http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/mar2008/koso-m01.shtml
WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE (USA)
“Independent” Kosovo: Anatomy of a Western protectorate
By Paul Mitchell
1 March 2008
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to
assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to
which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect
to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes
which impel them to the separation.”
With these words, the Second Continental Congress issued the United States
Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It declared the cause impelling
the American people towards separation to be the attempt by the King of
Great Britain to seek “the establishment of an absolute Tyranny.”
On February 17, 2008, in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, the province’s
Assembly also declared independence. Their document could not be more
different from the world-changing rallying cry of the US declaration with
its proclamation “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
In a document servile to the Western powers, their institutions and
representatives—and written in language meant as an appeal to faceless
bureaucrats in the US State Department and European Commission—Kosovo’s
leaders accept without question its status as a protectorate governed by a
foreign overlord. In much the same way as neighbouring Bosnia has been ruled
for the last 10 years, all the major decisions about the country’s economy,
public spending, social programmes, security and trade will remain in the
hands of a NATO/United Nations/European Union occupation administration.
In one sentence, we are told that Kosovo is now an “independent and
sovereign state” that “reflects the will of our people”; in the next, that
this is in “full accordance with the recommendations of UN Special Envoy
Martti Ahtisaari and his Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status
Settlement.” Former Finnish president Ahtisaari submitted his plan for
“supervised” independence in March 2007 but met opposition from Serbia and
Russia, which rightly saw it as a contravention of international law.
Although Ahtisaari’s proposal was withdrawn, it still drove the timetable
for independence and now forms the backbone of the declaration.
In the declaration, which runs to just 27 paragraphs, his name appears eight
times, including:
* We accept fully the obligations for Kosovo contained in the Ahtisaari
Plan, and welcome the framework it proposes to guide Kosovo in the years
ahead.
* The Constitution shall incorporate all relevant principles of the
Ahtisaari Plan.
* We invite and welcome an international civilian presence to supervise our
implementation of the Ahtisaari Plan, and a European Union-led rule of law
mission.
* We also invite and welcome the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation to
retain the leadership role of the international military presence in Kosovo
and to implement responsibilities assigned to it under UN Security Council
resolution 1244 (1999) and the Ahtisaari Plan, until such time as Kosovo
institutions are capable of assuming these responsibilities
* Kosovo shall have its international borders as set forth in Annex VIII of
the Ahtisaari Plan,
And just in case, the last paragraph repeats, “We hereby affirm, clearly,
specifically, and irrevocably, that Kosovo shall be legally bound to comply
with the provisions contained in this Declaration, including, especially,
the obligations for it under the Ahtisaari Plan.”
From the start, Ahtisaari’s plan insists its 15 articles and 12 annexes
“will take precedence over all other legal provisions in Kosovo” and details
how a “future international presence” will enforce them. Many of its
provisions have already been brought in under the UNMIK regime, and the
document merely sets them down formally.
The plans tells the Kosovan people that their newly “independent” country
will have “an open market economy with free competition” and will “establish
with the European Commission, and in close cooperation with the
International Monetary Fund, a fiscal surveillance mechanism.”
Recent reports show how the Kosovan economy is already dominated by
international capital. By the end of 2006, there were six banks, two of
which were under full foreign ownership and which controlled more than 70
percent of total bank assets. It was a similar story in the insurance
sector, where six out of nine companies are mainly in foreign ownership and
manage 70 percent of insurance assets.
Ahtisaari’s plan also demanded further privatisation of publicly owned
enterprises (POEs) and socially owned enterprises (SOEs) by the Kosovo Trust
Agency (KTA). The international members of the Board of Directors have the
power to suspend decisions of the KTA, and the two largest international
donors to the KTA have the right to attend meetings as observers.
Already, the KTA has sold off hundreds of POEs and SOEs whose origins lie in
the Tito regime.
By June 2007, the KTA had transferred 510 SOEs to new companies (NewCos) and
sold them off to investors in a competitive bidding process. Many workers
have been sacked or forced to accept minimal compensation, and the whole
process has been mired in accusations of corruption.
The Ahtisaari plan also prescribed the structure of Kosovo institutions,
most of which will have to have members of the “international community”
sitting in them. The government will consist of 12 ministers and the
Assembly of 120 members apportioned by ethnicity in a situation where many
in the minority population have been driven out or live behind barricades
and razor wire. There will be a 21-member Commission to draft a constitution
and a Constitutional Court composed of nine judges, three of whom will be
appointed by the president of the European Court of Human Rights. The Kosovo
Judicial Council will have 13 members, 2 of whom will be from the
“international community” and oversee the appointment of judges. A new
Kosovo Security Force (KSF) will be established consisting of no more than
2,500 lightly armed active members and 800 reserve members whose main job
will be restricted to crisis response, explosive ordnance disposal, and
civil protection. Kosovo will also establish a Civil Aviation Authority
(CAA) to regulate civil aviation activities.
Acting as Kosovo overlord will be an International Civilian Representative
(ICR), “double-hatted” as the EU Special Representative (EUSR), who will be
appointed by an International Steering Group (ISG) comprising France,
Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union,
European Commission, NATO and Russia. The ISG will have sole power to decide
when the ICR’s work is done. Two days before Kosovo declared independence,
Pieter Feith, a former political advisor to NATO in Bosnia-Herzegovina, was
appointed ICR/EUSR and Fletcher Burton, former US consul general in Leipzig,
Germany, was appointed his deputy.
The ICR has powers to enforce the Ahtisaari plan, including the authority to
overturn laws adopted by Kosovo authorities and ratify the appointment of
public officials and remove them. In addition, the ICR will appoint directly
certain state officials including the auditor-general, the director-general
of the Customs Service, the director of tax administration, the director of
the Treasury, and the managing director of the Central Banking Authority of
Kosovo. The Assembly may not formally approve the Constitution until the ICR
has certified it.
The Ahtisaari plan also called for a European Security and Defence Policy
Mission now created as the Eulex mission to “monitor, mentor and advise on
all areas related to the rule of law” and a NATO-led International Military
Presence (IMP), which will absorb the 16,000 NATO troops currently in
Kosovo. The IMP has the power to “use all necessary force where required and
without further sanction, interference or permission.” The IMP will provide
protection to the Serb minority and religious monuments, oversee the
formation of the KSF and dissolution of the Kosovo Protection Corps, largely
a fire-fighting force composed of former members of the Kosovo Liberation
Army. The IMP will be able to take over CAA functions and re-establish
military control over the airspace if necessary.
The plan also dictates the structure and powers of municipalities,
educational institutes and the police force. It also demands Kosovo pay its
share of the external debt, and if an agreement cannot be reached, the ISG
will nominate an international arbitrator whose “debt allocation shall be
irrevocable.”
Politicians and officials from Kosovo and the West have declared that all
this is necessary to ensure a peaceful transition to independence and
provide a stable environment for investment and membership of the European
Union. However, the new ICR/EUSR Feith told the Dutch newspaper NRC
Handelsblad, “Expectations are high.... People expect that their quality of
life and economic circumstances will improve rapidly” and warned, “Neither
the EU nor the Americans will be able to fulfil their high expectations.”
Kosovan economist Ibrahim Rexhepi adds, “We must get rid of the illusion
that independence will bring tonnes of dollars into our streets.... The
economic crisis is likely to continue. To restart the metallurgy, food
industry and energy (sectors) takes time and a lot of investment.”
Even to dignify Kosovo with the term country, let alone one that is
independent, makes a mockery of the term. Kosovo has a population of about 2
million people and covers an area of 10,887 square kilometres, or 4,203
square miles. It has one of the most underdeveloped economies in Europe,
with a per capita income estimated at US$2,328 in 2004.
The US state of Connecticut would make a more viable country. It is bigger,
is not landlocked and has a population of 3.4 million. Its per capita income
was US$47,819 in 2005, more than 20 times that of Kosovo.
Kosovo is almost entirely dependent on production outside its borders. It
exports less per capita than any other country in Europe—just €77 million.
Although analysts have made much of an increase in private sector activity,
non-housing private investment stood at just €284 million in 2006, and it is
dependent on scrap-metal recovery and geared to satisfying the consumer
needs of the international officials and Kosovan elite.
After nine years of UNMIK occupation, little has improved for the vast
majority of Kosovo’s population, and in many respects it has worsened.
Nearly 80 percent of the population have experienced a decline in living
standards since 2003. More than half of Kosovo’s inhabitants are unemployed,
and real wages are stagnant. Those that have work receive an average €220
(about US$320) per month. More than a third of the population live on less
than €1.50 per day. Attempts to raise pensions and wages have been blocked.
Those that are better off rely on remittances from relatives working abroad.
Poverty is so widespread and all-encompassing that, somewhat ironically, the
province has the lowest levels of inequality in Europe. But the gap between
the richest and poorest is growing.
Little wonder that there was a record low turnout in last year’s
elections—43 percent, down from 80 percent in elections soon after the
Kosovo war—indicating a staggering decrease in support for the political
parties installed after 1999.
Back in 1999, after the Western powers backed by various liberals and
radicals had thrown their support behind demands for self-determination for
Kosovo and the NATO bombing of Serbia, the World Socialist Web Site warned
in “After the Slaughter: Political Lessons of the Balkan War,” “The bombing
of Yugoslavia has exposed the real relations that exist between imperialism
and small nations.”
The statement continued, “The great indictments of imperialism written in
the first years of the twentieth century—those of Hobson, Lenin, Luxemburg
and Hilferding—read like contemporary documents. Economically, small nations
are at the mercy of the lending agencies and financial institutions of the
major imperialist powers. In the realm of politics, any attempt to assert
their independent interests brings with it the threat of devastating
military retaliation. With increasing frequency small states are being
stripped of their national sovereignty, compelled to accept foreign military
occupation, and submit to forms of rule that are, when all is said and done,
of an essentially colonialist character.”
Nearly a decade later, this prognosis has proven correct. Not only has
Kosovo’s creation been carried out in violation of any concept of national
sovereignty for Serbia, but in no sense can what has been created be
considered a sovereign entity in its own right. Rather, Kosovo is being used
as a pawn in the Great Power rivalries between the US, Europe and Russia,
with terrible consequences for all the peoples of the Balkans, irrespective
of their ethnicity.
WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE (USA)
“Independent” Kosovo: Anatomy of a Western protectorate
By Paul Mitchell
1 March 2008
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to
assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to
which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect
to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes
which impel them to the separation.”
With these words, the Second Continental Congress issued the United States
Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It declared the cause impelling
the American people towards separation to be the attempt by the King of
Great Britain to seek “the establishment of an absolute Tyranny.”
On February 17, 2008, in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, the province’s
Assembly also declared independence. Their document could not be more
different from the world-changing rallying cry of the US declaration with
its proclamation “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
In a document servile to the Western powers, their institutions and
representatives—and written in language meant as an appeal to faceless
bureaucrats in the US State Department and European Commission—Kosovo’s
leaders accept without question its status as a protectorate governed by a
foreign overlord. In much the same way as neighbouring Bosnia has been ruled
for the last 10 years, all the major decisions about the country’s economy,
public spending, social programmes, security and trade will remain in the
hands of a NATO/United Nations/European Union occupation administration.
In one sentence, we are told that Kosovo is now an “independent and
sovereign state” that “reflects the will of our people”; in the next, that
this is in “full accordance with the recommendations of UN Special Envoy
Martti Ahtisaari and his Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status
Settlement.” Former Finnish president Ahtisaari submitted his plan for
“supervised” independence in March 2007 but met opposition from Serbia and
Russia, which rightly saw it as a contravention of international law.
Although Ahtisaari’s proposal was withdrawn, it still drove the timetable
for independence and now forms the backbone of the declaration.
In the declaration, which runs to just 27 paragraphs, his name appears eight
times, including:
* We accept fully the obligations for Kosovo contained in the Ahtisaari
Plan, and welcome the framework it proposes to guide Kosovo in the years
ahead.
* The Constitution shall incorporate all relevant principles of the
Ahtisaari Plan.
* We invite and welcome an international civilian presence to supervise our
implementation of the Ahtisaari Plan, and a European Union-led rule of law
mission.
* We also invite and welcome the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation to
retain the leadership role of the international military presence in Kosovo
and to implement responsibilities assigned to it under UN Security Council
resolution 1244 (1999) and the Ahtisaari Plan, until such time as Kosovo
institutions are capable of assuming these responsibilities
* Kosovo shall have its international borders as set forth in Annex VIII of
the Ahtisaari Plan,
And just in case, the last paragraph repeats, “We hereby affirm, clearly,
specifically, and irrevocably, that Kosovo shall be legally bound to comply
with the provisions contained in this Declaration, including, especially,
the obligations for it under the Ahtisaari Plan.”
From the start, Ahtisaari’s plan insists its 15 articles and 12 annexes
“will take precedence over all other legal provisions in Kosovo” and details
how a “future international presence” will enforce them. Many of its
provisions have already been brought in under the UNMIK regime, and the
document merely sets them down formally.
The plans tells the Kosovan people that their newly “independent” country
will have “an open market economy with free competition” and will “establish
with the European Commission, and in close cooperation with the
International Monetary Fund, a fiscal surveillance mechanism.”
Recent reports show how the Kosovan economy is already dominated by
international capital. By the end of 2006, there were six banks, two of
which were under full foreign ownership and which controlled more than 70
percent of total bank assets. It was a similar story in the insurance
sector, where six out of nine companies are mainly in foreign ownership and
manage 70 percent of insurance assets.
Ahtisaari’s plan also demanded further privatisation of publicly owned
enterprises (POEs) and socially owned enterprises (SOEs) by the Kosovo Trust
Agency (KTA). The international members of the Board of Directors have the
power to suspend decisions of the KTA, and the two largest international
donors to the KTA have the right to attend meetings as observers.
Already, the KTA has sold off hundreds of POEs and SOEs whose origins lie in
the Tito regime.
By June 2007, the KTA had transferred 510 SOEs to new companies (NewCos) and
sold them off to investors in a competitive bidding process. Many workers
have been sacked or forced to accept minimal compensation, and the whole
process has been mired in accusations of corruption.
The Ahtisaari plan also prescribed the structure of Kosovo institutions,
most of which will have to have members of the “international community”
sitting in them. The government will consist of 12 ministers and the
Assembly of 120 members apportioned by ethnicity in a situation where many
in the minority population have been driven out or live behind barricades
and razor wire. There will be a 21-member Commission to draft a constitution
and a Constitutional Court composed of nine judges, three of whom will be
appointed by the president of the European Court of Human Rights. The Kosovo
Judicial Council will have 13 members, 2 of whom will be from the
“international community” and oversee the appointment of judges. A new
Kosovo Security Force (KSF) will be established consisting of no more than
2,500 lightly armed active members and 800 reserve members whose main job
will be restricted to crisis response, explosive ordnance disposal, and
civil protection. Kosovo will also establish a Civil Aviation Authority
(CAA) to regulate civil aviation activities.
Acting as Kosovo overlord will be an International Civilian Representative
(ICR), “double-hatted” as the EU Special Representative (EUSR), who will be
appointed by an International Steering Group (ISG) comprising France,
Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union,
European Commission, NATO and Russia. The ISG will have sole power to decide
when the ICR’s work is done. Two days before Kosovo declared independence,
Pieter Feith, a former political advisor to NATO in Bosnia-Herzegovina, was
appointed ICR/EUSR and Fletcher Burton, former US consul general in Leipzig,
Germany, was appointed his deputy.
The ICR has powers to enforce the Ahtisaari plan, including the authority to
overturn laws adopted by Kosovo authorities and ratify the appointment of
public officials and remove them. In addition, the ICR will appoint directly
certain state officials including the auditor-general, the director-general
of the Customs Service, the director of tax administration, the director of
the Treasury, and the managing director of the Central Banking Authority of
Kosovo. The Assembly may not formally approve the Constitution until the ICR
has certified it.
The Ahtisaari plan also called for a European Security and Defence Policy
Mission now created as the Eulex mission to “monitor, mentor and advise on
all areas related to the rule of law” and a NATO-led International Military
Presence (IMP), which will absorb the 16,000 NATO troops currently in
Kosovo. The IMP has the power to “use all necessary force where required and
without further sanction, interference or permission.” The IMP will provide
protection to the Serb minority and religious monuments, oversee the
formation of the KSF and dissolution of the Kosovo Protection Corps, largely
a fire-fighting force composed of former members of the Kosovo Liberation
Army. The IMP will be able to take over CAA functions and re-establish
military control over the airspace if necessary.
The plan also dictates the structure and powers of municipalities,
educational institutes and the police force. It also demands Kosovo pay its
share of the external debt, and if an agreement cannot be reached, the ISG
will nominate an international arbitrator whose “debt allocation shall be
irrevocable.”
Politicians and officials from Kosovo and the West have declared that all
this is necessary to ensure a peaceful transition to independence and
provide a stable environment for investment and membership of the European
Union. However, the new ICR/EUSR Feith told the Dutch newspaper NRC
Handelsblad, “Expectations are high.... People expect that their quality of
life and economic circumstances will improve rapidly” and warned, “Neither
the EU nor the Americans will be able to fulfil their high expectations.”
Kosovan economist Ibrahim Rexhepi adds, “We must get rid of the illusion
that independence will bring tonnes of dollars into our streets.... The
economic crisis is likely to continue. To restart the metallurgy, food
industry and energy (sectors) takes time and a lot of investment.”
Even to dignify Kosovo with the term country, let alone one that is
independent, makes a mockery of the term. Kosovo has a population of about 2
million people and covers an area of 10,887 square kilometres, or 4,203
square miles. It has one of the most underdeveloped economies in Europe,
with a per capita income estimated at US$2,328 in 2004.
The US state of Connecticut would make a more viable country. It is bigger,
is not landlocked and has a population of 3.4 million. Its per capita income
was US$47,819 in 2005, more than 20 times that of Kosovo.
Kosovo is almost entirely dependent on production outside its borders. It
exports less per capita than any other country in Europe—just €77 million.
Although analysts have made much of an increase in private sector activity,
non-housing private investment stood at just €284 million in 2006, and it is
dependent on scrap-metal recovery and geared to satisfying the consumer
needs of the international officials and Kosovan elite.
After nine years of UNMIK occupation, little has improved for the vast
majority of Kosovo’s population, and in many respects it has worsened.
Nearly 80 percent of the population have experienced a decline in living
standards since 2003. More than half of Kosovo’s inhabitants are unemployed,
and real wages are stagnant. Those that have work receive an average €220
(about US$320) per month. More than a third of the population live on less
than €1.50 per day. Attempts to raise pensions and wages have been blocked.
Those that are better off rely on remittances from relatives working abroad.
Poverty is so widespread and all-encompassing that, somewhat ironically, the
province has the lowest levels of inequality in Europe. But the gap between
the richest and poorest is growing.
Little wonder that there was a record low turnout in last year’s
elections—43 percent, down from 80 percent in elections soon after the
Kosovo war—indicating a staggering decrease in support for the political
parties installed after 1999.
Back in 1999, after the Western powers backed by various liberals and
radicals had thrown their support behind demands for self-determination for
Kosovo and the NATO bombing of Serbia, the World Socialist Web Site warned
in “After the Slaughter: Political Lessons of the Balkan War,” “The bombing
of Yugoslavia has exposed the real relations that exist between imperialism
and small nations.”
The statement continued, “The great indictments of imperialism written in
the first years of the twentieth century—those of Hobson, Lenin, Luxemburg
and Hilferding—read like contemporary documents. Economically, small nations
are at the mercy of the lending agencies and financial institutions of the
major imperialist powers. In the realm of politics, any attempt to assert
their independent interests brings with it the threat of devastating
military retaliation. With increasing frequency small states are being
stripped of their national sovereignty, compelled to accept foreign military
occupation, and submit to forms of rule that are, when all is said and done,
of an essentially colonialist character.”
Nearly a decade later, this prognosis has proven correct. Not only has
Kosovo’s creation been carried out in violation of any concept of national
sovereignty for Serbia, but in no sense can what has been created be
considered a sovereign entity in its own right. Rather, Kosovo is being used
as a pawn in the Great Power rivalries between the US, Europe and Russia,
with terrible consequences for all the peoples of the Balkans, irrespective
of their ethnicity.
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