KOSOVO: Is partition the answer?

 

Is partition the answer?

21 August 2006 William Montgomery

The conventional wisdom is that the troubles in the former Yugoslavia began with Kosovo and will end with it. That may not be accurate, as there are many other problems, which are still far from being resolved and have major elements of instability.

Photo: www.globalsecurity.com Bosnia can never be a fully functioning, viable, and dynamic state while saddled with its current Constitution and other aspects of the Dayton Peace Agreement.  Serbia lives under the shadow of growing Radical influence, disaffection with the West and its conditionality, and seemingly unbridgeable differences among the parties considering themselves to be "democratic." It is hard to see how, at least in the short term, this can end well. Macedonia's future (and real peace in Southern Serbia) depends very much on whether extremists in Kosovo will be contained or will resume their efforts to foment revolution. Be sure that the idea of a "Greater Kosovo" is alive and well. The fact remains, however, that Kosovo is a major source of the current instability in the Balkans and directly or indirectly impacts on all of the regional problems outlined above. It is in everybody's interest that it be "solved" in a way, which contributes to regional instability instead of the opposite. Kosovo's fate was actually sealed when immediately before and during the initial phases of the NATO Air Campaign, Slobodan Milosević's government decided to solve the problem once and for all by forcing hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians to leave the country. It was the video images of these refugees pouring across the border into tent cities, that both provided the rationale for the NATO campaign to continue (there was widespread unease among member countries about it to begin with and it would have been difficult or impossible to sustain without those images) and also convinced many key players in the International Community that Serbia had forfeited its right to Kosovo. Opinions were formed at that time that have not changed, despite the democratic transformation in Serbia itself. Members of the International Community, including from the United States, made many statements that helped to convince Kosovo Albanians that Kosovo would inevitably be independent. It is absolutely clear that the decision on the future status of Kosovo will be a form of conditional independence. That has been telegraphed ad infinitum by leading members of the Contact Group in public and private sessions. There are not and never were "negotiations" in Vienna about Kosovo. This is a play, written and directed by the Contact Group and UNMIK in which each actor has their role to play. It was really all about "form" and not about "substance" at all. The next stage of the play is when the UN/Contact Group arbitrarily announces its decisions. The only issue is whether this particular play should be called a tragedy or a farce. Serbian government's President of the Kosovo Coordination Center, Sanda Raskovic-Ivić, recently made a statement on BBC that if the parties could not in the end agree, some sort of partition would be a fit solution.  She should be congratulated on making the statement for two reasons: first, it united all parties in the region and internationally on an issue for the first and perhaps only time: everybody came out against it!  But secondly, for throwing on the table a different approach that has never been fully and fairly analyzed. It is not a new concept. Partition, cantonization, and the establishment of entities were all in theory legitimate options to consider. Because the reality is that there are absolutely no good options for Kosovo. Every alternative has significant downsides and the potential to make the overall regional situation worse, not better. Because of that, in 2001 and 2002 I persuaded the State Department and Secretary Powell that in our official statements on possible outcomes for Kosovo, we would "rule no solution out, keeping our options open." This was a short term victory, however, as the proponents of independence were so strong, that virtually every other type of solution was arbitrarily ruled out with little thought or analysis. At the same time, due to Washington's eagerness to escape the problems of the region, pressure was put on to resolve the question prematurely. Ironically, one of the reasons for ruling out entities or cantons such as in Bosnia (which would have been a logical step) was that although few will admit it, virtually the entire International Community believes that the entities and cantons in Bosnia have been a total disaster and have led to stagnation. They privately vowed to never repeat that mistake. They will never say this publicly, however, because it leads to the natural question of when they intend to do something about it in Bosnia itself. The problems that confront proponents of partition are two-fold. First of all, its opponents believe that it will give precedent and impetus to similar movements in Macedonia and in Bosnia.  But those who state this are fooling themselves if they believe that those movements do not already exist and will undoubtedly create significant problems in any case. Moreover, the very independence of Kosovo is a very bad precedent for other parts of Europe, as the Russians are quick to point out (and warn). Secondly, the international community is wedded to the idea of a multi-ethnic society and extremely reluctant to take steps that formalize ethnic divisions.  While absolutely correct as an ideal, in practice Kosovo never really was a multi-ethnic society and the experiences of the past 20 years have only widened the already existing gaps between the ethnic groups there. The Kosovo Albanians, however, have been brilliant at "talking the talk" of multi-ethnicity which the West so loves to hear. That this is a total sham seems to escape the International Community. That the likely outcome will be an exodus of Serbs from Kosovo as we saw in Sarajevo in 1996 also doesn't seem to register. Prime Minister Koštunica is in an impossible position. No Serbian politician can agree to independence for Kosovo and maintain his/her political standing. Moreover, the Serbs more than most are focused on their history and no one wants to be remembered for generations as the Serb who gave away Kosovo. So he is sticking to a position, which is and will increasingly be in confrontation with the International Community. It would like to see the Prime Minister using this time to "prepare" Serbia for the inevitable instead of rallying Serbs to the Kosovo cause.  This has the side effect of making the International Community less receptive to Serbian positions on many of the key areas of disagreement in Vienna. This is too bad, as the very best that Serbia can hope to achieve is to have significant decentralization take place along the lines of the models they suggested. Given how hard the Kosovo Albanians are fighting this concept, it is likely that the end result will be something that doesn't give the Serbs enough to convince most of them to stay in an independent Kosovo. One remaining question is timing. There is a debate going on in the International Community over whether to press forward with the Kosovo decision this fall or to wait a while in hopes of early Serbian elections. The strategy would be to wait until after those elections so as to give democratic forces the best chance of prevailing.  This option might have more of a chance if the democratic parties seemed to be moving towards those elections in a reasonably short time period, but that is not yet the case. Thus, the pressure to announce the decision on future status continues to increase. The other new development is that the series of steps by which the conditional independence will be obtained may be far more drawn out that Kosovo Albanians will like and the International Presence and authority more robust than was earlier planned.  This is in response to the growing awareness of the impact in Serbia itself. The reasoning seems to be that the pain will be softened if spread out for a sufficiently long period. This would also give time for the treatment of ethnic minorities to improve.

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A War of Images by Stella Jatras

Jewish World Review August 22, 2006 / 28 Menachem-Av, 5766

A War of Images

By Stella Jatras

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Will the same weapon that defeated the Serbs also defeat Israel?

They say that truth is always the first victim in war. Such is the case in the Israeli/Hezbollah war.

It appears that Hezbollah has taken a page out of the Bosnian Muslim playbook: Win the PR battle, and you win the war. What better example of media disinformation than the Bosnian War, where images of civilians "slaughtered" at Sarajevo's Markale market place, allegedly by Serb forces, were so instrumental? If it worked for the Bosnian Muslims, why not for Hezbollah? Will Qana, Lebanon, become Israel's Markale market place?

Yossef Bodansky, author of Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, wrote the following in his 1995 book Offensive in the Balkans:

"Phase Three started with the self-inflicted major terrorist provocation. On Friday 5, 1994, a major explosion rocked the Markale -- Sarajevo's main market place -- causing heavy casualties. What was immediately described as the ubiquitous 'Serb mortar shell' was actually a special charge designed and built with help from HizbAllah experts and then most likely dropped from a nearby rooftop onto the crowd of shoppers. Video cameras at the ready recorded this expertly-staged spectacle of gore, while dozens of corpses of Bosnian Muslim troops killed in action (exchanged the day before in a 'body swap' with the Serbs) were paraded in front of cameras to raise the casualty counts.

"This callous self-killing was designed to shock the West especially sentimental and gullible Washington, in order to raise the level of Western sympathy to the Bosnian Muslims and further demonize the Serbs so that Western governments would be more supportive of Sarajevo's forthcoming aggressive moves, and perhaps even finally intervene militarily." (Emphasis added)

Some headlines that Americans never saw were "Muslims 'slaughter their own people'," The [London] Independent, 22 Aug. 1992, and "Serbs 'not guilty' of massacre," The Sunday [London] Times, 1 Oct. 1995.

In 1992, Peter Maher, Professor Emeritus of Linquistics, visited Dubrovnik, Croatia, to see for himself the truth about the war. He wrote, "A few months earlier, the press was filled with stories that the Pearl of the Adriatic had been reduced to rubble. The stories were fakes." Professor Maher goes on to explain just how it happened: "The dramatic 'Dubrovnik burning' pictures were shot with long lenses. . . .But the smoke was from the fuel tanks of two pleasure boats burning in the Old Harbor ... Dubrovnik's Old City never burned and was never even targteted by the federal forces.....The only building in the Old City of Ragusa to be gutted by explosives and fire was the library and treasure of the Serbian Orthodox church, which housed a priceless collection of medieval manuscripts and icons. It was not navy guns that did the damage, but plastic and incendiary devices planted on the spot by Croatian forces."

Who can forget the horrific pictures that were repeatedly shown on CNN of the two dead Muslim babies on a bus in Bosnia, allegedly killed by a Serb sniper? I would never have known the truth if I had not been watching France 2 TV, which showed the funeral of these innocent babies. Officiating was a Serbian Orthodox priest. These were not Muslim babies; they were Serbian babies, but for American consumption, the Serbian Orthodox priest was cropped from the film so that the American people would continue to believe that the babies were Muslim. This kind of reporting is not just yellow journalism. It goes beyond the pale, the same kind of "journalism" that Israel is experiencing today -- manipulation, distortion, staging, forgery and the doctoring of photos by anti-Israeli media. Welcome to the club!

Hopefully, in the current Israeli/Hezbollah conflict, the media distortions will not sell. At the beginning of the Balkan conflict we did not have the Internet and bloggers to expose CNN and its ilk. Today is different. Almost immediately after photos of damage from an Israeli air strike on Beirut were posted, outrage from bloggers who recognized that the photos were doctored forced Reuters to admit that two or more photos were altered. The company stated, "A Reuters photograph of smoke rising from buildings in Beirut has been withdrawn after coming under attack by American web blogs. The blogs accused Reuters of distorting the photograph to include more smoke and damage." Was this simply one person's mistake, or is a pattern being exposed in the present Israeli/Hezbollah war of the biased or even co-belligerent media that was at work in the war against the Serbs?

Israel is accused of indiscriminately killing civilians, as in the Qana incident. It is difficult to find any suggestion in all of the articles on the subject that Qana was staged. Questions should have been raised. For instance, how is it that the IDF air attack was between midnight and 1:00 AM, but when the building blew up (or collapsed) at 8:00 AM there were approximately 50 women and children (reported numbers vary) sleeping in the building? Why is no one asking what was in that building that caused it to blow up seven or eight hours after the air strike? Why is no one in the mainstream media asking why those people were still in the building or why there were only women and children?

While western democracies try to keep civilians, especially their own, safe from ongoing hostilities, Islamic forces have a history of using their own civilians as human shields. Israel claims that Hezbollah deliberately puts its weapons and fighters in civilian neighborhoods, keeping residents hostage and not caring if they are killed or not. One interesting fact can be found in the book by Lord David Owen, titled Balkan Odyssey, in which he writes, "In Sarajevo it became ever clearer that there were in fact two sieges of the city: one by the Bosnian Serb army, with shells, sniper fire and blockades, and the other by the Bosnian government army, with internal blockades and red tape bureaucracy which kept their own people from leaving. In a radio broadcast the army -- not the government -- said that able bodied men aged 18-65 years and women aged 18-60 years were forbidden to leave because they were needed for the city's defence; but their main reason was different. In the propaganda war, the Serbian siege aroused the sympathy of the world, and for this they needed the elderly and the children to stay. It was their most emotive propaganda weapon for bringing the Americans in to fight the war, and they never wanted it to be weakened."

For those who think accusing Muslims of deliberately killing their own civilians or putting them where they are sure to be "collateral casualties" is farfetched, I would ask, why is that any more unthinkable than encouraging one's own child to be a suicide bomber?

One noticeable difference between the reporting in the Israeli/Hezbollah war and the Balkan war is balance. Although the media coverage is primarily one-sided in the Israeli/Hezbollah conflict, nearly four to one showing civilian casualties in Lebanon vs. those in Israel, the Balkan war news of Serbian casualties and suffering was almost non-existent.

In 1995, the journal World Affairs published the following quote from John Ranz, U.S. chairman of Survivors of Buchenwald Concentration Camp: "The gigantic campaign to brainwash America by our media against the Serbian people is just incredible, with its daily dose of one-sided information and outright lies....What is today's reality? The murderers of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies are back [in Croatia] from the U.S., Canada, Argentina where they fled after World War II. The Serbs fought the Nazis, they paid a terrible price for standing at the side of the allies against Hitler. Humanity owes them a debt of gratitude."

Yohanan Ramati, Director of the Jerusalem Institute for Western Defense, seconded the notion: "This organized anti-Serb and pro-Muslim propaganda should cause anyone believing in democracy and free speech serious concerns. It recalls Hitler's propaganda against the allies in World War II. Facts are twisted and, when convenient, disregarded."

Most disturbing is a 1992 observation by Gregory Copley, who wrote in his Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy report, "Pictures of dead or wounded (or raped) Serbs often fill the screens of the world's television and print media, only to be re-labeled as dead or wounded or raped Croats or Muslims. Many Serbian victims -- and the bulk of the victims of the conflict, contrary to popular reports, have been Serbs either from Bosnia and Herzegovina or from Croatia -- not only suffer the indignity of defeat in death; they also are used in death as models in the macabre image manipulation operation of the Croatians and the Muslim Bosnians. If the Vietnam War was lost to the United States by the negative television images of its own reporters, then the Balkan war against the Serbs are being won by Ustashi Croatia and the Muslim Bosnians by an active, planned manipulation of international television."

Like any sovereign nation, Israel has the right to defend itself against Muslim terrorists.The Serbian people should have had the right to defend their sovereignty against the same Muslim terrorists whom we are fighting today.

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As a career military officer's wife, Stella Jatras has traveled widely and has lived in many foreign countries where she not only learned about other cultures but also became very knowledgeable regarding world affairs and world politics. With the advent of the war in Bosnia, Mrs. Jatras immediately recognized the bias of the Western media and the Clinton administration's flawed foreign policy in the Balkans and began her efforts to present to the American people a more accurate view of that tragic situation. Her letters and articles have been published in The Washington Times, The Washington Post, The Arizona Republic, The Patriot- News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania), Chronicles, The Stars and Stripes, and the Los Angeles Times, as well as a number of magazines and periodicals. In addition her writings have had worldwide distribution via the Internet such as Citizen Soldier and Jihad Watch. Stella Jatras lived in Moscow for two years (where her husband, George, was the Senior Air Attaché), and while there, worked in the Political Section of the US Embassy. Stella has also lived in Germany, Greece and Saudi Arabia. Her travels took her to over twenty countries.

Failure by IC to protect minorities in Kosovo could lead to renewed conflict

Kosovo's FInal Status: new Report:

http://www.minorityrights.org/ 

 

Press release

 

Failure by international community to protect minorities in Kosovo could lead to renewed conflict  

 

Embargoed for release Monday 7th August 2006 at 10:30 a.m.  

 

7 August 2006 

 

After seven years of UN and international governance the situation in Kosovo is 'little short of disastrous' and there is a high risk of ethnic cleansing occurring again, according to a new report by Minority Rights Group.

The report titled Minority Rights in Kosovo under International Rule launched today, criticizes the UN and international community for failing to protect the rights of Kosovo's minority communities. It describes how the situation of minorities in Kosovo remains the worst in Europe, and highlights the danger of these mistakes being repeated in Iraq.

"The authorities have allowed a segregated society to develop and become entrenched, and thousands of minorities remain displaced," the report says.

"Nowhere (in Europe) is there such a level of fear for so many minorities that they will be harassed or attacked, simply for who they are or what language they speak," it adds.

According to the report, the short term measures of separating Kosovo's two main communities, Albanians and Serbs, has disastrous long term implications.

Clive Baldwin the author of the report, says: "The reality is that segregation is entrenched, creating a society that is so fractured that non of its people feel protected. They live in fear of mass conflict re-occurring in the long term."

The report, which looks at the situation of Kosovo's Albanian, Serb and other communities, including, Bosniak, Croat, Turk, Ashkalia and Roma, argues that problems to do with minorities are not due to lack of resources. In fact, the international administration has been one of the most expensive in UN history.

Instead, the report says a mindset of segregation, a lack of clear accountable government and a lack of any real protection of human rights and the rule of law are among the reasons why minorities continue to suffer in Kosovo.

It also faults the international community for failing to learn from past mistakes and use the experience and expertise available to them to protect minority rights.
"It is almost incredible is that all these mistakes have been made under an international administration consisting of institutions, notably the UN and OSCE, with a long institutional memory of addressing minority rights," Baldwin says.

According to the report the 'future status negotiations' represents both the best hope and the greatest danger and as the future of Kosovo is currently being decided the report calls for a radical move away from the patterns of segregation. It also recommends that minority rights are guaranteed by the rule of law and that all minorities, including minority women, should be consulted on the future of their lives, their property and their country.

"The message is clear to all parties. The Serbs need to realize that the effective protection of all communities in Kosovo in an integrated society is the only long term solution. It is in their best interest," says Baldwin.

"We urge the international community to recognise the damage that segregation can cause. They must realize that the Serbs and Kosovo's other communities, including the Albanians, are not benefiting from the current system. The only long term security for Kosovo will be effective protection for all minorities," he says.

For more information or to arrange interviews with Clive Baldwin, please contact Farah Mihlar on 0207 4224205 (office) 078 70596863 (mobile) or farah.mihlar@mrgmail.org

Notes to Editors

• Since 1999 Kosovo has had an interim administration, consisting the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), which includes representatives of the EU and Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and a NATO-led Kosovo Force.
• Clive Baldwin is Head of Advocacy at Minority Rights Group International. From 2000 to 2002 he was a member of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo. Previously, he was a practising human rights lawyer.
• Minority Rights Group International (MRG) is a non governmental organisation working to secure the rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples worldwide.

 

Kosovo report summary

By Preti Taneja

Nowhere in Europe is there such segregation as Kosovo. Thousands of people are still displaced and in camps. Nowhere else are there so many 'ethnically pure' towns and villages scattered across such a small province. Nowhere is there such a level of fear for so many minorities that they will be harassed simply for who they are. And perhaps nowhere else in Europe is at such a high risk of ethnic cleansing occurring in the near future - or even a risk of genocide.

This is not a description of Kosovo in 1998 or in 2003. It is a description of Kosovo today. For the Serbs and 'other minorities' - the Roma, Bosniaks (Slavic Muslims), Croats, Turks and Albanians of Kosovo - who suffer from expulsion from their homes, discrimination and restrictions on speaking their own language, the pattern of violence they have endured for so long may be about to be entrenched as law in the new Kosovo, as the future status talks continue behind closed doors in Vienna.

How, after one of the longest and most expensive international administrations since the creation of the United Nations (UN), whose mandate was explicitly to secure an environment for refugees to return home and ensure public safety (Resolution 1244, Article 10), has this been allowed to occur?

This report tracks a clear failure on the part of the international protectorate to learn lessons from the past and draw on the minority rights expertise available to it in the UN and other bodies. This failure has allowed decision-makers to remain unaccountable, and produced a Constitutional Framework that refers to minority rights so broadly that they are too wide to be effective. Instead of integration, the current situation encourages the opposite: segregation. The report shows how the initial international governance structure - five different armed brigades in Kosovo, each running a different region and led by a different country (France, Germany, Italy the UK and the USA), each with very different policies towards security and minorities - has kept fresh the wounds inflicted before the security forces first arrived and allowed patterns of violence to be repeated.

The problem is not lack of financing. Conversely, the fact that so much money has been spent on the region has allowed segregation in public services to become an easy solution to conflict between groups. A short-term mentality, the use of quota systems in public services and an electoral system based on rigid ethnic representation show a lack of commitment to implementing minority rights in any meaningful way.

This report shows how the future status negotiations currently under way in Vienna represent both the best hope and the greatest danger for peace.

For hope to be justified, the report emphasizes, there is a radical need for change in mindset and in practice:

• Minority rights should be guaranteed by a rule of law that is actually taken seriously and applied.

Till today, the governing administration, the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) have declared themselves above regulation, overturning even the most basic of human rights laws, that of requiring all detention to be by order of a judge. Rights that exist on paper are made meaningless, and any fragile sense of security minorities have is consistently undermined. Therefore:

• The criminal justice system must hold those responsible for past crimes to account and see them arrested whatever their political power.

Out of hundreds of investigations into the 2004 atrocities, few have been prosecuted, and those few convicted have received lenient sentences.

• All minorities should be consulted on the future of their lives, their property and their country, instead of talks taking place among a select group of people, in secret and behind closed doors.
• Specific efforts must be made to include women's views and international negotiations should include minority rights and gender experts.

When the Constitutional Framework was drawn up in 2001 it was not put up for general consultation. The same mistake is being made today, with talks taking place in Vienna, far from where the most disadvantaged can take part. Understanding the devastating realities facing returning refugees and communities wanting to keep their language alive, to travel in safety and to seek work at all levels of society - all of which have become next to impossible for Kosovo's minorities despite seven years of international intervention - is vital for anyone involved in peacekeeping missions, in reportage or in international governance.

The report shows that measures that separate communities through religion or ethnicity should be transitional, if they have to be used at all. The future status talks offer a chance for change. Otherwise, the danger is that the patterns of segregation that are accepted in Kosovo, and that lead to the terror of ethnic cleansing, will be enshrined in the Constitution, and will be played out again over the next decade.