It's hard to imagine a worse outcome for the Balkans
The prospect of another war and more
savage ethnic cleansing shows just what a fine mess we created eight years ago
Simon
Jenkins
Wednesday November 21, 2007
The Guardian
This one we can see coming. On December 10 the second round
of so far abortive talks on Kosovan independence will expire, bringing to a
crisis the unfinished last chapter of the west's 1990s "Balkanisation of the Balkans". In
Brussels this week European ministers will make a final effort to forestall the
decision of the newly elected Kosovan government to declare unilateral
independence of Serbia. Since Serbia is equally determined not to grant it,
irresistible force has met immovable object.
This is not a clash of tinpot
dictators but one of democratic outcomes. Kosovo's independence is the clear
wish of its electors, just as it is not the wish of Serbia's. The latter have
long regarded Kosovo as part of their emotional and historic integrity. The auguries
presage a return to conflict.
The instinct of British politicians and media is to declare that something
must be done. It is usually then to do nothing and then something messy, and
finally to say that something should have been done earlier as it would not
have been so messy. This is what happened successively in Croatia, Bosnia and
Kosovo in the 1990s. In each case militant separatists were encouraged, with
varying degrees of enthusiasm, to seek independence from whatever regime ruled
in Belgrade, which they duly obtained with considerable shedding of blood.
Faced not just with the break up of Tito's wider Yugoslavia but with the
defection of the core provinces of Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo, Serbs under
Milosevic tried to hold them by force. They treated the Kosovans so cruelly
that the outside world was moved to intervene. While most countries, including
America, tut-tutted and for three months dropped bombs, probably hastening the
carnage in Kosovo, Tony Blair rightly divined that only a ground invasion could
reverse a humanitarian outrage. In this he was successful.
But what did he expect to happen next? As in Afghanistan and Iraq, Britain
is, like the US, inclined to shoot first and plan afterwards. In Kosovo the
outcome was to reward "terrorist" separatists with a country of their
own, albeit smaller than Wales. Men who, were they Serbs, would be hauled
before a war crimes tribunal are now hailed in the west as heroes.
For eight years Kosovo has enjoyed de facto autonomy under the protection of
17,000 Nato troops. These have allowed the regime to
"reverse-cleanse" the province of half its Serbs, including virtually
all the 40,000 who once lived in the capital, Pristina. There are barely
200,000 left, just 10% of the population. Although the new prime minister, the
former guerrilla Hashim Thaci, declares that "Kosovo is ready for
independence", he cannot mean it. Kosovo
is a Nato protectorate under UN administration, with more aid per head than any
state in Asia or Africa. What Thaci wants is not independence but the luxuriant
post-intervention dependency enjoyed by Bosnia, Sierra Leone and the embattled
regimes in Baghdad and Kabul.
To this the Serbs remain implacably opposed. Even moderate opponents of
Milosevic's reign regard the enforced dismemberment of their nation as
excessive punishment for the barbarities committed by the Serb army in 1998.
Nor will they let it rest. Like the Basque country for Spain and the Falklands
for Argentina, Kosovo will always be a cause celebre for Serbia.
Independence for Kosovo clearly accords with current realpolitik, but
realpolitik is seldom the end of the matter in the Balkans. Russia says it
would veto Kosovo's acceptance into the UN, and to that extent Kosovo would be
an illegitimate state.
Nor is Russia's attitude purely due to Slav solidarity. Moscow is
understandably averse to western troops coming to the aid of separatist
movements wherever there is insurrection or cries of genocide, least of all
within bombing distance of the Caucasus. Russia is supported in this view by
Spain, Greece and Cyprus, each with separatist problems. And what does Britain,
so keen on Balkan partition, say to the Pashtuns or the Kurds when they demand
independence?
These are not diplomatic niceties. Already guerrillas of the shadowy
Albanian National Army are reportedly roaming the Serbia/Kosovo border, partly
financed by a massive heroin trade. Already Serbian militias are arming against
them, preparing to defend their compatriots under siege inside Kosovo.
At best, resumed hostilities would mean further savage ethnic cleansing and
a repartition of Kosovo. At worst, it would mean a long-running border war,
with western troops sucked into defending Kosovan irregulars and Russia into
defending Serbia's sovereignty. It is hard to imagine a worse outcome to
Britain's glorious "mission accomplished".
Any visitor to the Balkans soon learns that what in Westminster seems a
landscape of black and white, goodies and baddies, is in truth all grey.
Britain has been party to the military partition of a sovereign European state
at the instigation of its separatists, albeit with justice and local majority
opinion on their side. Such self-determinations are never straightforward, as
the English know in their dealings with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The prospect of war has commentators screaming that "something must be
done". I have not read one sensible answer to the question: what? Had Nato
negotiated some sort of delegated sovereignty for Kosovo with the post-Milosevic
government in Belgrade, Pristina hardliners might have been faced down and
Serbia's notional integrity preserved.
That day has passed. It is easy to "hope" that Thaci and the
Serbian prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, might see the virtue of compromise
and agree to go their separate ways under some sort of UN "sovereignty
umbrella" (once proposed for the Falklands). But with Russia behind the
Serbs, and Europe and America behind the Kosovans, why should leaders in either
Belgrade or Pristina risk the wrath of their electorates by compromising? Once
steeped in such dependency, no one feels any pressure to back down.
Kosovo is a western protectorate. There is no pressing need for de facto
autonomy to become de jure independence. Pristina has as much autonomy as it
can use and should be ordered to tone down its senseless confrontation and
leave Serbia a shred of pride - on pain of a genuine independence it would
certainly not like. In any resumed war, Kosovo would not be a winner.
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