Tag: United Nations
Why partition of Kosovo is bad for Serbs
Today I spent a couple of hours at the Serbian orthodox monastery in Dečani, a 14th century beauty of enormous historical and religious significance to the Serbian Church. There is only one Serb living in the town, which lies in a cradle of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The monastery currently houses 24 monks and is building a guest house to handle an increased flow of visitors.
I heard no flag-waving Serb nationalism at the monastery. The mood there is contemplative and reflective. No one there wanted Kosovo independence, but political frameworks are transitory. The Church needs to ensure its own permanence.
Its primary concerns are two: the welfare of its flock and the protection of its churches, monasteries and other property. Most of these are south of the Ibar river, which is often proposed as the dividing line for a partition between the Serb-majority population of the north and the Albanian-majority population of the south. The Church opposes partition. It would lead to the loss of the Serb population south of the Ibar and most of the precious churches, monasteries and property.
But that view does not carry much weight in Belgrade, where the politicians simply want to hold onto something in Kosovo so that they can claim they have not lost everything. Nor is the Church particularly influential in northern Kosovo, where it has nevertheless tried to convince Serbs not to use violence.
It hasn’t been entirely successful at that either. Serbs in the north have erected barricades–including a large cross–on an important road. KFOR, the NATO-led force that is entrusted by the UN Security Council with ensuring a safe and secure environment in Kosovo, tried to remove them yesterday morning, leading to a clash in which two German soldiers and one American were reportedly injured. The Church is unhappy when such clashes occur, since they increase ethnic tension throughout Kosovo and raise doubts about whether the majority of Serbs who live south of the Ibar can continue to do so.
Kosovo’s government is currently completing the process of adopting constitutional amendments and laws to implement all aspects of the Ahtisaari plan, a proposal for settlement of the Kosovo dispute that was rejected by Belgrade because it entailed Kosovo independence. It provides extensive protection for Serbs and Church property. But the Church worries that constitutional amendments and laws are not sufficient. It wants international guarantees, since there are Albanian political parties that would seek to reverse anything done now to offer protection, should they come to power in the future.
The Western-educated elite that runs many Kosovo institutions today has good intentions. But this elite has little to do with the more traditional clan structures that hold power at the local level. The Church wants the international community to ensure that guarantees will last, no matter who comes to power in Pristina.
All of this sounds to me well grounded and rational. Unfortunately, it is not what we are hearing out of President-elect Tomislav Nikolić in Belgrade. He is still attached to partition ideas that would destabilize a large part of the Balkans.
It is high time Europe as a whole minced no words about this. I doubt Angela Merkel will: her message on a visit last summer to Belgrade was unequivocally against partition. She presumably won’t hesitate to reiterate that message now that two more Germans have been injured. But more is needed: Greece and Cyprus in particular need to recognize that their refusal to recognize Kosovo is encouraging partition proposals that, if adopted, would end with the partition of their favorite island.
Not to mention the loss of this spectacular monastery:
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Goat rope
I arrived in Pristina yesterday and have enjoyed two days of intense conversations about Kosovo’s international relations, which are enormously complex for a country of less than 1.8 million inhabitants.
Let’s review the bidding. Kosovo declared independence in 2008, after almost nine years of UN administration following the 1999 NATO/Yugoslavia war. Serbia, of which Kosovo was at one time a province, did not concur in independence and has not recognized the Kosovo state’s sovereignty. But 90 other countries have, including the United States and 22 of the 27 members of the European Union (EU) and 24 of 28 members of NATO. Russia has blocked approval of UN membership in the Security Council, at the behest of Serbia. An International Civilian Office (ICO) will supervise Kosovo’s independence until September, when it plans to certify that the Kosovo government has fulfilled its responsibilities under the international community “Ahtisaari plan” (the Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status Settlement). That was intended to be the agreement under which Kosovo became independent but was implemented unilaterally (under international community pressure) by the Kosovo government when Serbia refused to play ball. Belgrade and Pristina talk, but almost exclusively in an EU-facilitated and US-supported dialogue limited to resolution of technical, not political, issues.
Even after the ICO closes, Kosovo will be under intense international scrutiny (for a fuller account, see the Kosovar Center for Security studies report). NATO provides a safe and secure environment and is training its security forces for their enhanced roles after the July 2013. An EU rule of law mission monitors Kosovo’s courts and provides international investigators, prosecutors and judges for interethnic cases. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) provides training and advice on democratization, human and minority rights. The Council of Europe (CoE) administers programs on cultural and archaelogical heritage, social security co-ordination and cybercrime. The UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) continues despite its inconsistency with both the Ahtisaari plan and the declaration of independence, which at Serbia’s behest the International Court of Justice has advised was not in violation of international law or UN Security Council resolution 1244 (which established UNMIK).
Kosovo’s many complications get even worse north of the Ibar river, in the 11% of the country’s territory contiguous with Serbia that is still not under Pristina’s control. It may not really be under Belgrade’s control either, but that makes the situation there even more difficult. Partition of that northern bit, which Belgrade authorities have pursued, would likely precipitate ethnic partitions in other parts of the Balkans: Macedonia, Bosnia and Cyprus would all be at risk if Kosovo were split, an outcome neither Europe nor the U.S. wants to face. Serbia’s President-elect Nikolic suggested last week that Belgrade might recognize the Georgian break-away regions of South Ossetia and Abhazia, a move that would simultaneously deprive Serbia of its heretofore principled stance against Kosovo independence but at the same time reinforce Belgrade’s hope for partition of northern Kosovo.
What we’ve got here is a goat rope, as the U.S. military says. The situation seems hopelessly tangled. It is a miracle that the Kosovo government gets anything done with so many foreigners people looking over its shoulders. It naturally also has to meet domestic expectations, which are increasingly in the direction of more independence and fewer non-tourist foreigners, though Americans seem always to get a particularly warm welcome because of their role in past efforts to protect Kosovo from the worst ravages of Slobodan Milošević.
Kosovo unquestionably continues to need help. OSCE recently organized Serbian presidential elections in the Serb communities of Kosovo, a task that would have proven impossible for the Pristina or the Belgrade authorities. NATO has a continuing role because it will be some years yet before Kosovo can defend itself for even a week from a Serbian military incursion, which is unlikely but cannot be ruled out completely until Belgrade recognizes the Kosovo authorities as sovereign. The Kosovo courts would still find it difficult to have their decisions fully accepted in many cases of interethnic crime.
But the time is coming this fall for this overly supervised country to struggle on its own, making a few mistakes no doubt but also holding its authorities responsible for them. Kosovo needs a foreign policy that will take it to the next level. That means not only untangling the goat rope (or occasionally cutting through it) but also achieving normal relations with Belgrade and UN membership. There is no reason that an intense effort over the next decade cannot take Kosovo into NATO and perhaps even into the EU, or close to that goal, provided it treats its Serb and other minority citizens correctly and resolves the many outstanding issues with Belgrade on a reciprocal basis, and peacefully.
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Annan needs to keep at it
With the toll from Friday’s attack on the Syrian village of Houla mounting well over 100 (including dozens of children), it is tempting to denounce the UN’s Annan peace plan as a dead letter. The European edition of the Wall Street Journal this morning headlines, “Syria Massacre Upends Fragile Hopes for Peace.” Others are even more explicit that Annan has failed, and have been saying so for months.
That is a mistake. The UN observers Annan directs did their job at Houla, verifying the incident and assigning blame to the regime. That is precisely what they are there to do. Unarmed, they have no capacity to intervene with force. The Security Council yesterday issued a statement, approved by Russia and China, condemning the Syrian government for the massacre. Minimal as it is, that counts as progress on the diplomatic front. Weaning the Russians from their client, Syrian President Bashar al Assad, is an important diplomatic objective.
The clarity of the UN observers may push the diplomacy further in the right direction. Moscow and Washington are apparently discussing a plan similar to the Yemen transition process, which involved a resignation of the president and a transition guided by the vice president. I have my doubts this particular scheme is viable in Syria, but there may be variants worth discussing that would provide reassurance to the Alawites while initiating a political process that will move the country definitively past the Assad regime.
That is the essential point. It is hard to picture the violence ending and politics beginning without dealing somehow with Alawite fears that they will end up massacred if Bashar al Assad leaves power. That would be a tragedy not only for the Alawites but for the Middle East in general. Let there be no doubt: past experience suggests that those who indulge in abusive violence often become the victims of it when their antagonists get up off the ropes and gain the upper hand.
It would be far better for most Alawites, the relatively small religious sect whose adherents are mainstays of the Assad regime, if a peaceful bridge can be built to post-Assad Syria. They will not of course trust those who have been mistreated not to mistreat them in turn. This is where the diplomats earn their stripes: coming up with a scheme that protects Alawites as a group from instant retaliation while preserving the option of eventually holding individuals judicially accountable for the Assad regime abuses. It is hard to picture a case more difficult than Syria, where the regime has managed to keep most Alawites loyal and used some of them as paramilitary murderers.
There really is no Plan B. The Americans cannot act unilaterally on Syria without losing Russian support in dealing with Iran on its nuclear program. President Obama’s top priority is stopping that program from advancing further toward nuclear weapons. While some think the American elections are a factor restraining the president on Syria, I don’t think he is likely to change his mind even if he wins. Only if he decides that the effort to stop a nuclear Iran has failed will he be tempted to cut the chord with the Russians and lead a military response to Bashar al Assad’s homicidal behavior, thus ending Syria’s alignment with a potentially nuclear Iran and shoring up the Sunni Arab counterweight. But he would only do that in the narrow window before Tehran acquires nuclear weapons, not afterwards.
The observers are supposed to be laying the groundwork for a political solution. Their mandate expires in July. That is the next big decision point. Annan needs to keep at it for now, hoping that the Russians and Americans come to terms and open a window for a political solution that ends the Assad regime.
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Do the right thing
I wrote last October:
There has to be strict accountability for crimes against Serbs if Kosovo is to gain high ground in its international tug of war with Belgrade. The murders in recent weeks have to be made the object of serious investigations leading to arrests and prosecutions. And those who perpetrate these crimes, or who intimidate witnesses, should be viewed as what they are: enemies of a Kosovo state seeking to gain international recognition as a willing and capable defender of the rights of all its citizens.
I confess I do not know if there have been arrests and prosecutions for the murders I was referring to 7 months ago. I’ll be grateful if someone who knows leaves a comment on this post. But in any event what I wrote bears repeating, because it is happening again: threats against Serbs south of the Ibar and an attack on a police checkpoint in the majority Albanian portion of southern Serbia.
I don’t believe in collective guilt or punishment, but I do believe in collective responsibility. People who know better need to restrain the people who commit such crimes and speak out when the restraint fails. There is nothing that can hurt Kosovo’s campaign for international recognition and its effort to be accepted in international organizations more than crimes against Serbs. The perpetrators need to be discouraged, apprehended, tried and convicted. That is what the international community expects of a country that wants to be treated as independent and sovereign.
I met last week with Kosovo’s new crop of ambassadors going abroad. They are a well-educated, talented group, several of whom I’ve known for a long time. But the resources they command are minimal. Kosovo’s moral standing is vital to them. They cannot do their jobs if people in Kosovo are doing things that disgrace the homeland.
Ah, some will say, but you forget the crimes against Albanians! No, I don’t. I remember well hearing Nekibe Kelmendi talk about the murder of her husband and sons. How could anyone forget? And there are thousands of other cases, still unsolved, unprosecuted, unpunished. I don’t excuse Serbia’s failure to pursue these cases, but I have to admit that their failure to do so will have less impact, because Serbia is already a member of the United Nations. Kosovo isn’t.
That’s not fair. Life is not fair. You still have to try to do the right thing.
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Syria: what now?
This is a piece of mine Reuters published this afternoon under the headline “Here’s how to handle Syria”:
Bashar al-Assad continues his war on the Syrian opposition, despite the presence of United Nations observers. His efforts have generated extremist reactions, including major bombings. The Syrian opposition continues to fragment, even as protesters manage to mount peaceful demonstrations in many parts of the country. The conflict is increasingly sectarian in character and has overflowed to Lebanon’s Tripoli.
There is no alternative in sight to the existing Security Council resolutions. Syria is not on the NATO summit agenda this weekend in Chicago. The Americans continue to need the Russians “on side” for nuclear talks with Iran that resume next week in Baghdad. Unilateral American action on Syria is not in the cards. Europe is preoccupied with its own financial crisis and is unable to act without American help. Qatari and Saudi weapons entering Syria are likely to increase violence and worsen sectarian tensions.
So what is to be done? Here are some ideas for the Obama administration:
- Lend wholehearted support to the Annan plan, which the United States has been badmouthing ever since the Security Council passed Resolution 2043 on Apr. 21.
- Talk with Moscow about ensuring that Russian vital interests in Syria, port access and arms sales, are protected once Bashar al-Assad is gone. The United States no longer needs to block Moscow’s access to a Mediterranean port, as it did during the Cold War. Russian arms sales to Syria are a small price to pay to bring down a regime that links Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
- Deploy civilian observers – including Americans – to Syria. The Security Council has already authorized a civilian component to the U.N. Supervisory Mission in Syria (UNSMIS). It would be too much to expect Syria to accept U.S. military observers, and the U.S. does not send its soldiers and Marines into harm’s way unarmed, as the UNSMIS observers are. But we have had good results with unarmed civilian observers in the Kosovo Verification Mission before the NATO-Yugoslavia war, when the lead observer spoke truth to power about a civilian massacre.
- Stop talk about arming the opposition. It isn’t what we should be doing or encouraging because of the likelihood it will prolong sectarian conflict; we can’t control where the weapons end up; and there is no hope that an insurgency will defeat Assad anytime soon.
- Redouble encouragement for peaceful demonstrations, which are occurring every day in Syria, and try to ensure that the U.N. observers are present for them.
- Increase the flow of non-weapons aid to the opposition inside Syria, which claims to have received precious little so far, and provide intelligence on threatening movements of Syrian security forces.
- Present overhead video of heavy weapons in use against Syrian cities at the Security Council, along with other hard evidence of Annan plan violations. Anne-Marie Slaughter has proposed a U.N. website that would post video and photographs uploaded by Syrians.
- Tighten the application of sanctions, including implementing the draconian financial sanctions already adopted for Iran against Syria as well.
When the Security Council approved the Annan plan, the United States called for “swift and meaningful consequences … should the regime continue to flout its obligations.” The best way of getting those consequences approved in the Security Council is to support full implementation of the Annan plan. Then the United States can go to the Council in mid-July, when the observer mission has to be renewed, arguing that despite its sincere efforts, Bashar al-Assad has defied the international community and needs to be taught a lesson.
PHOTO: Anti-government protesters attend the funeral of Mahmoud Al Moustafa, whom protesters said was killed by forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, in Deir Al Zour, May 15, 2012. REUTERS/Handout
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Ineffective solutions to the wrong problem
John Kerry’s renewed advocacy of safe zones and possible arming of the Syrian opposition provokes me to repeat what I’ve said before: these are ineffective solutions to the wrong problem. If you want to protect civilians, the worst thing you can do for them is to concentrate them in one place where Bashar al Assad can be sure he will be killing his opposition. And if you want to bring Bashar down, an armed opposition is one of the slowest and least effective ways to do it.
First, safe areas, corridors, or whatever you want to call them. They will not be safe because the UN Security Council declares them safe. Remember the safe areas in Bosnia and the UN protected areas in Croatia. They were target-rich environments, because that is where the enemies are. To make areas safe, you have to destroy the Syrian army’s capability to attack them, in particular with aircraft (including helicopters), missiles, artillery and armor.
In order to do that, you have to take down the air defenses. Think Libya times five or maybe ten, because Syrian capabilities are significantly greater. Libya was impossible without the jump start the U.S. gave the operation. And there is someone out there who thinks Jordan and Turkey will do Syria on their own? The EU and the U.S. are simply not going to engage in this effort–they have too much else on their minds, and the Americans want to keep the Russians on side for the nuclear negotiations with Iran.
Second, arming the opposition. This is already happening to some extent–small arms circulate widely in the Middle East. But small arms aren’t going to stop armor, artillery and aircraft, or even mass arrests and torture. An assassin could of course get lucky, but armed rebellion has little prospect for overthrowing Bashar, whose army and other security services have remained cohesive. We can of course feed an insurgency in Syria, but that is no quick solution. Insurgencies typically take decades to succeed, and they more often don’t.
These propositions are not only ineffective. They would take things in the wrong direction. Safe areas would attract mainly Sunni Syrians, thus increasing the sectarian segregation that the civil war has already begun. Arming the opposition would also drive away from its ranks the relatively few Alawites, Christians, Druze and others who have joined its ranks.
Sectarian warfare comparable to what happened in Iraq in 2006-7 is just about the worst outcome imaginable in Syria from the American perspective. Odds are it would overflow to Lebanon, Iraq and maybe even Turkey and Jordan.
If you want to intervene militarily in Syria, the United States should lead the effort and target the command and control of the Syrian armed forces, including Bashar al Assad himself. Talking about half measures that won’t work but instead make things worse is not helpful.
The consequences of a serious military strike on the regime are unpredictable. Would Bashar be killed? Who would take over? Would it intensify the civil war? How will Iran react? This too is a solution that could make things worse.
The Annan plan, even not 100% effective, starts looking like a reasonable proposition when you take a good look at the alternatives. We should stop talking smack about it and do our best to support it.
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