[NYC-L] [Kcc-News] [Kosova] Land in limbo

[Mentor Cana]

---------------------------------------------------------------------
  Kosova Crisis Center (KCC) News: http://www.alb-net.com/index.htm
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1186133,00.html

Land in limbo

Until Kosovo achieves independence, upsurges of violence such as the recent
attacks against Serbs will only continue, says Anna Di Lellio *

Monday April 5, 2004

To describe the violence that erupted in Kosovo last month as ethnic
cleansing is wrong and misleading. Yes, Albanian mobs targeted Serb
civilians and property, including Orthodox churches. But the label is too
easily employed when talking about the Balkans, although it can be said
that the violence was all too predictable.
What happened was very similar to a race riot, in which a suppressed rage
suddenly exploded. The violent mobs were the extreme and cowardly
manifestation of a diffuse sense of helplessness among Kosovo Albanians.
While there is no justification for the violence, understanding the broader
picture is crucial.

In 1999 Nato rescued Kosovo from Slobodan Milosevic and delivered it to the
UN as a protectorate. Security council resolution 1244 provided the
framework for the transition to self-government. At the time, it seemed
premature to make any commitment on deadlines and ultimate goals, although
Kosovo Albanians thought they had won the war for independence from Serbia.
Now they fear a UN-led open-ended transition has taken on a life of its
own.

This fear is well founded. Residents of a protectorate, Kosovo Albanians
have no citizenship or representation abroad. They feel politically
homeless despite having a president, a prime minister and a parliament.
These self-governing institutions often overlap with the UN, which retains
major powers (the police, the judiciary, the security sector and foreign
policy among them), lack accountability and produce layers of bureaucracy
and resentment, not good governance. Kosovo Albanians have been assigned
the impossible task of nation-building even while they are told they have
no nation.

This contradictory system of rules is now the main obstacle to progress.
There is a cautionary tale here for those who would pass a troubled
occupation of Iraq into the hands of the UN.

Let's take cohabitation with Serbs (multi-ethnicity is a misnomer), the
yardstick of the UN's standards for Kosovo. There are Serb members of
parliament, Serb ministers and Serb employees of the provisional
institutions of self-government. However, Kosovo Serbs have been allowed by
the UN to maintain parallel schools, hospitals, and courts - a de facto
partition of Kosovo.

The Kosovo Serbs are intimidated into separatism by Serb paramilitary
groups and police and given financial incentives by Belgrade, which they
consider their only legitimate government. For the same reason, those who
fled the province after the end of the war are not returning home, no
matter how improved living conditions might be.

The market economy, or the lack of it, is another problem. Unemployment is
measured at over 60%, and growth is barely self-sustaining, though the
black economy does well. This is hardly a surprise in the absence of
privatisation, stopped months ago in the midst of legal wrangling over
Kosovo's sovereignty.

Uncertainty about the status of Kosovo is a constant source of anxiety for
Albanians. This is especially true when Serbia, still the sovereign state
in Kosovo, continues to slide down the path of an unrepentant nationalism.
With the eyes of the US, and the world, now turned towards the Gulf, Kosovo
Albanians understand that they have become once again hostage to their own
powerlessness and feel desperate.

Labelling the recent violence "reversed ethnic cleansing" obscures all the
above issues and more. It neglects to see that when the streets exploded
the Albanian leadership called for an end to it. The former military chief
of the KLA, Lieutenant-General, Agim Çeku, went on TV to ask that protest
be expressed only through institutional channels. Political leaders, from
the prime minister to small-town mayors, persuaded angry youths to return
home.

Civil society groups condemned the violence. The Kosovo Women's Network, an
umbrella organisation for women's groups in the country, immediately
mobilised to help and collected funds for Serb women. The government has
authorised &#euros;5m (£3.3m) to compensate the victims of looting.

It is very important that the responsibility of the riots be investigated,
from the role played by instigators to the inexplicably inadequate response
of more than 6,000 police under the UN leadership and 18,000 Nato troops.
However, it is the underlying reasons that need an intelligent political
response.

To keep a tired UN protectorate on life support for as long as it takes for
Kosovo to achieve democratic standards on a par with leading European
countries has proved inadequate. A de facto split of the province in two,
leaving the north and a few cantons in Albanian territory to Serbia is a
clear recipe for more violence and contentious demands for partition
elsewhere in the region.

Two years ago an independent commission led by the South African judge
Richard Goldstone launched the idea of conditional independence as the best
option.

An independent Kosovo under international monitoring of democratic
standards and Nato protection will make citizens out of members of
different ethnic groups. It should go some way towards dispelling the fears
of both communities, allow development, and solve the question of Albanian
irredentism. Without this solution, the Balkans will not know stability and
peace.

* Anna Di Lellio was media commissioner in Kosovo from September 2001 to
March 2003 and political adviser to the UN Kosovo protection corps
coordinator from September 2003 to February 2004.
______________________________________________________________
If you wish to unsubscribe, send a blank message to:
kcc-news-unsubscribe at alb-net.com , or visit KCC-NEWS's page at:
http://www.alb-net.com/mailman/listinfo/kcc-news