[lit-ideas] Guardian Unlimited: Land in limbo

  • From: omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 13:03:03 +0000 (UTC)

Omar spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Land in limbo
Until Kosovo achieves independence, upsurges of violence such as the recent 
attacks against Serbs will only continue, says Anna Di Lellio
Anna Di Lellio
Monday April 05 2004
The Guardian


To describe the violence that erupted in Kosovo last month as ethnic cleansing 
is wrong and misleading. Yes, Albanian mobs targeted Serb civilians and 
property, including Orthodox churches. But the label is too easily employed 
when talking about the Balkans, although it can be said that the violence was 
all too predictable. 

What happened was very similar to a race riot, in which a suppressed rage 
suddenly exploded. The violent mobs were the extreme and cowardly manifestation 
of a diffuse sense of helplessness among Kosovo Albanians. While there is no 
justification for the violence, understanding the broader picture is crucial.

In 1999 Nato rescued Kosovo from Slobodan Milosevic and delivered it to the UN 
as a protectorate. Security council resolution 1244 provided the framework for 
the transition to self-government. At the time, it seemed premature to make any 
commitment on deadlines and ultimate goals, although Kosovo Albanians thought 
they had won the war for independence from Serbia. Now they fear a UN-led 
open-ended transition has taken on a life of its own.

This fear is well founded. Residents of a protectorate, Kosovo Albanians have 
no citizenship or representation abroad. They feel politically homeless despite 
having a president, a prime minister and a parliament. These self-governing 
institutions often overlap with the UN, which retains major powers (the police, 
the judiciary, the security sector and foreign policy among them), lack 
accountability and produce layers of bureaucracy and resentment, not good 
governance. Kosovo Albanians have been assigned the impossible task of 
nation-building even while they are told they have no nation.

This contradictory system of rules is now the main obstacle to progress. There 
is a cautionary tale here for those who would pass a troubled occupation of 
Iraq into the hands of the UN.  

Let's take cohabitation with Serbs (multi-ethnicity is a misnomer), the 
yardstick of the UN's standards for Kosovo. There are Serb members of 
parliament, Serb ministers and Serb employees of the provisional institutions 
of self-government.  However, Kosovo Serbs have been allowed by the UN to 
maintain parallel schools, hospitals, and courts - a de facto partition of 
Kosovo. 

The Kosovo Serbs are intimidated into separatism by Serb paramilitary groups 
and police and given financial incentives by Belgrade, which they consider 
their only legitimate government. For the same reason, those who fled the 
province after the end of the war are not returning home, no matter how 
improved living conditions might be.

The market economy, or the lack of it, is another problem. Unemployment is 
measured at over 60%, and growth is barely self-sustaining, though the black 
economy does well. This is hardly a surprise in the absence of privatisation, 
stopped months ago in the midst of legal wrangling over Kosovo's sovereignty.

Uncertainty about the status of Kosovo is a constant source of anxiety for 
Albanians. This is especially true when Serbia, still the sovereign state in 
Kosovo, continues to slide down the path of an unrepentant nationalism. With 
the eyes of the US, and the world, now turned towards the Gulf, Kosovo 
Albanians understand that they have become once again hostage to their own 
powerlessness and feel desperate.

Labelling the recent violence "reversed ethnic cleansing" obscures all the 
above issues and more. It neglects to see that when the streets exploded the 
Albanian leadership called for an end to it. The former military chief of the 
KLA, Lieutenant-General, Agim Ã?eku, went on TV to ask that protest be 
expressed only through institutional channels. Political leaders, from the 
prime minister to small-town mayors, persuaded angry youths to return home. 

Civil society groups condemned the violence. The Kosovo Women's Network, an 
umbrella organisation for women's groups in the country, immediately mobilised 
to help and collected funds for Serb women. The government has authorised 
&#euros;5m (£3.3m) to compensate the victims of looting.

It is very important that the responsibility of the riots be investigated, from 
the role played by instigators to the inexplicably inadequate response of more 
than 6,000 police under the UN leadership and 18,000 Nato troops. However, it 
is the underlying reasons that need an intelligent political response.

To keep a tired UN protectorate on life support for as long as it takes for 
Kosovo to achieve democratic standards on a par with leading European countries 
has proved inadequate. A de facto split of the province in two, leaving the 
north and a few cantons in Albanian territory to Serbia is a clear recipe for 
more violence and contentious demands for partition elsewhere in the region. 

Two years ago an independent commission led by the South African judge Richard 
Goldstone launched the idea of conditional independence as the best option. 

An independent Kosovo under international monitoring of democratic standards 
and Nato protection will make citizens out of members of different ethnic 
groups. It should go some way towards dispelling the fears of both communities, 
allow development, and solve the question of Albanian irredentism. Without this 
solution, the Balkans will not know stability and peace.

· Anna Di Lellio was the Kosovo temporary media commissioner and political 
adviser to the UN Kosovo protection corps coordinator from September 2001 to 
March 2003

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
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