Kosovo: Is Partition Most Likely Outcome?
The idea of partitioning Kosovo along ethnic lines is nothing new. Some Serbian officials and academics toyed with the idea in the early decades of the 20th century as a way of dealing with the Serbs' declining demographic position there. More recent partition projects were associated with the Serbian Academy of Sciences in the mid-1980s.
In addition to securing Serbian-majority areas and cultural and religious sites for the Serbian state, the partition planners have generally sought to keep control of as much of the province's mineral wealth for Belgrade as possible.
Some forms of de facto partition already exist in Kosovo. In the 1970s and early 1980s, when ethnic Albanian politicians held sway in communist Kosovo after decades of tough Serbian rule, many Serbs left the province. They said they were victims of intimidation and various forms of pressure to sell their land, although the Albanians claimed the Serbs were happy to take the money and move to better farms in Vojvodina.
Serbian Refugees
In the wake of the 1998-99 conflict, much of the Kosovar Serbian population fled their homes for Serbia proper or for what was emerging as a heavily Serbian territory north of the Ibar River, which divides Mitrovica into northern Serbian and southern Albanian halves. Various Serbian enclaves remain throughout Kosovo, but their existence is often precarious.
Some Serbian refugees and displaced persons probably will never go back to their former homes in what are now heavily Albanian areas like Pristina. The Serbian ethnic-cleansing campaign of 1999 in particular made heavy use of "human intelligence" on the ground that only local Serbs could supply. Many Serbs who cooperated with former Serbian and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's security forces subsequently fled because they feared the wrath of their Albanian neighbors.
Those Albanians also remember that it was the Serbs of Kosovo who formed the bedrock of support for Milosevic in his rise to power in the mid-1980s and subsequently helped keep him there.
Lack Of Communication
There has, moreover, been little communication across ethnic lines since 1999. The younger generations of Serbs and Albanians literally do not speak each other's languages because they never experienced the joint school or military systems that Yugoslav-era generations did.
Traditionally, few Serbs bothered to learn much Albanian, but prior to the late 1980s, most Kosovar Albanians with anything more than very basic schooling knew some Serbo-Croatian. All Kosovar males who served in the Yugoslav military learned at least enough Serbo-Croatian to conduct basic conversations and probably developed their skills further if they were posted to Croatia or Bosnia or somewhere else far from home.
Balkan Dominoes
The international community has long ruled out partition as an option, saying that Kosovo's future will be determined for the province as a whole. Some observers have warned that if foreign powers ever do allow the Serbian north to secede, they will pave the way for similar partition attempts in the Presevo Valley, Macedonia, or Bosnia-Herzegovina, thereby opening a Pandora's box of Balkan conflicts.
In the meantime, according to this scenario, the Kosovar Albanians will become increasingly impatient. Before young hotheads or organized radicals take matters into their own hands and renew the violence that shook the province in March 2004, the political leaders will issue a unilateral declaration of independence. This will be endorsed as the only practical alternative to protracted instability by several members of the international community, including probably the United States, Great Britain, Turkey, and some other states that have already indicated their support for Kosovar independence.
Most of the EU member states will bicker among themselves and not be able to act together, as has often happened in the past. Serbia will use its old connections with the Nonaligned Movement and its corps of experienced diplomats to ensure strong support for its position among the developing countries. This could prove useful, not only in the Security Council but also in the General Assembly, if and when Pristina seeks membership in that body. The Kosovars have few seasoned diplomats to plead their case except for publisher and negotiator Veton Surroi.
Facts On The Ground
At this point, so the theory goes, Russia and Serbia will make it clear that they have been stalling in hopes of triggering a declaration of independence by the Kosovars without Security Council approval. Serbia will then invoke the council's Resolution 1244, which specifies that Kosovo is part of Yugoslavia. (Yugoslavia was changed to Serbia in the text after Milosevic's rump Yugoslavia ceased to be.) As former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has noted, the Western countries never meant the reference to Kosovo being part of Yugoslavia seriously but simply included it in 1244 as a sop to Russia and Greece.
But that will not make any difference at this stage. According to this scenario, Belgrade, backed by Moscow and perhaps Beijing, will announce that it will invoke what it considers its rights under 1244 and send its security forces and other officials into northern Kosovo to protect the Serbian population there from the "illegal" regime in the south.
The partition will then be sealed, perhaps with the assistance of foreign peacekeepers guarding the new boundary lines to prevent any direct clashes between Serbian and Kosovar Albanian forces.
The new Kosovar state will try to observe the provisions of the Ahtisaari plan and protect the Serbian enclaves and cultural properties because it knows that its international standing depends on it. But the enclaves will likely fade away as the young in particular move to the north, to Serbia proper, or even further away still. The cultural properties will lead a sometimes difficult existence, probably behind much barbed wire and guarded by French or Greek troops.
One of the lessons of the Croatian and Bosnian conflicts of the early 1990s was that Serbian populations outside Serbia had difficulty accepting the possibility that Serbs could have happy and productive lives in states that they did not control. That is clearly the case in Kosovo, too, particularly after 1998-99. It is probably too much to expect that any Albanian-dominated Kosovar state would ever attract even the grudging the allegiance of the province's Serbs.
Partition would be a bitter pill for the Albanians to swallow. They have said repeatedly that they will not accept it, but they might find themselves with little choice. With the political limbo of the UNMIK period behind them and a new legal system in place, they will then get on with their own lives and display the skills of entrepreneurship that they have in the United States, Switzerland, Germany, or Croatia. Neither they nor their former neighbors are likely to miss each other.
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Kosovo: UN Security Council Begins Final-Status Debate
Serbian Prime Minsiter Vojislav Kostunica at the UN on April 3
The plan was put forward by the UN special envoy for Kosovo, Martti Ahtisaari, after Serbian and Kosovar Albanian negotiators failed to reach agreement on the province's future status. The proposal has received backing from the United States and the European Union, but Russia, a veto-holding member of the council, has expressed its opposition.
Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, in an address to the Security Council on April 3, reiterated Belgrade's long-standing position that it is ready to give Kosovo "the highest degree of autonomy," but not independence.
Russia Pushes A 'Fact-Finding Mission'
Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin described the April 3 session as "good" and said Moscow will continue to push its proposal to send a Security Council "fact-finding" mission to Belgrade and Prishtina.
"I don't think anybody expected that the Security Council will come to some sort of conclusion today," Churkin said. "There was no effort at drawing a conclusion but what one could feel, in my view, that Security Council members, most of them, were in a reflective mood. We are trying to analyze the situation and trying to find the best way forward."
Russia's proposal for a "fact-finding" mission has met with mixed reactions within the Security Council. China and some of the nonpermanent council members expressed support for the mission. But the other three permanent members -- Britain, France, and the United States -- view Russia' proposal simply as a way to delay a decision that to them seems inevitable.
Alejandro Wolff, the acting U.S. ambassador to the UN, reasserted Washington's strong support for Ahtisaari's proposal. He said the Ahtisaari plan is the "only option really available."
Not A Template
But at the same time Wolff acknowledged there is some polarization within the council on Kosovo's status. He said that concerns are mostly related to situations in other parts of the world. But he argued that the Kosovo case is "unique" and should not serve as a template.
Security Council President Emyr Jones Parry of Britain leading the discussion on April 3 (official site)
Russia has argued that if Kosovo is to be given independence then the same treatment should be applied to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, which are seeking independence from Russia's southern neighbor, Georgia.
Churkin expressed his anger when Kosovar Albanian representatives were allowed to participate in the Security Council meeting. He noted that earlier in the year, Abkhaz representatives were denied U.S. visas when they wanted to come to the council to explain their position.
Divided Council
Ahitsaari, who is a former president of Finland, has come to the conclusion -- after 15 months of fruitless negotiations between Belgrade and Prishtina -- that independence is the only solution for Kosovo. Speaking after the council's April 3 meeting, Ahtisaari said he had no intention of changing his proposal, which has been described by Serbia's government as a "useless exercise."
"I totally disagree that this has been a useless exercise because otherwise we couldn't have actually made the proposals that we made, had we not come through thoroughly the different discussions," Ahtisaari said. "I don't think that the prolongation of these talks will help on the status issue."
UN Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry of Britain said there is "considerable support" within the Security Council for Ahtisaari' proposal. At the same time Jones Parry, who is the council's president for April, said a vote was unlikely soon.
Britain's view, he said, is that an independent Kosovo means stability in the Balkans and the road to membership in European structures for both Kosovo and Serbia.
"What is on offer is a managed process, a process which should lead towards independence, but one which is done in a way which meets aspirations," Jones Parry said. "And because of the European dimension of this, we believe that what is on offer for Kosovo, and also crucially for Serbia, and for the countries of the Balkans, is actually a destination with the Euro-Atlantic structures, both, the European Union and NATO."
The Ahtisaari blueprint would give Kosovo the independence its overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian population seeks -- with international supervision -- while at the same time giving Serbian-inhabited municipalities broad self-government as well as protection for Orthodox Christian sites throughout the province.