balkan war redux

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Published on The National Interest(http://nationalinterest.org )Source URL (retrieved on Nov 3, 2011):

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/balkan-war-redux-5696

Balkan War Redux

[1]

|August 3, 2011Morton Abramowitz[2], James Hooper [3]

Ethnic violence is back in the Balkans. And once again, has taken the West by surprise.

This time the focal point is northern Kosovo, the region north of the Ibar River. Formally under Kosovarsovereignty, the area is claimed by Serbia and treated by the West as a de facto part of Serbia, whereSerb paramilitaries profit from smuggling to the Albanian mafia while enforcing obedience among theareas overwhelmingly Serb population.

NATOs Kosovo Force (KFOR) unitswhich include some U.S. troopsand the EUs rule of law missio
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(EULEX) tread gingerly around this reality. Belgrade exploits the paramilitaries to reinforce Serbiasterritorial claims. Officials from Pristina rarely step into this international shadowland. The United States,European Union and Belgrade all regard Pristina as a distant and inconvenient landlord, a silent partner their tripartite understandings. Kosovo is expected to abide by the status quo and not fuss over thedisjunction between Western professions of Kosovar sovereignty (albeit with close ties to Belgrade) andthe reality of dominating Serb paramilitaries on the ground.

These arrangements were upended recently when Kosovos prime ministerfinally, in the view of hiscountrymensent police units to two northern border posts to enforce a trade-policy decision by theKosovo government. As Kosovar officials have frequently complained to the EU and the United States (tno avail), Serbia freely exports its goods into Kosovo but blockades Kosovar goods headed north.Kosovos deputy prime minister publicly warned Belgrade that unless it lifted the blockade within thirtydays, Pristina would block Serbian goods entering through the north. On July 25after informing EULEXof its intentions, according to the prime ministerhe sent Kosovar police units to take charge of twonorthern crossing points along the Serbian border. The action led to a confrontation with armed Serbs, aone Kosovar police officer was killed in the shooting.

What followed were scenes reminiscent of Croatia and Bosnia in the early 1990s: Barricades went upthroughout the north and began restraining KFOR movements; Two leading officials from Belgrade

responsible for relations with Kosovo crossed into the north to show solidarity with fellow Serbs manningthe barricades, underscore Belgrades claim over the territory and try to restore the status quo ante bynegotiating with the KFOR commander; Serbs threw Molotov cocktails into a KFOR camp and set the twborder posts ablaze. KFOR, as part of a compromise solution to tamp down the violence, took over contof the two destroyed border gates.

By Thursday a deceptive calm had returned to the area and the Kosovar forces had withdrawn. But theviolence may have created a new reality. With emotions running strong on both sides, positions seem tobe hardening. The Kosovars have united behind their prime minister, who condemned an already-unpopular EULEX for doing nothing to aid the police unit.

Another casualty may be the EU-sponsored Serbia-Kosovo bilateral talks on small but practical technicaproblems. Just weeks ago, the EU proudly announced agreement on three such issues and hoped to bumomentum for further limited dialogue. But pictures of the Serbian leader of those talks meeting withparamilitaries at the barricades cast the negotiating process into a new and less benign light. The eventsalso stirred nationalists in Belgrade. In Pristina, Kosovars now see the talks as a sideshow in which theirnegotiators are used as props by Brussels to help make Serbia more presentable to governments decidsoon on the countrys EU-candidacy status.

The greater damage may be to a fundamental US policy assumption: that it is better to delay grappling wthe undiscussed core issue of the status of northern Kosovothe claim in Belgrade that Kosovo bepartitioned along the Ibar River and the equally firm insistence by the Kosovars that the north belongs to

Kosovo.

It may well be that the Wests preference of restoring the status quo ante in the north will not be possiblethough diplomats in Pristina, Belgrade and Brussels are working assiduously to achieve that. If so,Washington will have to decide whether to reexamine long-held assumptions about keeping final-statusnegotiations over the north in a diplomatic deep freeze and consider whether events are now forcing itshand. If this were to happen, it would require the United States to play a major role in the presentnegotiations and the overall Serbia-Kosovo divide.

Clearly Washington would prefer not to take on this set of headachesfar easier to kick the can down throad. Once violence, however, enters an issue, it can outrace the efforts of diplomats to contain it, as we


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learned in the Balkans in the 1990s.

Washington now faces two broad policy choices: follow the EU in attempting to restore the old situation bcoaxing Pristina to accept the status quo ante in the north and convincing both parties return to theirlimited talks. Or it could try to shape a new reality, either by changing the nature of the talks and focusingon the fundamental question of the future of the north; or by leading the EU in establishing Western contover northern Kosovo and the border with Serbia. Almost certainly, if history is any guide, short-termconsiderations will prevail over long-term ones.

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Source URL (retrieved on Nov 3, 2011):http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/balkan-war-redux-5696

Links:

[1] http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=nationalinterest

[2] http://nationalinterest.org/profile/morton-abramowitz

[3] http://nationalinterest.org/profile/james-hooper
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