Kosovo - is the United States inciting violence in the North?

Recent statements by senior US officials concerning north Kosovo and Albanian efforts to subdue the northern Serbs suggest a willingness by Washington to accept a violent outcome. The Obama Administration - while seeking UN consensus on other important foreign policy issues - seems to be following with Kosovo the unilateral approach more characteristic of President Bush.

The recent violence in Mitrovica shows the situation there remains volatile. The northern Serbs remain opposed to Kosovo independence and the imposition of any institutions of the Pristina administration in the north. Despite pressures upon them from Belgrade to accept the presence of the EU in the north and to refrain from provocative actions - and despite vigorous partisan differences among them - few northern Serbs see the EU and its police as anything other than the leading edge of an Albanian occupation. Even fewer are ready to accept any link to the Pristina institutions which they see as part of a strategy to eventually force them from their homes. The July 2nd demonstration against Pristina's planned opening of an office of its Interior and Local Government ministries in north Mitrovica brought around 2,000 local Serbs to the street. The fatal grenade attack and subsequent incidents have increased tensions along what is already a fault line that could still shake the whole region.

A few days before the July 2nd attack, the US Ambassador to Pristina went to Mitrovica and apparently made a quite surprising suggestion, that the most likely source of any terrorist threat in Kosovo was from the northern Serb-majority area. (If the Albanian-language press reporting these comments got them wrong, the US Embassy has not sought to correct the record.) Such comments coming from a senior US official could only be heard along the Ibar River as either a provocative challenge to the Serbs or as implicit encouragement to anyone wishing to strike at Serb "terrorists." Did the Ambassador's comments play a role in setting up a more volatile confrontation on July 2?

During the July 6^th session of the UN Security Council, the US comments appear to make clear that the American government is indeed quite willing to see a "resolution" of the Kosovo issue through a collapse of the peacekeeping effort and any chance for a negotiated compromise agreement. The Deputy US Permanent Representative began by denigrating Serbia's call for a special session. He suggested the attack was a simple criminal matter and said the decision by the Kosovo government to open its office in the north was "the right one and one that is within its prerogative as an independent and sovereign state." He added that the opening was "part of a larger strategy endorsed by all of Kosovo's communities and by members of the international community to extend the benefits of good, accountable, legitimate government to all of Kosovo's citizens - including its citizens in the north." He concluded by condemning "any violence and provocative actions by demonstrators" and by repeating the standard US and EU call to resolve the situation in the north by "strengthen[ing] the rule of law and protections for all communities there."

The US statements may not appear problematic on the surface; who could be against good government services, law and order and peace? But in the context of the continuing fundamental differences over which government and legal system is the legitimate one in Kosovo, they can only encourage the Albanians to continue provoking the Serbs. Indeed, the Kosovo Interior Minister followed these comments by reportedly adding to his list of coming actions for taking Pristina's "rule of law" into the north, measures to be taken against Kosovo Serb police officers (KPS) who may still receive "salaries and orders" from Belgrade. Unilateral actions from the Pristina side, especially as encouraged or supported by its international backers, threaten further violence and further partitioning of the north from the south. Trying to impose complete Pristina control on the northern KPS would be such a step.

Why does the US support a dangerous unilateral approach in Kosovo while working to develop international consensus on issues such as Iran and North Korea? Probably for a mixed bag of reasons:

• To avoid having to take on a leadership role in another troublesome conflict area, it is easier to simply be a "cheerleader" for the EU effort to manage the crisis. That the EU effort itself seems to have not resolved anything still leaves the EU on the hook and not the US.
• The Kosovo Albanians have the potential to produce a great many problems - mostly for Europe but also for the US - including becoming a haven for Moslem fundamentalists and for international organized crime and for destabilizing the region in the quest for a "Greater Albania." Easier to try to appease them by giving them support for grabbing the north.
• The quicker the Kosovo problem is "resolved" - even at the cost of Kosovo Serbs - the sooner the US military commitment to the Kosovo NATO force can be scaled back and even ended.
• The people in the European Bureau of the State Department (EUR) are the same people that sought to pre-empt a negotiated settlement in 2008 and are vested in making their unilateral approach work.

The US is the "800 pound gorilla" on the Albanian side of the dispute over Kosovo status. If the US cynically supports Pristina's effort to pre-empt the upcoming decision of the International Court of Justice through actions provoking conflict and violence in the north, the Albanians will not listen to or be constrained by anyone else. The US has supported every move the Pristina authorities have made to bully the southern Kosovo Serbs into accepting their place in the new order, including electricity and telephone cutoffs and outright intimidation. They seem to be now ready to do the same with the north. But this remains a case of playing with fire. Maybe the Americans don't really care as long as this time it is not them that gets burned? But that would be mere wishful thinking on their part.

Gerard M. Gallucci is a retired US diplomat and UN peacekeeper. He worked as part of US efforts to resolve the conflicts in Angola, South Africa and Sudan and as Director for Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council. He served as UN Regional Representative in Mitrovica, Kosovo from July 2005 until October 2008.

http://www.transconflict.com/2010/07/kosovo-is-the-united-states-inciting-violence-in-the-north-127/