[A-PAL] A-PAL--nonvoting prisoners and an article by M. Woollacott,The Guardian

[Alice Mead]

>Albanian Prisoner Advocacy
  November 12, 2001


                         A-PAL STATEMENT

Let the Albanian Prisoners vote at home! UNMIK is conducting 
elections, but these UNMIK prisoners, who are still in Serbia, cannot 
vote-- despite their guaranateed right to do so. If this makes no 
sense, read on!

The recently signed transfer document (it was apparently not an 
agreement) for the Albanian prisoners had a tone of surreal 
strangeness about it. Without saying much of anything, it seemed that 
somehow Serb leaders had backed into acknowledging that UNMIK was 
indeed the administrator of Kosovo, which is still called Kosovo and 
Metohojia in Serbia, indicating their future intention of not only 
re-occupying it but preventing the 90% Albanian population from using 
their name for the embattled place. It will be interesting to see if 
and when this transfer document produces any meaningful action.

In the meantime, Kosova's other citizens--and perhaps the 
prisoners,who have the right to vote but not the means so far as we 
know even though we have been asking that they have absentee ballots 
since September-- will be participating in elections. These citizens 
will elect representatives, who ultimately cannot represent them 
anywhere! This will be interesting, too.
So, two years after the end of the NATO war, the Kosovars remain the 
only undemocratically governed people in Europe, while under 
supervision of the UN, an organization formed to protect individual 
rights and freedoms worldwide. This is extraordinary. It cost the USA 
some $90 billion dollars to fight a war that now has maintained a 
strange status quo--the occupation of Kosovo by outsiders, who have 
blocked self-determination while touting the supremacy of protecting 
human rights (when NATO does so but not when Albanians demand human 
rights or the transfer of their own citizens to the proper courts) 
while at the same time, protecting the sovereignty of an abusive 
dictatorship whose federation no longer exists.

(for further obfuscation, please read the excellent article below.)


>*********************************************************************
>
>           "There is a dangerous lack of clarity on Kosovo's future-"
>
>The international community does have other responsibilities
>
>Martin Woollacott
>Friday November 9, 2001
>The Guardian
>
>Bernard Kouchner, the founder of Medécins Sans Frontières, was 
>rewarded for years of effort in the humanitarian field by being 
>handed a whole country to run. His experience as head of the United 
>Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (Unmik), he said, 
>was out of Alice in Wonderland. You had to believe in six impossible 
>things before breakfast and you had to run very hard just to keep in 
>one place. The man whose innovation had been to project humanitarian 
>aid across the frontiers of states in ingenious ways now had to 
>operate as ingeniously as he could in a society with frontiers but 
>without a state. The statelessness of Kosovo is an even more 
>pressing problem today.
>Kosovo and Bosnia are among the many responsibilities acquired by 
>the international community during the 1990s which risk being 
>overlooked in the understandable but frantic reordering of 
>priorities after September 11. The independent international 
>commission on Kosovo produced, in its Kosovo report late last year, 
>a thorough and balanced analysis of the causes of the Kosovo war, 
>the justifications for it, and the problems that followed the Nato 
>victory. The commission has now issued a follow-up report in which 
>it stresses again that some of the justifications for the war lie in 
>the future rather than in the past. "It would be a tragic sequel to 
>the war of 1999," the authors write, "if Kosovo was once more 
>forgotten ... the status of Kosovo has not yet been decided and ... 
>leaving this issue unresolved is both cruel to the Kosovans and 
>dangerous for the stability of the Balkans."
>
>The problem of Kosovo indicates the power of fiction in 
>international affairs. The fiction is that Kosovo is part of a 
>country called Yugoslavia, itself now a fictional concept. The 
>reality is that there is not a sane head anywhere who believes that 
>Kosovo will ever again be part of a political entity of which Serbia 
>is also a part. Yet independence continues to be out of bounds for 
>the Kosovans, because of a desire not to disturb Serbia's internal 
>political balance, because of the precedent it might offer 
>elsewhere, and because of a general reluctance to dispose in a 
>cavalier way of anybody's sovereignty, however tattered it may have 
>become.
>
>There is, no doubt, some risk that independence for Kosovo might be 
>used to argue for the independence of the Serbian entity in Bosnia 
>or in Kosovo itself, or for an Albanian entity in Macedonia. But 
>they are minor compared to the risks involved in keeping Kosovo in a 
>permanently retarded condition.
>
>Another recent report on Kosovo, from the International Peace 
>Academy, notes the dangers of difficult peace agreements "evolving 
>into a constitutional framework that is both unworkable and 
>impossible to change". That danger is well illustrated by Bosnia, 
>which is formally a state, but does not have the real attributes of 
>one and labours under arrangements which, if not changed, may 
>prevent it ever acquiring them. In Kosovo by contrast, there is a 
>readiness for a state and a degree of competence to run one but no 
>readiness, so far, to permit statehood. In the negotiations between 
>the UN mission and the Kosovans on a framework agreement for Kosovo 
>after the elections, the UN ruled out any unqualified reference to 
>the "the will of the people".
>
>The result is an oddity: free and fair elections not intended to 
>express the will of the people, or at least not the full extent of 
>that will. The Peace Academy report quotes an international official 
>as saying "elections are what we do". In similar situations, the 
>formula of troops on the ground, aid to the community flowing in, 
>and elections completed and approved has been abused, particularly 
>by the US, to claim progress where not much has in reality been 
>registered, and to provide a justification for departure. That is 
>not on the cards in Kosovo, since the denial of independence entails 
>a continued presence. But a different kind of contradiction is 
>evident.
>
>Kosovans will be voting in just over a week for a full array of 
>representative figures and institutions. There will be an assembly, 
>a president of the assembly, a prime minister appointed by that 
>president, ministers and, it seems, also a president of Kosovo. Yet 
>Unmik will continue to control the foreign affairs, defence, 
>interior, and justice portfolios, and the head of Unmik will have 
>the final say even on those matters which the Kosovans decide 
>themselves. Even in the short term, this is a recipe for confusion 
>and confrontation. The Kosovans, the Kosovo commission follow up 
>report suggests, "will have the illusion of self-rule rather than 
>the reality". In effect, Kosovo will have two governments, one 
>democratic and legitimate but with limited powers, and one unelected 
>and imposed, but with almost unlimited powers.
>
>Politics after the elections will be difficult. Hans Haekkerup, 
>Kouchner's successor, appears to have succeeded in persuading Serbs 
>to vote in the elections, which is heartening. But the result may be 
>that Ibrahim Rugova's Democratic Alliance, the LDK, which is 
>expected to win but not to get an outright majority, will have to 
>rule in coalition with Serbian and other ethnic minority parties. 
>Rogova's rivals, Hashim Thaqi and Ramush Haradinaj, could push 
>Rugova into that position by refusing to bring their parties into a 
>coalition government. From a position in opposition they might be 
>able to snipe at Rugova for his relatively soft position on the 
>independence issue and, in the event of Rugova having to form a 
>coalition with them, for working with Serbs who want a partition ist 
>or quasi-partitionist solution for Kosovo.
>
>It is true that immediate independence for Kosovo is not a practical 
>proposition. It would antagonise still further the Serbian minority 
>and would be opposed by neighbouring states. That is why conditional 
>independence offers the best available, if imperfect, solution. The 
>Kosovo commission suggested that the powers now exercised by the UN 
>mission should pass in an orderly way to the new Kosovo 
>institutions. This process would be conditional on a commitment by 
>the Kosovans to the sanctity of existing borders, a guarantee of 
>human rights to all citizens, and the renunciation of the use of 
>violence internally or externally. Paper promises would not do, and 
>the handover of powers could be slowed or halted if necessary. At 
>the end of such a process international responsibilities would be 
>confined to the protection of minorities, human rights, and the 
>integrity of the borders.
>
>The commission is not alone in arguing that the coming elections 
>must be followed by a decision, or at least a greater degree of 
>clarity, on Kosovo's final status. Unless some sense of movement 
>toward an agreed end is created, Kosovo will fester, and the 
>prospects for the region as a whole will be diminished.
>
>m.woollacott at guardian.co.uk
>
>Special report
>Kosovo
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
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