Independent thinking

THE GUARDIAN (UK) COMMENT

Kosovo must become a state if it is to be a well-governed and democratic society, say Isa Blumi and Anna Di Lellio

Monday October 24, 2005

In the current debate on Kosovo's political status, talks about conditional independence and substantial decentralisation as the sole guarantee for the protection of Serb minorities have become a mantra.

However, if democracy and security are the desired goal, a prolonged international custodial role and decentralisation are not the solution.

Experience has shown that traditional high diplomacy in the Balkans, whose foundations were laid at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, creates instability for two main reasons - it routinely disregards the will of local agents and places an overbearing emphasis on ethnicity.

The consequences of this approach are pernicious, yet today's debate on Kosovo shows very little has been learned from its failure.

Take the decentralisation plan of 1903 that the Great Powers requested from the Ottoman government: the Mürzsteg scheme. The goal, then as today, was to protect the rights of Christians.

More than 100 villages in Kosovo were separated from their Albanian and Muslim neighbours and allowed to administer themselves with the assistance of outside "experts". Free from taxation, they had their own judicial and administrative institutions as well as gendarmeries organised and led by Italy, Russia and France.

Rather than ensuring stability, however, the Mürzsteg scheme facilitated the mobilisation of Serb and Bulgarian minority "communities", and clashes between Christians and Albanians over territory increased.

In the 1990s, the international conferences and peace plans designed to avoid the bloodshed in Yugoslavia were notable for following the same logic, giving space to the idea of a link between ethnic nationality and territory as a basis - paradoxically - on which to preserve multi-ethnicity.

The Carrington plan, the Vance plan, the Zagreb-4 plan, the Cutilheiro plan, the Vance-Owen peace plan, the Owen-Stoltenberg plan and the Contact Group plan all consequently failed to stop the war.

The 1995 Dayton peace accords were perhaps the most notorious example. They put an end to the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but created two distinct entities, along ethnic lines, that are de facto separated although legally together and could split given the chance.

Dayton established an international mission in Bosnia which, 10 years later, is still headed by a high representative with the power to overrule domestic institutions, impose legislation and dismiss local officials - a good recipe only for passive citizenship. More damning still, the two entities are hardly integrated or reconciled.

In Kosovo, too, a UN-led protectorate with broad powers, UNMIK, was established after the 1999 NATO intervention. An undemocratic institution by definition, it failed to create democratic citizenship in Kosovo but contributed to an irreconcilable ethnic separation - a serious obstacle to democracy and stability.

Six years of protectorate have consolidated an Albanian ethnic identity as discourse and practice. As an illustrative example, UNMIK travel documents, substituting Yugoslav passports, contribute to classify Albanians in Kosovo as a unique group without a state or a nation and identified only by their ethnicity.

The protectorate has also confirmed the de facto partition of Kosovo along ethnic lines at the Ibar river. As NATO troops settled in the southern section of the divided city of Mitrovica in June 1999, they did not fulfil their mandate to secure the entire territory of Kosovo, and seem even more unable to do so now.

Northern Kosovo, with its parallel structures of government and economy, constitutes a physical and political magnet for Serb communities south of the river as the vital umbilical cord to Belgrade.

Today, international diplomacy entrusts negotiation about Kosovo's status to a European special envoy with as many as three deputies - an American, a European, and a Russian. It would be highly advisable for this group to refrain from trying to impose a diplomatic solution that professes to support multi-ethnicity but instead carves out ethnic enclaves.

As in the past, decentralisation as a tool to protect - and substantially separate - Serb minorities is a solution that continues to empower self-styled "representatives" of ethnic groups and creates new possibilities for conflict.

Local and regional security concerns will be better guaranteed if Kosovo integration into NATO and the EU are given a clear timeline and tied to the functioning of Kosovo institutions, especially their ability to respect minority safety and rights. Conditional integration into Europe, not conditional independence, should be planned for Kosovo.

Would Kosovo be able to perform? It should be given the chance. But in order to become a democratic society governed by institutions that are more transparent and responsive than the current ones, it must become a state.

International bureaucracies acting in loco parentis can produce only passive citizenship and encourage local institutions to behave irresponsibly. As in the case of East Timor or Eritrea, or nearby Montenegro, Kosovan statehood could be decided locally in a referendum.

Toying with the idea that Serbia would maintain some sort of sovereignty over Kosovo will not ensure stability.

And it would not be good for Serbia, a country that, after years of indecision, must clearly know what its southern borders are. Serbia can only profit from acquiring, in an independent Kosovo, a more self-assured and friendly neighbour.

Isa Blumi teaches Middle East and Islamic Studies and History, and Anna Di Lellio has been involved in Kosovo since the war as an international administrator and researcher.