Kosovo: Is the United States inciting violence in the North? - continued...

Last month, I wrote in this space and elsewhere about the possibility that the US was inciting violence against the Serbs in northern Kosovo. My first piece addressed comments from the US Ambassador to Pristina that the north was the center of terrorism in Kosovo. The next day, a grenade attack during a Serb protest of the opening of a Kosovar office in north Mitrovica took the life of a local doctor. Now I understand that in the period before the ICJ decision in July, a senior official in the US Embassy in Pristina was telling certain Kosovo Albanian political leaders that if the Serbs did not end their obstinate rejection of Kosovo independence, the Albanians should teach them a lesson. The official reportedly said that only Decani should be spared.

I cannot vouch for these alleged comments and would hope that the US Embassy might at least publicly repudiate anything that might have been said that could be seen to encourage Albanian violence against Kosovo Serbs. But on the past record of what the US has been saying and doing, it would be unwise to completely discount the possibility that American frustration with Belgrade and the northern Serbs might be leading to a precipice. It seems that the US had expected Belgrade to give up its diplomatic efforts once the ICJ made its decision. The US has lately been threatening Belgrade with the loss of EU membership should it continue to push in the UN and refuse discussions with Pristina without reference to status. The US has been pushing the Tadić government to accept talks on the courts, customs and other "technical" issues that would require Serbia to accept the supremacy of Kosovo government institutions and implicitly of Kosovo independence. The Albanians themselves are quite ready to seek to force events by launching provocations that would lead to violence either breaking the Serb resistance or justifying a full armed intervention to bring "law and order" to the north. Pristina already has suggested readiness to arrest Serbs, send its special police to the north and replace current Serb police chiefs in the north. In this context, the possibility that the US is privately suggesting to the Albanians that they would have American cover for launching such provocations is truly frightening.

The US apparently believes that the Serbs in Belgrade and north Kosovo now need a show of force. Under continuing pressure on the ground and on EU matters, and with a "loss" in the ICJ, one more big push will bring them to their senses. It is not clear if the EU partners share this view although the US threats that Belgrade stands to lose any chance for EU membership must have been made with EU agreement.

It should be clear that any violence stemming from Albanian provocations - and the likely political impact including further steps toward partition - will be the fault of any of the internationals empowering such recklessness. The Serbs will not surrender in the face of any use of force against them and Tadić does not have the political space to accept the American terms for surrender. Pushing him and the northern Serbs much further risks destabilizing peace in Kosovo and the Balkans.

If the EU is not on board with the American approach, it needs to be ready to use its mechanisms, including EULEX, to pre-empt and prevent any Albanian provocations. Saying that it will not use its Special Police against the north is not enough. It may have to use them to contain the Albanians (and possibly even Albanian KPS). KFOR needs to be ready to protect (and perhaps evacuate) the isolated Albanian enclaves in the north, especially those in the new construction areas of north Mitrovica, in the event of widespread violence. (KFOR will of course need also to protect Serb enclaves and cultural sites in the south if the Albanians should unleash violence against them.) The UN needs to be ready to pick up the pieces from whatever mess the Americans and Albanians leave behind. UNMIK may have to again take the political lead on and in the north - as it did after the March 2008 violence when it was able to reopen its offices within days - as well as in any negotiations that finally will need to take place. The UN may also need to send its own police back to the north.

All of this might seem a bit overwrought. But the people in the US State Department - and who knows what they are hearing from their embassies in Belgrade and Pristina - seem to be pursuing an anti-Serb campaign more than a Kosovo peace plan. Encouragement of violence - if this is what they have been doing - may be their way of paying back for what the Western powers didn't do in Bosnia. But it is no way to make policy in the 21st Century.

http://outsidewalls.blogspot.com/2010/08/kosovo-is-united-states-inciting.html