It is now 12 years since the fighting in Kosovo stopped. It started briefly again this week as Serbs killed a Kosovo police officer in a dispute over illegal Serb imports into the country. Now US and French soldiers have turned up to turn off the Serb aggression.
Serbs are tough when it comes to shooting Kosovans, but tend to slink away when confronted with real soldiers.
Once again the Balkans are paying the price of Europe’s indifference to the need to shape a final settlement that can allow these conflicted communities to become normal nation states. Indifference may be too harsh a word. Both William Hague and his energetic Europe minister, David Lidington, have urged the Serbs and Kosovans to negotiate an agreement based on Serbia finally giving up its pretence that Kosovo will one day be re-integrated and accept rule from Belgrade. The EU External Action Service is anything but indifferent with Lady Ashton’s chief aide, the British diplomatist, Robert Cooper, shuttling between Pristina and Belgrade, trying to build bridges.
As in the 1990s, when the world’s attention focused on the siege of Sarajevo or the 8,300 Europeans taken out in Srebrencia and shot by Serbs, today policy-makers have allowed the Kosovo question to drift down the agenda. This is short-sighted, because during the years of Serb oppression hundreds of thousands of Kosovans were driven off their land to become Europe’s single biggest refugee flow since the end of the second world war. In 1999, the world had had enough of Milosevic’s bullying and when he refused to agree a deal that would let Kosovo be Kosovo, a short military campaign put an end to the years of suffering of the Kosovan people.
Today, however, there is no final settlement. Kosovans are protected from a further Serb military occupation by UN-sanctioned troops and the presence of the biggest EU mission – the 6,000 strong EULEX mission. But they do not enjoy any of the normal rights of statehood. Russia blocks all moves at the UN to allow Kosovo to become a normal member of the international community. Unlike Macedonia or Montenegro and other republics that emerged after the dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation as a result of Miloseic-Karadzic-Mladic era of ultra-nationalism, Kosovo has been denied the right to be a modest Balkan nation-state.
EU negotiators have tried their weary best to make Belgrade see sense. Belgrade’s leaders are trapped by the raging sense of loss that Serbs genuinely feel as they look at the region they once ruled and now are told they must make way for governments in Pristina, Podgorica and Sarejevo that they instinctively see as inferior and unfitted to rule over Serb communities in Serbia’s neighbouring republics.
As Balkans minister I was told by leaders in Belgrade that it was impossible to deliver Karadzic or Mladic to the Hague because the people of Serbia saw them as national heroes and that they would vote in an ultra nationalist government if action was taken against these war criminals. Now the same argument is trotted out that any agreement between Serbia and Kosovo would be seen as treason by furious Serbs.
As a result, Serbia creates its own difficulties with the rest of Europe and is locked in its self-imposed cul-de-sac of isolation, unable either to make peace with Kosovo nor able to reconquer the territories mainly populated by Serbs.
To make matters worse, Serbia throws up endless irritations to try and prevent Kosovo moving towards a more normal economy based on trade, including exports of its high-grade agricultural produce. Kosovo has profitable metal mines and has recently discovered rare earths which have brought Chinese companies, eager to increase China’s quasi monopoly of these valuable raw materials, to Pristina to do deals.
Under international law, trade is governed by a system of customs stamps that allow goods to cross borders – even if there are quarrels between governments. Since 2008, Serbia has refused to accept goods with EU-accepted customs stamps to enter or cross Serb territory from Kosovo. This is a childish bit of bullying. Made-in-Kosovo produce just take longer routes elsewhere in the Balkans where most countries recognise Kosovo and the authority of its government.
On the other hand, the Serbs have encouraged the export of Serb products into Kosovo through the no man’s land of northern Kosovo where Belgrade still holds sway over the mainly Serb population. In the rest of Kosovo, big Serb communities have now made their peace with the existence of Kosovo. At the last EU-supervised talks, Belgrade did appear to accept that Kosovan goods could transit Serbia. But once EU negotiators returned to Brussels, Belgrade changed its mind and continued to refuse the custom stamped goods from its neighbour. This provoked the Kosovans into trying to shut down the border crossing for Serb goods in retaliation. The standoff turned vicious this week as a handful of Kosovan custom officials and police faced an angry Serb para-militaries who brought their guns and grenades out to assault the Kosovans.
Now French and American peacekeeping troopshave been deployed to the scene to stop the Serbs killing Kosovans. So we have another Balkans standoff. As John Hooper reported from Belgrade earlier this week, the Serbs may no longer be interested in aiming at EU membership if it means accepting the Serb rule is limited to Serbia. This suits Russia as Moscow is steadily increasing its presence and influence in the Balkans. The Kremlin views the NATO intervention to stop a new Srebrenica in Kosovo in 1999 as the last failure of the interregnum years of the 1990s before Putin arrived and stopped most cooperation between Russia and the West.
But as these geopolitical games are played out, it is the people of both Serbia and Kosovo who lose out. Both nations should be partners rather than reliving the hates of the 20th century. But there is no one able to bang heads together. The return of violence with Serbs getting out guns to kill Kosovans again should be a wake-up call.
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Denis MacShane MP was minister for the Balkans 2001-2005