Hopeful signs across the Balkans

Oct 25th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

The UN Security Council has given its approval to talks on the future status of Kosovo. But with Serbs and Albanians unlikely ever to agree on whether independence or autonomy is best for the province, a solution will have to be imposed, delicately, by other countries. Elsewhere in the region, too, there are hopeful signs

IT IS not much of a place. It is overcrowded, its economy is a shambles, it is riven with inter-ethnic hatred, and technically it belongs to another state. And yet, on Monday October 24th, the United Nations Security Council gave a green light for talks on the future status of Kosovo to begin. This brings both risks and opportunities. Unless the talks are handled with the utmost delicacy and the process is seen to succeed, the Balkans are in for a new bout of violence and upheaval. But if all goes well, the Security Council’s decision could lead to the creation of a new European state within a year. In other parts of the Balkans, too, things have been looking up a bit lately and there is a sense of optimism that the region may, finally, be turning a corner.

In the old Yugoslavia, which fell apart in 1991, Kosovo was a province of Serbia. Studded with medieval churches and monasteries, it was (and still is) regarded by most Serbs as the cradle of their civilisation—despite more than 90% of its population of some 2m being ethnic Albanian. Kosovo’s Albanians always resented rule by Belgrade, and in 1998 a guerrilla war was launched in a bid to kick the Serbs out.

The Kosovo conflict ended soon after the NATO military alliance went to war with what was then still called Yugoslavia. After 78 days of bombing raids, Serbia, then still led by President Slobodan Milosevic, accepted peace terms. In June 1999, Serbian forces withdrew. Kosovo became a UN protectorate with security provided by a NATO-led force. Tens of thousands of Serbs fled but some 100,000 remain among a much larger population of hostile Albanians. Most of the Serbs live in enclaves, some of which have to be protected by foreign peacekeepers. Much of the peacekeepers’ time is taken up protecting Serbian churches and monasteries from attack by Albanian extremists.

Now, more than six years after the end of the war, the UN has decided that it is time to sort out Kosovo’s future. With Mr Milosevic facing war-crimes charges in The Hague, Serbia’s current government, led by Vojislav Kostunica, says that Kosovo can have “more than autonomy but less than independence”. Mr Kostunica claims that under international law Kosovo belongs to Serbia and thus cannot be taken away from it without its consent. Most Kosovo Albanians will settle for nothing less than independence.

Officially, the Security Council convened to give its backing to talks after examining a report on the situation in the province written by Kai Eide, a Norwegian diplomat. In fact, the council was acting as a rubber stamp. Diplomats from the main countries that deal with Kosovo—America, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Italy—had already met in Rome last week where, after months of intensive negotiations, they agreed on what would happen.

The plans is as follows: in the next week or so, Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, will appoint Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president, to lead the talks between the Serbs and Kosovo Albanians. These will continue for some months but at a certain point Serbs and Albanians are going to fail to agree on the key question: should Kosovo be independent or not? At this point, the big countries that deal with the issue look set to impose what is called “conditional independence”—that is to say, Kosovo will no longer be regarded as part of Serbia but it will not be fully independent for several years, perhaps until it joins the European Union, which could be a decade or more away.

“Conditional independence” will mean, among other things, that NATO troops will stay and that, as in Bosnia, a representative of the international community could be appointed with considerable powers to run the place. Serbia had been hoping that Russia might step in to stop this, but the Russians have told their western counterparts that they will not.

Serbia says that if Kosovo is taken away from it against its will, it would refuse to recognise the province’s new status. Serbian politicians give warning that extreme nationalists could come to power in Belgrade as a consequence and destabilise the whole region. For their part, Albanians say that violence will erupt if Kosovo is not seen to be moving towards independence. Diplomats fear the Albanian threat more than the Serbian one. But they are thinking about the future shape of the region as a whole, not just Kosovo, and that is where things get much more complicated.

Avoiding the black-hole scenario

The diplomats’ big idea is to absorb into the EU the whole of the western Balkans—ie, all of what used to be Yugoslavia plus Albania (the former Yugoslav republic of Slovenia is already a member). EU citizens’ concerns about enlargement aside, this is a long-term project. But you need only look at the map to see why the diplomats think it necessary. Once Bulgaria and Romania join the Union, probably in 2007, the whole region will, in effect, be an awkward enclave surrounded by EU countries. This “black hole”, say the strategists, is a recipe for disaster. Better to have the former troublemakers inside the tent rather than outside.

And moves to get them inside have accelerated in the past few weeks. Serbia began talks on eventually joining the EU on October 10th. Croatia, one notch ahead of it, also proceeded to the next stage, after Austria championed its cause in nail-biting negotiations over starting entry talks with Turkey. On October 21st, the EU agreed to open talks with Bosnia. Next month, Macedonia hopes that it too will get the nod to proceed to the next stage of membership talks.

In 2001, that former Yugoslav republic almost fell apart when guerrillas from its ethnic Albanian minority declared war on the state. Now, thanks very much to (unsung) EU diplomacy, former enemies sit in government together working towards the same aim: joining the Brussels-based club.

Ask people across the Balkans what their main concerns are these days, and the answer is likely to be things such as jobs and the freedom to travel, not creating or cementing a national identity. Serbia’s economy, potentially the largest in the region, has finally begun to recover. Elsewhere, too, there are hopeful signs, which tend to be under-reported. Nevertheless, Balkan and EU leaders will have to work hard if they are to keep up the momentum that has been quietly building over Kosovo and the rest of the region. In a decade or so, the EU’s enlargement fatigue may be a thing of the past—for this part of the world, if not for Turkey. But if Kosovo goes wrong and violence returns to the Balkans, one thing is certain: once that fence surrounds the region, a lot of people on the EU side will be sorely tempted to lock the gate and throw away the key.

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