RESEARCH PAPER - KOSOVO AND METOHIA (5)

Kosovo and Metohija:

Serbia’s troublesome province^*

Dušan T. Bataković

Institute for Balkan Studies Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Belgrade

Abstract: Kosovo and Metohija, the heartland of medieval Serbia, of her culture, politics and economy (1204–1455), experienced continuous waves of spiraling violence, forced migration and colonization under centuries-long Ottoman rule (1455–1912). A region which symbolizes the national and cultural identity of the Serbian nation as a whole now has an Albanian majority population, who consider it an ancient Albanian land, claiming continuity with ancient Illyrians. Kosovo was reincorporated into Serbia (1912) and Yugoslavia (1918) as a region lacking tradition of inter-ethnic and inter-religious tolerance and cooperation. The two rivalling Kosovo nations, Albanians and Serbs, remained distant, maintaining limited inter-ethnic communication throughout the twentieth century. The mounting national and ideological conflicts, reinforced by the communist ideology, made coexistence almost impossible, even after the 1999 NATO bombing campaign and establishment of KFOR-secured UN administration. Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence in February 2008 is a dangerous attempt to establish a second Albanian state extended into the heartland of Serbia, a failed state cleansed of both Serbs and other major non-Albanian communities.

Keywords: Serbia, Kosovo, ethnic strife, nationalism and communism, Kosovo crisis, NATO bombing, war against Yugoslavia, international protectorate

The March pogrom 2004 

In March 2004, it became obvious, to unbiased international observers at least, that certain Kosovo Albanian leaders believed that the Province could be cleansed of all the remaining Serb population in a few violent campaigns, and that they could present the international community with a fait accompli. They were encouraged in that belief by a mild international reaction to the ethnic cleansing campaign which had expelled two-thirds of Kosovo’s Serbs from the middle of June 1999 onward. Although Kosovo’s Serbs had for years been warning of the real nature of Albanian nationalism in Kosovo, both the UN and the West assumed they were exaggerating, only to receive a confirmation for almost all Serbian claims within just two days of orchestrated violence — the March pogrom, Kosovo’s Kristallnacht.⁷³

Busloads of Albanians were transported to Serb-inhabited areas, clashing occasionally with KFOR units on their way, and targeting in particular those enclaves that stood as an obstacle to controlling the main trans-port and railway routes in Kosovo. During the two-day pogrom additional thirty-five Serb churches and monasteries were destroyed or damaged. The only still functioning Serb Orthodox Church in Priština, St Nicholas, dating back to 1830s, was finally set ablaze, another act of denying the very possibility of Serbs living or returning to the provincial capital.⁷⁴ Further-more, four thousand Serbs were displaced by Albanian mobs from strategically important areas of Kosovo, most probably intended for Albanian settlement in the future.⁷⁵

Kosovo Albanians failed to fulfill the minimum international demands set after 2000, that “standards before status” should be implemented as regards the basic human rights, the freedom of movement, democracy, the rule of the law and property rights, in particular for Serbs and other non-Albanians. Furthermore, according to the reliable data gathered by the German Intelligence Service (BND), filed in the sixty-seven pages of a confidential report of 22 February 2005, partly published by the Swiss weekly Weltwoche, the leading political figures among Kosovo Albanians, former KLA warlords Hashim Thaçi, Ramush Haradinaj and Xhavid Haliti, had for years been deeply involved in organized crime in the province, from arms and drugs smuggling to human trafficking and money laundering.⁷⁶ The same report included the statement of Klaus Schmidt, chief of the European Mission for Police Assistance of the EU Commission in Albania (PAMEC), that “through Kosovo and Albania 500 to 700 kilos of drugs are smuggled daily, and that a part of it is refined in Kosovo laboratories”.⁷⁷ Lack of control over the borders and movement of people and goods be-tween UN-controlled Kosovo and Albania additionally strengthened organized crime, which became a trademark of Kosovo in the eyes of internationals observers.⁷⁸

UN-sponsored negotiations
Despite a series of Western reports that Kosovo remained a major centre of drug-smuggling and women-trafficking in Europe, and that it made no progress in fulfilling the standards regarding democracy, tolerance, minority protection and the rule of the law, set as a prerequisite for talks on the final status of the province, negotiations on the future status of Kosovo commenced under UN auspices in early 2006.⁷⁹ Apparently promised independence prior to the beginning of the negotiating process, the Kosovo Albanians did not feel obliged to engage seriously in the status talks.

Although Serbia offered the Kosovo Albanians the broadest autonomy possible, “more than autonomy, less than independence”, except a UN seat and their own armed forces, they, fully confident of the support they enjoyed in certain influential capitals, practically refused to negotiate seriously about the status and demanded nothing short of independence. In order to find mutually acceptable topics, the Serbian delegation in Vienna status talks on Kosovo, offered serious and sustainable proposals concerning non-status issues, such as decentralization, establishment of new Serb-inhabited or mixed municipalities, new competencies of these municipalities, as well as the protection of the endangered Serbian religious and cultural heritage, with special protected zones for the most important patrimonial sites.⁸⁰

All these issues, addressed by the Serbian delegation with utmost accuracy, and their sustainable proposals drafted in accordance with the Kosovo Serbs were either rejected or scaled down to the level of becoming unacceptable for the Serbian side. Furthermore, the UNOSEC — UN office in Vienna in charge of organizing bilateral meetings and providing mediation— was perceived by many analysts as rather slow, inefficient and, in most cases, biased. In order to additionally fortify the positions and demands of Kosovo Albanians, it tended to present the Serbian negotiating team (in cases they rejected a pointless or even humiliating proposal made by Kosovo Albanians) as the only responsible for non-cooperative attitude.

At the end of the eighteen-month-long UN-sponsored talks on the future status of Kosovo, the UN-appointed mediator Martti Ahtisaari produced a plan for a “supervised independence” of Kosovo.⁸¹ His plan, however, contained solutions of which roughly sixty percent had never been tabled, let alone discussed, by the involved parties during the Vienna negotiations, including crucial provisions regarding basic security, freedom of movement and military protection for Serb patrimonial sites.⁸² The entire Ahtisaari plan was therefore resolutely rejected jointly by Belgrade officials and Kosovo Serbs as being both biased and unsustainable. Moreover, the Ahtisaari plan lacked approval from the UN Security Council and thus could not be legally implemented. The time-limited extension of status talks under the UN Troika (USA, Russia, EU) in late 2007 brought no tangible results, despite Serbia’s renewed offer of a broadest possible autonomy (including the Hong-Kong model) exclusive of a UN seat and armed forces. ⁸³

Furthermore, the unilateral proclamation of independence at the Kosovo parliament session of 17 February 2008 was boycotted by the non-Albanian MPs, including dozens of self-appointed Serbs and the legitimate representatives of the Gorani and Roma communities. Their boycott underlined that the declaration of independence approved by a de facto mono-ethnic Kosovo parliament had no legitimacy in the eyes of Kosovo’s non-Albanian communities. Unilateral declaration of independence, lacking consent both of Belgrade and of Kosovo’s Serbs and non-Albanians, is considered by many experts in both politics and international law to be an inadequate basis for building a tolerant, multiethnic and democratic society, despite any lip service paid to such ideals.


To be continued: A failed state based on discrimination

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^* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the University of Ottawa, Canada, on 6 March 2008. 

⁷³Cf. analysis by D. Krnjevic-Miskovic, “Kristallnacht in Kosovo. The burning of churches raises questions about independence”, 19 March 2004 (www.Nationalinterest. com)

⁷⁴ Once the news of the pogrom and the burning of churches in Kosovo spread, two mosques, in Belgrade and Niš, were attacked and sustained damage. In contrast to the way the crisis was handled in Kosovo and Metohija, the Serbian authorities deployed police forces, which however, were not entirely successful in dispersing the enraged mob. In Belgrade, a bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church joined Muslim clerics in an effort to prevent the crowd from attacking the mosque.

⁷⁵ Kosovo and Metohija. The March Pogrom (Belgrade: Ministry of Culture, 2004).

⁷⁶ J. Roth, “Rechtstaat? Lieber nicht!”, Weltwoche 43/2005, 48–50.

⁷⁷ Ibid.

⁷⁸ For more details see X. Raufer (with S. Quéré), Une menace pour l’Europe. La mafia albanaise. Comment est née cette superpuissance criminelle balkanique? (Lausanne: Ed. Fa-vre, 2000).

⁷⁹ Kosovo’s record is at best disappointing after years of supposed tutelage in democracy by the “international community”. The ethnic Albanian leadership has been implicated in an explosion of organized crime, including drug dealing, money laundering and sex trafficking. Some have referred to Kosovo as the “black hole” of Europe. At a 2006 con-gressional hearing, Charles English of the State Department stated: “Discrimination remains a serious problem. Access to public services is uneven. Incidents of harassment still occur. Freedom of movement is limited. And too many minorities still feel unsafe in Kosovo.” Similarly, Joseph Grieboski of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy argued that “the present record of rule of law, protection of the rights of religious and ethnic minorities, and the return/resettlement of internally displaced people by the Pro-visional Authority of Kosovo – all of which are indispensable for democratic governance – have been gravely unsatisfactory.” D. Bandow, “Kosovo a Year Later”, The American Spectator, 23 February 2009.

⁸⁰ D. T. Bataković, “Kosovo: Negotiated Compromise vs. Chaos and Instability”, The Bridge 1 (2007), 48–51. 

⁸¹ J. Preston, “United Nations report urges independence for Kosovo”, The New York Times, 26 March 2007.

⁸² www.unosek.org/unosek/en/statusproposal.html 

⁸³ For more on Vienna negotiations and their continuation after June 2007 see D. T. Bataković, Kosovo. Un conflit sans fin? (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 2008), 273–287.