Sunday, April 1, 2001Key to Peace: Kosovo's Independence
By MICHAEL MEYER
NEW YORK--Fighting in Macedonia and southern Serbia has quieted. How long before it erupts again? There is only one solution for an enduring peace in the Balkans. That is independence for Kosovo.
An emerging constellation of forces makes this not only inevitable but desirable. Recent events in the province and along its borders are ominous. But they are part of a bigger picture. Taking them into account, it is possible to see how the latest chaos presents a unique (and perhaps last) opportunity to end a decade of conflict.
Begin with Montenegro. It seeks independence from the Yugoslavia of which it is a part. Washington and the European Union are doing their best to discourage it, but they will probably fail. Sooner or later, Montenegro will almost certainly secede, perhaps as early as summer, depending on the results of this month's elections. That will put Kosovo in play, whether we relish the prospect or not.
Neighboring Serbia is newly democratic. The more relevant and less recognized fact is that it wants to cut loose from Kosovo. A new generation of Serbs, turned cynical by war, cares little for their supposed mythic "homeland." Apostles of the old nationalism have also had their fill. In Belgrade not long ago, Dobrica Cosic, author of the infamous 1986 memorandum that sanctified "Greater Serbia," shrugged off 15 years of blood and madness that he did so much to spawn. Kosovo? "Serbia would be better off without it," he told a U.S. official.
Hard-liners from the old regime will resist. But they have few allies. Yugoslavia's military has trouble enough coping with the Albanian insurgency on its southern flank; it has no stomach for the far larger war that would ensue if the army ever returned to Kosovo. Leading politicians are reluctant to let Kosovo go only because they fear being blamed for losing it, says a senior U.S. official in Pristina, fresh from briefings with his counterparts in Belgrade. They want us to "force them" to do it.
A third critical change is the emergence of new radicals. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the U.N. peacekeeping mission have had many chances to control those now making war along Kosovo's boundaries. Instead, in ways large and small, we have encouraged them. A year ago, to offer one instance, U.N. KFOR troops arrested an Albanian from Macedonia, living in Kosovo, named Xhavit Hasani. Suspected of murder and ethnic terrorism, he was extradited to Skopje, whereupon members of his gang promptly kidnapped four Macedonian police to procure his release. Intelligence sources now identify Hasani as a leader of the new National Liberation Army around his native village of Tanusveci, where the first fighting broke out that plunged Macedonia into crisis.
London newspapers, citing angry British commanders in Kosovo, have accused the Central Intelligence Agency of supporting separatist guerrillas in the Presovo Valley of southern Serbia. A bizarre scheme to undermine former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic backfired, according to the reports, now that the dictator is gone and the "freedom fighters" are running amok. I had heard these rumors long ago and give them little credence. But I do know that U.S. troops, in particular, have turned a blind eye to men and materiel smuggled from Kosovo into Serbia. It's also an open secret that the head of one leading political party in Kosovo, whose faltering election campaign was buoyed last fall with U.S. funds, strongly backs the rebels. So do many other fighters of the titularly disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army.
So far, we have met these problems with half-measures. We condemn the violence, denounce the perpetrators as "extremists" representing fringe political interests. We enter into an entente cordiale with our erstwhile enemy, allowing Yugoslav forces to enter the security zone along the Macedonian border, the guerrillas' home base. We vow to tighten security along the sieve that is Kosovo's frontier, to limit the separatists' movements. But no one pretends these measures can be more than modestly effective. We don't confront the guys with guns, because they could turn on us.
What's needed is a vision of the future that moderates violence. That presupposes our recognizing--and acting upon--a set of unalterable facts. The vast majority of Kosovar Albanians dislike the thugs who move among them. They want to live normal lives in peace. They revere NATO, most especially Americans. They are friends, not "new enemies," as some loose talk of recent weeks has cast them. But like the radicals, they, too, want independence for Kosovo. For the very reasons that brought NATO to the province, they will never again submit to Belgrade's rule. We have deferred this issue, fearing it may further "destabilize" the region. Standing against independence, however, is guaranteed to do exactly that.
Lord David Owen, the European Union's peace envoy to the Balkans in the mid-90s, has lately called for a regional peace conference, a present-day equivalent of the "1878 Congress of Berlin," complete with border changes endorsed by great powers. Carl Bildt, the U.N. Balkan special envoy, suggests an independent Kosovo could be coaxed into a confederation of Yugoslavia, a prospect that is privately endorsed by many leading Kosovars. Istvan Istvan Gyarmati, at the EastWest Institute in New York, argues that if we in the West do not take the initiative, extremists will. The cards on are on the table. It's time to play them.
The script could go like this. If Montenegro declares independence, Yugoslavia should be considered formally defunct. Significantly, the United Nations resolution that dispatched NATO to Kosovo mandates the province to be the sovereign territory of the federation of Yugoslavia, not Serbia. Kosovo's future should be negotiated as such. Borders may change, similar to the manner in which Yugoslavia ceded portions of southern Kosovo to Macedonia last month. Serb territories of Kosovo, north of Kosovska Mitrovica and the Ibar River, might go to Serbia. In exchange, Belgrade might relinquish the western sliver of southern Serbia dominated by Albanians of the Presovo Valley, Eastern Kosova, the locals call it.
Macedonia's problems are singular. The country is governed by a coalition of Macedonian Slavs and Albanians, deeply but not hopelessly at odds. The nation's slender Albanian minority seeks equal standing under a constitution recognizing both nationalities and conferring a measure of autonomous self-government. Macedonia's Slavs fear losing power and suspect Albanians of plotting to secede, despite unequivocal declarations to the contrary. The authorities' success in driving the guerrillas away from Tetovo last week is temporary. The international community must quickly help bring the two sides together, first to present a united front to their peoples, opposing the guerrillas, and second to renegotiate their common future through a round table of national reconciliation. Otherwise, it will be war.
Haste is not required, except regarding Macedonia. As long as the ultimate destination is clear, slow-but-steady will win the day. Meanwhile, the U.N. mission must begin to accomplish what it set out to do: build the civil institutions needed to make Kosovo a functioning society. It has been painfully slow, stalling even now on efforts to craft an interim constitution or legal framework for the province. The result: a vacuum of power--and a sense of political drift--that gives radicals free rein.
There is no substitute for a lack of strategy. If our way is not accepted as the path of safe and clear progress, it will be the guerrillas' way. One former KLA soldier, speaking recently to a liberal, Westernized columnist for a Pristina daily, put it like this: "You miss the essential thing, if you think my friends and I do not know the value of the kalashnikov for achieving a political solution." The message is loud and clear. Unless independence is on the table--to be forfeited, not won, by violence--there is no prospect for peace. Nor any exit for NATO.
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Michael Meyer, a Newsweek Editor and Former Correspondent in the Balkans, Recently Returned From a Year With the U.n. Mission in KosovoCopyright 2001 Los Angeles Times
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