Kosovo: Improving the Lives of the People?

The arguments over the EU's strategy for northern Kosovo are mostly about power and control. As is usual in such circumstances, they also can serve to divert attention from other issues. In Vienna these days the supporters of Kosovo independence have been talking to each other about preserving territorial integrity, extending Kosovo's legal system and realizing both the Ahtisaari Plan and UNSCR 1244. Also about "improving the lives" of the northern Serbs with money from Pristina and by allowing them to "choose their leader without any fear and pressure from Belgrade." The ICO announced just before the Vienna meeting of the "International Steering Group (ISG)" that it had found 14 people to begin preparing for elections in north Mitrovica. The chief EU rep called this "a new beginning" for a "positive, sustainable future, safe and prosperous for the people living there." The Kosovo Prime Minister said in Vienna that "this plan has been made for the people in the north [who] will choose their legitimate leader and he will be required by law to work for them."

Translation: The Albanians were promised all of Kosovo in exchange for accepting the Ahtisaari Plan and their Western supporters continue to look to keeping them "on side" by delivering the north. Confronting the Serbs and Belgrade is easier than disappointing the Albanians. The EU management in Kosovo also gains the advantage of not having to talk about their lack of effort to exercise their mandate in southern Kosovo while the government can avoid addressing Kosovo's many other problems. The subtext is that by extending Pristina's rule into the north, Albanian "returns" can be forced on the northern Serbs - who include many IDPs from the south - without addressing the real barriers to Serb property claims (if not returns) in the south.

Belgrade too shelters behind its words of resistance to the EU/ICO plans for the north. It has done little to improve the lives of Serbs in Kosovo other than occasionally visit them which it does mostly for political reasons. Belgrade has left it to EULEX to hold the issue of police, customs and the courts in its hands rather than to exert itself. As noted previously, ambiguity can sometimes be helpful. Usually, however, it just provides a bush to hide in.

On the ground in the north, the Serbs continue to try to convey that their resistance to rule by Pristina is not just confined to a few radicals leaders "forced upon them." In a recent assembly, they made it clear that they don't need a new state as they believe they already have one and that they expect that state "to truly, and not merely rhetorically, defend Serb national interests in the southern Serb province."

In a story that seems to have been barely noted - and could perhaps be apocryphal - the Novi Sad daily Dnevnik apparently ran a piece last week that the Quint countries (US, France, UK, Germany and Italy) have warned Belgrade that they would in the future no longer tolerate the "campaign against them and other countries which have recognized Kosovo." Unnamed diplomatic sources from this group reportedly told Dnevnik that some of the Quint members had demarched the Serbian government warning that while they have so far tolerated Serbia's foreign policy concerning Kosovo - because they saw it as a way for President Tadić to remove it from the political agenda - they will no longer accept accusations that they are violating international law. Belgrade was told it cannot do this and at the same time have good relations. It apparently would also be unacceptable for Belgrade to continue to resist the EU strategy for the north. Rather Serbia should accept the formula of "Kosovo under UNSC Resolution 1244" rather than "Kosovo under UNMIK."

Without verification, it would be unwise to take this report too far. But it sounds like how the Quint would talk if it was desperate. And it is consistent with the public effort by the Quint and NATO to present themselves as legitimately pushing Kosovo institutions into the north under 1244 and without the UN.

At some point, one hopes, the international community will get back to the job of peacekeeping and focus on helping the parties reach a status agreement and on improving the lives of all of Kosovo's people, north and south, in the practical ways they really need. But perhaps the Quint countries need to take one more try at imposing the outcome that let's them off the hook.

http://outsidewalls.blogspot.com/2010/02/kosovo-improving-lives-of-people.html