Kosovo's Final Status: An Indecent Proposal

SERBIANNA (USA), Saturday, May 28, 2005, By Boba Borojevic

Dr. Srdja Trifkovic on the search for Kosovo's final status.

The Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija has been under the UN protectorate since the bombing of Serbia in 1999. Some NATO countries and Albanians are advocating independence for the province, although some 250.000 Serbs were expelled from their land, over 2000 killed and their houses and churches scorched, or completely destroyed by Albanians since NATO troops occupied Kosovo and Metohija. The UN has sold Serb properties and companies to highest bidders.

"The Kosovo Serbs have been exposed to constant harassment, deprived of basic human rights, isolated inside enclaves and denied freedom of movement and the right to work or use their own property, most of which has been usurped, destroyed or burned down.

With the exception of the north of Mitrovica, where Serbs are the majority, Serb children in Kosovo lack the basic conditions for normal life. They are not free to move around and have to be escorted to school by KFOR soldiers, there to protect them from frequent attacks, insults and harassment from Albanian extremists and their neighbors, " reports the www.kosovo.com site on May 21, 2005.

On the ground, however, Kosovo's UN governor Soren Jessen-Petersen, a Danish diplomat, is prepared to testify at the UN SC that "significant progress" over the past three months have been met by Albanians on implementing "democracy standard" there. Why this deception?

Because the outcome in Kosovo, as far as Mr. Petersen and other international administrative are concerned, is preordained. In other words, the reality on the ground is irrelevant. What they have in mind has been decided in advance. A parallel could be made with the trail in The Hague, notably that of Slobodan Milosevic. No matter what happens at the trail itself, no matter how comprehensively the myth of Racak, or the myth of Serbrenica is demolished, the "guilty" verdict is preordained.

Likewise, even though Kosovo - by any parameters - is the worst-administered part of Europe; although, by any parameters, the human rights situation there is nothing short of catastrophic, nevertheless Mr. Petersen and others will not allow reality to get in the way of their political agenda. It is particularly noteworthy that the UN has entrusted the administrator himself with writing this report, even though he has a vested personal and professional interest in making it as glowing as possible. You do not ask an employee to write his own performance review! If as administrator Mr. Peterson has failed, and he has failed, obviously he is not going to be the one to admit that failure.

The US Congress has hinted couple of weeks ago that it is going to support Kosovo autonomy. Why is it so?

They want much more than "autonomy." The assumption in Washington is increasingly clear: at the end of the road Kosovo will become independent, under whatever auspices. The supporters of Kosovo's independence have been working very hard and diligently, lobbying, investing money in Washington, while the Serbian side has not done anything tangible. A good example of this failure is the recent visit by the delegation of the Serbian Orthodox Church to the US. That visit, by any objective standard, was a failure, both in terms of the caliber of the people the delegation has met while in Washington and in New York, and in terms of the impact on policy.

With the defeat of John Kerry and the reelection of George Bush last November the Serbian side was given a brief window of opportunity, just as it had been given a brief window of opportunity in the immediate aftermath of the riots in Kosovo in March of last year. On both occasions the Serbs have failed to use it. They've failed to develop a firm common position that would no longer allow any breaking of the ranks. Such breaking of the ranks did occur, however, most notably with a call by president Tadic on the Kosovo Serbs to take part in the farcical, sham elections last fall.

The second reason for this development is the desire of the Bush administration to disengage from the Balkans as much as possible. As they see it in Washington, that requires some kind of political package that will include both a form for independence of Kosovo, a revision of the Dayton agreement, and the wrapping up of The Hague indictments with the arrest of Mladic and Karadzic.

On all three accounts, however, the Serbian side was not proactive in pointing out that, if carried out, they would contribute to instability. If the Serbian side is not reconciled to the loss of Kosovo, if it refuses to sign on the dotted line, Kosovo simply cannot be independent.

As far as Bosnia is concerned, it should have been pointed, time and over again, that a centralized Bosnia will be as unstable and unviable as it had been back in 1991-1992, at the beginning of the civil war, because all of the forces of disintegration are present to this day. If anything they are present in a much more strongly pronounced form. The animosities among the three ethnic groups, the three constituent nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina, run deeper and remain more intractable then ever.

And finally, as far as The Hague is concerned, it should have been pointed out by the Serbian side that by supporting The Hague, the US is actually paving the way for the authority of the International Criminal Court, which the Republican administration has resolutely refused to accept.

The problem is that on this particular set of issues there is a great proximity of views between the US and its European partners. On both sides of the Atlantic we have a clearly descendible desire to wrap things up in the way that is harmful to Serbian interests. This is partly due to an assumption abroad that the Serbs are reconciled to their own defeat, and that they cannot get their act together.

Would solving the "Kosovo Question" deflect criticism from Iraq, and maybe even generate some good PR in the Muslim world?

Those who imagine that the US can earn itself a few brownie points with the jihadists by being nice to the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo are deluding themselves. We have ample evidence that this has not happened as the result of the Clinton administration's support for the Bosnian Muslims in 1992-95 or for the Kosovo Muslims in 1998-1999. This has earned precious little good will in the Muslim world. The same applies to Washington's attempts to court Muslim favor by being ambivalent of the issue of Chechnya, or by effectively supporting Pakistani in the conflicts with India over the decades, or bybeing extremely lenient of Muslim transgressions in southern Philippines, in Indonesia, or along the tectonic plate between Islam and non-Islam in black Africa.

Whoever thinks that Islamists will accept the favoring of the Muslim side in the Balkans as a quid pro quo for the policy of U.S. support for Israel, or for Guantanamo Bay, or for the Abu Ghraib prison, is completely deluded. By granting the Muslim side in the Balkans the status of victimhood and moral superiority vis-à-vis their Serbian neighbors, the West has eliminated the possibility of turning that support into a geopolitical asset. Those Westerners who claim to be guided by moral standards in pursuit of foreign policy cannot ask for their Balkan chips to be honored by the Muslim world when that policy in any event, they claim, had been based upon an objective assessment of who is right and who is wrong.

Serbian side is willing to grant Kosovo and Metohija wider autonomy, short of independence. Why would Serbia want to sign such a deal? What kind of proposal is this anyway?

That slogan "More Than Autonomy, Less Than Independence" is meaningless. It can mean anything and it means nothing at all. It is one of those stock phrases that can conceal de facto independence. At this time is primarily meant to conceal the lack of true consensus on the Serbian side. That phrase paves for way for all kinds of models for the separation of Kosovo from Serbia, such as "conditional independence," or "independence in stages" but either way in the end Kosovo will get detached.

What Serbs don't have is a model that would preserve at least a modicum of Serbian presence, physical, political, and constitutional, in the province, and a model that would be clearly spelt to the so-called international community. If such set of clear-cut proposals are not presented, inventing these vague phrases is politically harmful.

There is no reason for Serbia to negotiate on the final status of Kosovo at this stage. If they enter these negotiations, they should be aware that they will end badly for the Serbian side, and by accepting the negotiating process they will grant such result an altogether unjustified legitimacy. Serbia should not be involved with the results that will come by these negotiations. Since UNSC Resolution 1244 has not been honored, the Serbs have a perfect alibi for refusing to negotiate any "final status." Why should they negotiate a new document, when the old one, adopted by the highest ranking international decision-making authority, remains just a scrap of paper.

"The Balkans, an essential link to the war on terrorism", was the title of the conference held in Belgrade a couple of weeks ago. The Rockford institute, from Rockford Illinois was one of the organizers why do you think it was important for it to be held in Belgrade?

We actually had two conferences, one in Chicago on April 16th, and the second in Belgrade on May 4th. Both were equally important: both in the United States and in Serbia it is necessary to point out the weak link that the Balkans has become in the war against terrorism. In the US, it is necessary to point out to the decision-making community that supporting an independent Kosovo and a centralized Bosnia amounts to opening the floodgates of Jihad into the very heart of Europe. There have been connections, and there still are, between the Islamist involvement in Bosnia and terrorist attacks all over the world. There have been connections between the so-called KLA, or whatever name it has assumed in the meantime, and Osama bin Laden and the international Jihad. In terms of their value systems, they are very similar to other jihadist movements all over the world, most notably Chechnya, our experts have concluded. They warn that by forcing a political solution that would grant a defective independence to those forces in Bosnia and Kosovo would facilitate Islamist penetration that has taken place elsewhere else in the Muslim world.

In Serbia, it was important to deliver a similar message as Serbian decision-making communities are remarkably reluctant to resort to such arguments in their contacts with Westerners. If you look at the testimony before the Committee on International Relations on May 19, it is remarkable that not a single presenter from the Serbian side pointed out that the US would actually be harming itself because it would be creating the conditions for the establishment of a Jihadist base in Europe.

Participants of both conferences have presented very effectively these and other solid arguments and we really look forward to completing the book and presenting it to the informed public and the decision-making community as our contribution to the debate on what is to be done in the Balkans.

With an independent Kosovo and a unified Bosnia under the factor of a Muslim rule, Islamists will have their foot in Europe. Why is this not seen as a threat, in Europe or the United States?

The only reasonable explanation for their refusal to take stock of the reality of Islam is that they hate the society to which they were born, that they resent the traditional culture, civilization and morality of which both Europe and North America are based, and that they want to be allies of that which is the enemy. The same demons that have guided their fathers and grandfathers in supporting Stalin and the communist subversion of the West is now guiding them to support the Muslims and the creation of an Islamist fifth column in the Western world.

Yet the victory of Islamic forces in Europe and Kosovo and in Bosnia was actually achieved by NATO. Would an independent Kosovo and a unified Bosnia justify NATO's way of waging wars?

NATO's waging wars of the 90s in support of the Muslim side in the Balkans was primarily used as a US tool of proving to the Europeans that Washington is still the boss who calls all the shots when it comes to the security policy. By virtue of expanding beyond its area of operationsm and by violating its charterm and by turning from a strictly defensive alliance into a criminally aggressive group, NATO has become a tool of post-modern social and political engineering. It has become a tool of global hegemony just as the United Nations or the European Union will be used as tools of global hegemony if and when required.

Who will be the loser and who will be the winner in the scenario of an independent Kosovo and Bosnia under Muslim rule?

The main losers will be the Serbs, of course. But, in the long run, the losers will be the entire Western world and all people who do not want to see the expansion of Jihad into the heart of Europe. The losers will be the upholders of the rule of law in international relations. The losers will be those who want to see peace and stability in the Balkans. The winners will be the enemies of all those things, and primarily the warriors of the global Jihad.

Dr Srdja Trifkovic, director of the Institute For International Affairs at Rockford Institute, Rockford Illinois and the author of the book : The Sword of the Prophet: Islam-History, Theology, Impact on the World.