbian communities both north and south of the Ibar River as well as sovereignty over dozens of Serbian Orthodox Church sites and institutions, whose protective zones would be extended in some undefined fashion. In the north, this proposal includes an “autonomous” district that would in addition acquire legislative authority over finance, property, infrastructure, culture, social welfare, the judiciary and police, housing, and European cooperation, with only a vague wave of the hand in the direction of Kosovo’s constitution.
In return, Pristina gets practically nothing: no bilateral recognition by Serbia and no UN membership, only vague promises of treatment as a sovereign state, including exchange of ill-defined permanent diplomatic missions. President Vucic was right when he said this offers more than the Ahtisaari Plan. It offers a great deal more to Serbia and requires much less of Belgrade. It would even roll back specific provisions of the 2013 Brussels Agreement that extended Pristina’s judicial and police authority to northern Kosovo.
All you need to do to understand the profound unfairness of this proposal is to ask whether Belgrade would be prepared to make it reciprocal, empowering the Albanian-majority communities of southern Serbia in the way proposed here for the Serb-majority municipalities of Kosovo. “No” is the answer. Nor would Serbia be prepared to offer an undefined extension of protected areas around mosques inside Serbia. Reciprocity is one of the basic rules of sovereign states. This proposal would leave the Kosovo state significantly less sovereign than it is today while asking Belgrade to do little more than continue to maintain a representative in Pristina.
The non-paper war is not doing the cause of peace and stability in the Western Balkans much good. The two salvos so far have come from one side, the first in favor of moving borders to accommodate ethnic differences and the second in favor of keeping borders where they are but not respecting the Kosovo’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. So I think I’ll prepare my own non-paper. It won’t move borders and will be consistent with official US policy of respect for the sovereignty and terrritorial integrity of all the states of the Balkans, but it will add some practical means of achieving what most in Europe, the US, and the Western Balkans says they want: prosperous and democratic states worthy of EU membership. Look for it in the next few days on peacefare.net!
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Montenegro is under attack and needs American help
The last time Montenegro appeared in the US press President Donald Trump was shoving its Prime Minister out of his way during the Summit at which the former Yugoslav republic joined NATO in 2017. Now Montenegro’s government, which came to power last September, is shoving aside NATO in favor of improved relations with Serbia and Russia.
Until last fall, Montenegro had been governed for most of the last 30 years by Milo Djukanovic, either as President or Prime Minister. Still in the presidency, he has been a determined advocate of Montenegro’s independence, achieved in 2006, and its affiliation with the US and Europe. Montenegro has become a front-runner in the Western Balkan regatta for European Union membership.
Djukanovic’s multiethnic political coalition lost the parliamentary election last August by one seat to a coalition whose core support comes from people who resisted Montenegrin independence from Serbia and identify not as Montenegrin but as Serb. This occurred after months of raucous street demonstrations supported by the Serbian Orthodox Church, Serbia, and Russia, which conducted an intense disinformation campaign on conventional and social media.
The sponsors are getting their payback.
An effort to regularize the status of the Serbian Orthodox Church and its property in Montenegro has been dropped. Security officials have been replaced with people close to Russia. The conviction of two politicians involved in the Russian-backed plot to assassinate Djukanovic in 2016 has been overturned. Even the rector of the main university has been purged in exchange for a Russophile.
Belgrade and Moscow are gloating. Serbian President Vucic hopes to re-attach Montenegro to Serbia as part of a broader ambition to create what he calls a “SerbianWorld” that would include parts of Kosovo and Bosnia. His Defense Minister, who denies the genocide at Srebrenica, advocates a greater Serbian political space, the cause for which the genocide was committed. The Russians are using the friendlier officials in Montenegro’s defense establishment to gain access to confidential NATO information. Violence and vandalism are plaguing minority communities that have long supported Djukanovic.
President Djukanovic himself is staying calm, biding his time for a reversal of the electoral defeat. While his coalition lost a municipal election in his hometown of Niksic on March 14, his party did well and signaled that he is still a force to be reckoned with. His opponents are pouring in money and Russian-generated disinformation in their effort to weaken Djukanovic further, in preparation for the next presidential election in 2023.
The United States and the European Union have so far refrained from expressing strong concern, despite the well-known Serbian and Russian interference during the campaign. Election day was reasonably free and fair and the subsequent transition was constitutional and mostly peaceful. Djukanovic’s coalition had been in power for a long time and had worn out its credibility with some people in both Washington and Brussels by accruing repeated and persistent corruption and organized crime allegations. It looked initially like the kind of alternation in power that is normal and desirable in a real democracy.
An election dominated by Serbian and Russian disinformation does not, however, betoken democratic alternation. Montenegro’s problem is that it never generated a pro-Western opposition capable of alternating with Djukanovic’s coalition. The current government has pledged not to reverse the Western thrust of the country’s foreign policy, but in practice it is doing just that. NATO has been concerned enough to send a security team to ensure that classified information does not go astray. The deputy prime minister has admitted to breaches of NATO classified information by a newly appointed security official. The European Union has objected to several legislative initiatives, including closing the special prosecution office charged with investigating the 2016 assassination plot.
Washington has been silent. It should not stay that way. President Biden, decorated by the Montenegro in 2018, knows the country well and supported its NATO aspirations when he was Vice President. So too did prominent Republicans like Secretary of State Pompeo and Senator Lindsay Graham. The U.S. Administration and Congress should both ring a loud alarm warning that the current Montenegrin government will not be allowed to undermine the Alliance from inside.
Montenegro has been a notable, decades-long success story. It stayed out of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, liberated itself from Slobodan Milosevic’s autocracy, declared independence peacefully, converted most of its economy to a market system, opened negotiations on all the required “chapters” for accession to the EU, and joined NATO, where it contributes in particular to cybersecurity. That long record of success is now at risk. If President Biden wants to encourage other countries to travel this difficult path, Washington should lend a helping hand.
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A Bronx cheer for a dumb idea
COVID-19 isn’t the only epidemic in the Balkans. There is an even more deadly one: proposals to move borders. There is no vaccine to prevent their spread. Below is a good pictorial summary, courtesy of Rada Trajkovic, who tweets:
Balkans corrupt, criminalised, illiberal leaders have been so emboldened by their unfettered domestic power grabs that they now believe they can play a (bloody) game with our borders. Perfect distraction from their poor domestic records & a way to destabilise the EU for decades.
Greater Albania, Greater Serbia, Greater Croatia: the wet dream of Franjo Tudjman, Slobodan Milosevic, Hasan Pristina. Everyone wins!
But of course there are losers, both on this map and beyond. The Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims to the American press, no matter how unreligious) get an indefensible, rump state surrounded by sworn enemies and ripe for radicalization. The Kosovo Albanians lose their state and become the northeastern province of Albania. The major Serb Orthodox sites south of the Ibar River in Kosovo would no longer be sustainable. Macedonia loses perhaps 40% of its territory. Several hundred thousand people (maybe half a million or more?) on the “wrong” side of ethnically defined new borders would have to relocate or run the risks associated with minorities in ethnically defined states.
Beyond this map the repurcussions would also be dramatic: once the principle of not changing borders to accommodate ethnic differences is breached, the Russian position on South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia, Transnistria in Moldova, and Crimea and Donbas in Ukraine would be vastly strengthened. Russian challenges to the terriorial integrity of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania would not be far behind.
All of this is well understood in the United States and Europe. Few in Washington, London, or Brussels are interested in opening Pandora’s Box. But the West is distracted. The US is confronting a long list of foreign policy challenges. The EU is preoccupied with COVID-19, economic recession, and the aftermath of Brexit. Ditto the UK. Chancellor Merkel, the EU’s trump card when it comes to pursuing liberal democracy in the Balkans and many other matters, is getting ready to retire without a worthy heir apparent.
The current preference in the West is not to move borders but to make them less cumbersome. This proposition goes under the heading of “mini-Schengen,” an effort on the regional level to mirror the EU’s borderless Schengen area. Removing visas, tariffs and non-tariff barriers while shortening the waiting time for trucks at the all too frequent border stations in the Balkans could improve efficiency and hasten the day that the Balkans can join the “maxi” Schengen area.
That is a much easier and more promising prospect than moving half a million people, many of them against their will. Violence is the only force that could achieve what the map above projects. American and European troops would either need to suppress murder and mayhem in Kosovo, Bosnia, and North Macedonia or evacuate, something that would no doubt be celebrated in Moscow. Nor would violence stop there: the Serbs of Montenegro would seek union with Serbia while the Bosniaks of Serbia’s Sandjak seek union with rump Bosnia, pushing aside people of other ethnicities in the effort. Perhaps the Russians could use renewed Balkan violence as a pretext for deploying their own troops, as they did recently to end the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In short: the map above is a proposal for death and destruction, instability, NATO and European embarrassment, and still another Russian win, in addition to ensuring the ethnic nationalist political stranglehold in the Balkans for another generation. Those who propose such an outrage merit oppropbrium from real democracies. I hope the US and EU can spare a few moments from their many other priorities to give this distraction the diplomatic equivalent of the Bronx cheer it deserves:
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A good move, but more is needed
My reaction to this letter from the Secretary of State to the tripartite presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is mixed. It is good that it presses hard on the need for constitutional as well as other reforms. It has been apparent for the better part of two decades that BiH needs profound changes in how power is gained and distributed in order to make it a functional state that can deliver services to its citizens.
But it fails to make clear, except by implication, that reform will need to go in the direction of strengthening individual rights relative to the group rights that the Dayton constitution favored. It also pretends to be modest in its goals, while laying out a broad requirement for constitutional, legal, electoral, and economic reforms. It is not clear whether those goals have been sufficiently coordinated with the European Union and its member states, who hold most of the carrots and sticks that can incentivize the needed reforms. Broad goals without sufficient incentives are not a formula for success.
In the more than 25 years since the Dayton agreements were signed, most BiH reform processes have either ended in drivel or in strengthening the ethnically-based power sharing system that is at the root of the country’s dysfunctional governance. It will take vigorous and coordinated diplomatic and political effort by the EU and US to prevent that from happening again. Milorad Dodik, the first member of the presidency to which this note is addressed, is a past master at blocking any reforms that threaten his corrupt and autocratic control over BiH’s Serb-majority entity, Republika Srpska. He exploits fear of the country’s Muslim majority and Serb nationalism, including the threat of secession and union with Serbia, to ensure that he stays in one powerful position or another.
It is a particular irony that Dodik is necessarily an addressee of this letter. The US has sanctioned him for violation of the Dayton accords:
Specifically, Dodik was designated for his role in defying the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in violation of the rule of law, thereby actively obstructing the Dayton Accords; Dodik was also designated for conduct that poses a significant risk of actively obstructing the same.
At the same time, Dodik is collaborating with a nationalist Croat leader, Dragan Covic, in attempting to implement a Constitutional Court decision in a way that favors ethnic nationalist political parties. While objecting to the authority of the Constitutional Court in principle, Dodik exploits any decisions it makes that he likes.
The missing ingredient in BiH reform proposals in the past has been popular support. The country’s citizens have left governance and reform largely to ethnic nationalists who have convinced their three respective groups (Bosniak, Serb, and Croat) that they need to be protected from one or two of the others. If there is no pressure from the street, the ethnic nationalists will do with the American initiative what they have always done: strengthen their own positions and prevent the emergence of a trans-ethnic coalition that can challenge their hold on power.
The Americans know this. What is unclear from Blinken’s letter is what they will try to do about it. Without popular demand for reform that protects individual rights and reduces the saliency of group rights, BiH will continue to be a dysfunctional and semi-democratic state ruled mainly by kleptocratic ethnic leaders who enjoy near monopolies on power. Individuals with equal rights are the essential ingredient of democratic governance. They are what BiH lacks. Only Bosnians, with some international assistance, can produce them.
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Elucidating a tragic moment in the Balkans
I received this note from the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade this morning:
March 17, 2021 marks the 17th anniversary of the March violence in Kosovo. During two days, March 17 and 18, 2004, Albanian protesters attacked Serbs, Roma and Ashkali, their property and Orthodox religious buildings throughout Kosovo.
In the March violence, 23 people lost their lives, 954 people were injured, almost 900 houses were completely destroyed or severely damaged, 36 Orthodox religious buildings were demolished and burned, and about 4,000 people were displaced.
Attached was this report by Isidora Stakić, which I find enlightening:
The retreat of the Serbian army and police from Kosovo in June 1999 meant liberation for Kosovo Albanians from Serbian rule and repression, and for Kosovo Serbs it meant the beginning of a new reality marked by the unwillingness and inability of UNMIK and KFOR to protect the personal safety of Serbs, Montenegrins, Bosniaks and Roma people, but also by the prevailing conviction of Kosovo politicians and the public that the priority is independence, followed by solidarity with the Serbs who stayed in Kosovo.[1]
The post-war reality was not easy for Kosovo Albanians either; much of their expectations of liberation came under pressure from the difficult economic situation and faintly observable justice for the thousands of civilians killed and a large number of missing. The then-new government of the Republic of Serbia made a step forward by discovering mass graves in Serbia, but the right-wing political parties, that were part of the government, managed to marginalize the question of the responsibility of the Yugoslav Army and Ministry of Interior for war crimes and influence Kosovo Serbs not to take participation in building a new political system in Kosovo. The killings and disappearances of Serbs and Roma, frequent until the end of 2000, would take place in the presence of KFOR and UNMIK, leading both the remaining Serbs and most of the Albanians to a conclusion that post-war perpetrators had the tacit consent of the international community to create Kosovo without Serbs.[2]
What were the triggers?
The March violence (17 and 18 March 2004) was preceded by three events. The first occurred on the 15th of March in the village of Čaglavica/Çagllavicë, when 18-year-old Serb Jovica Ivić was shot at and wounded in the abdomen and arm. Ivić claimed that the attackers were Albanians.[3] In response to this attack, Serbs from Čaglavica/Çagllavicë blocked the Priština/Prishtinë-Skoplje/Shkup road, a vital route for Albanians, and threw stones at Albanians’ vehicles.[4] This provoked anger of the Albanian community and strong condemnation by its political leaders who accused Serbs of endangering freedom of movement, and UNMIK of being passive towards the blockade.
At about the same time, in several cities in Kosovo, the associations of KLA veterans organized protests over the arrest of former KLA commanders charged with war crimes. These protests were directed, above all, against UNMIK, whose representatives made the arrests. In speeches during the protest, UNMIK was described as a neo-colonial force that “supporting organized crime and continuing the same politics applied by Serbia“.[5]
The third event took place on the afternoon of March 16, when three Albanian boys drowned in the Ibar/Iber river in the Serb-majority municipality of Zubin Potok. Immediately after the accident, the Kosovo media reported on this tragic event as an ethnically-motivated crime, stating that the boys jumped into the river because they were being chased by Serbs with a dog. The media were appealing to the statements of the fourth, surviving boy and the only eyewitness of the accident, but it turned out that the boy talked about Serbs with a dog cursing at them from a nearby house – which scared him and his friends – and not about Serbs chasing them.[6] Later, after investigating the incident, the international prosecutor concluded that the offered evidence did not support the existence of a reasonable suspicion that a crime had been committed.[7]
Although there was a possibility, on the day of the accident, that it was an ethnically motivated crime, the media couldn’t know that beyond any doubt and they were obliged to report professionally, following the known facts. Instead, Kosovo media – and TV stations in particular – reported sensationally, recklessly, emotionally and biasedly.[8] As the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media noted in his report, the media did not intentionally incite the violence that would follow the strangulation of the boy, but “had it not been for the reckless and sensationalist reporting, events could have taken a different turn.“[9]
The March violence in numbers
The March riots began in the morning of 17 March with a gathering of Kosovo Albanians in the southern part of Mitrovica/Mitrovicë and soon spread to many other towns in Kosovo. On March 17 and 18, 2004, 50-60,000 Kosovo Albanians took part in the violence, targeting Serbs, Roma and Ashkali, their property and Orthodox religious buildings. The participants in riots would use rocks and Molotov cocktails, set fire to people’s property and shoot at buildings, expel, intimidate and beat people. During the riots, the protesters would clash with UNMIK police and KFOR soldiers, and in some places with Serbs. The violence involved mostly younger men who spontaneously took to the streets. Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimates that the riots were both spontaneous and organized: although most of the protesters joined the riots spontaneously, there is no doubt that Albanian extremists worked to organize and accelerate the spread of violence.[10]
In the March violence in Kosovo, 23 people lost their lives: Macedonian Jana Tučev, nine Serbs – Dragan Nedeljković, Slobodan Perić, Dušanka Petković, Borivoje Spasojević, Borko Stolić, Dobrivoje Stolić, Slobodan Tanjić, Zlatibor Trajković and Nenad Vesić, and thirteen Albanians – Fatmir Abdullahu, Ferid Çitaku, Bujar Elshani, Kastriot Elshani, Isak Ibrahimi, Alumuhamet Murseli, Agron Ramadani, Nexhat Rrahmani, Arben Shala, Gazmend Shala, Ajvaz Shatrolli, Esat Tahiraj and one Albanian from Priština/Prishtinë whose name the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) failed to identify.[11]
Among the victims, there were two women: Jana Tučev, who was shot dead with a firearm in her apartment in northern Mitrovica, and Dušanka Petkovic from Uroševac, who was a heart patient and died in KFOR base the day after she was kicked out from her house. Four of the Serbs were killed by Albanians with firearms, two were burned in their homes, the cause of death of one of them is unknown, and one disappeared during the evacuation. Two of the Albanians were killed by KFOR members, three lost their lives in clashes with KFOR and Serbs, one was killed by a UNMIK policewoman when he attacked another person with a knife, one was killed by a sniper by Serbs, and the reason of the death of the other Albanians is unknown.[12]
The April 2004 report by the UN Secretary-General stated that 954 people had been injured in the March violence, including 65 international police officers, 61 KFOR members and 58 members of the Kosovo Police Service (KPS).[13]According to the data collected by the HLC in months after the March violence, about 170 Serbs were seriously injured, 150 of them by beatings at their homes, while 20 were attacked outdoor.[14] About 800 Serbian, 90 Ashkali and two Albanian houses were completely destroyed or severely damaged, and 36 Orthodox religious buildings were demolished and burned.[15]
After the March violence, about 4,000 people, having lost their homes, were displaced – some of them for the second time, since they had already been displaced in 1999.[16] Older people found themselves in a particularly difficult socio-economic situation, as well as the others who lost in these riots all the property they had been acquiring all their lives. Immediately after the violence, many people who lost their homes were accommodated in containers provided by the international community and where the living conditions were very poor.[17] The displaced Serbs were largely dissatisfied with the damage assessments made by Albanian institutions, pointing out that the material damage they suffered was much greater.[18] Also, they complained that the help they used to receive from the Government of Serbia was insufficient or that they were not getting it at all.[19]
In January 2006, 1,231 of approximately 4,000 displaced persons after the March violence still had the status of displaced persons.[20] By June 2007, 897 previously destroyed or damaged residential buildings had been rebuilt, out of the intended 993.[21]
Actions of security institutions: KFOR, UNMIK police and KPS
Kosovo’s security institutions – both international (KFOR and UNMIK police) and local (KPS) – have failed to protect people and their property. According to the HRW report, members of the international forces interviewed after the March riots showed a lack of self-criticism and unawareness of their mistakes, shifting the blame to each other, but also justifying themselves by lack of material and human resources, inexperience in suppressing protests, surprise factor, lack of coordination, etc.[22] Members of KFOR were unable to prevent the attacks, but mostly acted as rescue teams, helping Serbs evacuate. They would leave unsecured houses behind, and in the presence of KFOR, Serb and Ashkali houses in several municipalities throughout Kosovo were destroyed and looted.[23] UNMIK police have also shown that they cannot control the situation and have no authority.[24]
The Kosovo Police Service (KPS) acted without command and instruction, so the conduct of KPS members varied from place to place. Some police officers sided with the protesters and participated in the destruction of property or they would arrest Serbs and Ashkali who were trying to defend themselves, ignoring at the same time the Albanian violence. Most KPS members were passive observers and wouldn’t interfere even when Serbs were being beaten by the protesters. The third group includes police officers who acted professionally in an effort to facilitate a safe evacuation, which some Serbs see as indirect participation in the expulsion, while others point out that this saved their lives.[25]
Solidarity
Most Kosovo Albanians who did not take part in the riots passively watched what was happening. However, there were also bright examples where Albanians tried to help Serbs by providing shelter in their homes, calling the police, helping them reach KFOR bases and other safe places, but also standing in front of Serb houses preventing protesters from destroying them.[26] In some cases, however, not even the solidarity of the neighbors was able to stop the wave of violence.
“When a group of Albanians came in front of our house, they started setting it on fire, and I was hiding in a toilet hole. I heard two of my neighbors, Albanians, telling them that I was a good man, that I had done nothing wrong to anyone, but it didn’t help. An Albanian who works in the mosque came and chased the two away. After that, they started setting the fire,” said the Serb M.I. from Kosovo Polje/Fushë Kosovë.[27]
The behavior of Albanian political leaders did not help stop the violence. Even when they called for an end to the violence, those calls seemed insincere and forced.[28]
Violent reactions in Serbia
The events in Kosovo provoked protests in several cities in Serbia, which soon became violent. Protesters in Belgrade set fire to Belgrade’s Bajrakli mosque on the night between March 17 and 18, shouting “Kill Shiptar”, “Kill, slaughter, let Shiptar disappear” and “Let’s go to Kosovo”.[29] Until the protesters broke through the police cordon, the police had an order not to use force.[30] The Bajrakli mosque, thanks to its construction, was not completely burned, but its interior was largely destroyed, including the library and art objects. Protesters in Niš set fire to Islam-aga’s mosque and it was even more severely damaged than Belgrade’s mosque.
In Novi Sad, rioters broke shop windows, destroyed and set fire to bakeries owned by Albanians and other Muslims, and broke windows to the Islamic Center premises. The police were mostly passive, standing aside while the protesters stoned the houses in Roma and Ashkali communities,[31] although Roma and Ashkali were not in any way involved in violence against Kosovo Serbs, but they themselves were also victims of the violence.
Trials
According to the UNMIK statistics from 2008, 242 people have been charged for the March violence (206 before local and 36 before international prosecutors), and additionally, 157 people have been charged before courts for misdemeanors.[32] International judges and prosecutors dealt mainly with cases involving serious crimes such as murder, attempted murder, incitement to national hatred and causing general danger, while the most common offenses before domestic courts were: participation in a group that committed a criminal offense and aggravated theft.[33]
The trials of these indictments were accompanied by a number of problems and difficulties, including defaulting witnesses, changing the testimonies of witnesses, procrastination of the police in submitting reports, postponing the main hearing, disregarding ethnic motives, imposing minimum sentences or even sentences below the prescribed minimum, the too frequent imposition of suspended sentences, etc.[34]
Out of a total of 399 indictees, 301 were convicted by April 2008. According to the OSCE, 86 persons were sentenced to prison (including suspended sentences), and the maximum sentence was 16 years in prison.[35] The March violence never happened again in Kosovo, thanks in part to KFOR, UNMIK and the Kosovo police.
[1] Humanitarian Law Center (2004) Ethnic Communities in Kosovo 2003 and 2004, p. 6, available at http://hlc-rdc.org/wp-content/uploads/editor/file/Etnicke_zajednice2003-2004..pdf
[2] Humanitarian Law Center (2004) Ethnic Violence in Kosovo, p. 2, available at http://www.hlc-rdc.org/images/stories/pdf/izvestaji/FHP_izvestaj-Etnicko_nasilje_na_Kosovu-mart_2004-srpski.pdf
[3] Human Rights Watch (2004) Failure to Protect: Anti-Minority Violence in Kosovo, March 2004, p. 16, available at https://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/kosovo0704/kosovo0704.pdf
[4] Humanitarian Law Center (2004) Ethnic Violence in Kosovo, p. 4.
[5] Human Rights Watch (2004), Failure to Protect: Anti-Minority Violence in Kosovo, March 2004, p. 18.
[6] OSCE (2004) The Role of the Media in the March 2004 Events in Kosovo, p. 4-5, available at https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/6/8/30265.pdf
[7] Humanitarian Law Center (2004) Ethnic Violence in Kosovo, p. 5.
[8] OSCE (2004) The Role of the Media in the March 2004 Events in Kosovo, p. 3.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Human Rights Watch (2004), Failure to Protect: Anti-Minority Violence in Kosovo, March 2004, p. 26-28.
[11] Humanitarian Law Center (2004) Ethnic Violence in Kosovo.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Secretary-General of the United Nations (2004) Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations
Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, 30 April 2004, p. 1, available at https://unmik.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/s-2004-348.pdf
[14] Humanitarian Law Center (2004) Ethnic Violence in Kosovo, p. 4.
[15] Ibid.
[16] OSCE (2007) Eight Years After: Minority Returns and Housing and Property Restitution in Kosovo, p. 33, available at https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/d/e/26324.pdf
[17] Many HLC interlocutors talk about poor living conditions in container settlements. For further details see: Humanitarian Law Center (2004) Ethnic Violence in Kosovo.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] OSCE (2007) Eight Years After: Minority Returns and Housing and Property Restitution in Kosovo, p. 34.
[21] Ibid., p. 33-34.
[22] Human Rights Watch (2004), Failure to Protect: Anti-Minority Violence in Kosovo, March 2004, p. 22-26.
[23] Humanitarian Law Center (2004) Ethnic Violence in Kosovo.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid., p. 2; See also: Human Rights Watch (2004), Failure to Protect: Anti-Minority Violence in Kosovo, March 2004, p. 22.
[26] Many HLC interlocutors talk about Albanians who helped Serbs. For further details see Humanitarian Law Center (2004) Ethnic Violence in Kosovo.
[27] Humanitarian Law Center (2004) Ethnic Violence in Kosovo, str. 21-22.
[28] Ibid., p. 3.
[29] BBC News in Serbian (2019) 15 Years After: Who is Responsible for the March Violence in Kosovo, 17 March 2019. Available at https://www.bbc.com/serbian/lat/balkan-47569978
[30] Human Rights Watch (2005) March 2004 Violence against Albanians and Muslims, available at https://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/serbia1005/4.htm
[31] Ibid.
[32] OSCE (2008) Four Years Later: Follow up of March 2004 Riots Cases before the Kosovo Criminal Justice System, p. 3-4, available at https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/c/4/32701.pdf
[33] Ibid., p. 23.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid.
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