The Ahtisaari Proposal

The Ahtisaari Proposal

It also, of course, fully provides a roadmap for the independence of Kosovo within a fairly short period of time without once even mentioning the "I" word. 

Some of most significant aspects of the proposals from the Serbian side are that the Kosovo Protection Corps would be abolished; that the number of municipalities with a Serbian majority would increase and that the authorities of the local municipalities would be significantly strengthened (more than their counterparts in Serbia now have); that certain key questions bearing on the lives of ethnic minorities would require their approval in Parliament; that the portion of debt currently being paid by Serbia to the World Bank, London Club, and Paris Club for properties located in Kosovo would become Kosovo's responsibility; that Serbian would be one of two official languages; that there would be no official state religion; that properties of the Serbian Orthodox Church would remain fully under its control with security provided; and there would be wide latitude for continued close relationships with Serbia, including financial subsidies and cooperation in education and other fields.

The Kosovo Albanian negotiators will certainly challenge many of the above in their sessions with Ahtisaari in Vienna.

However, there are two or three major problems.  First of all, many of the guarantees and safeguards for the minority population are mere words on paper; subject to being ignored once the hurdle of Russia and the Security Council is overcome. The Serbs have absolutely no reason to trust the International Community to deliver on these commitments.

Let's start with UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which among other things, specifically recalls the territorial sovereignty of Yugoslavia over Kosovo and also envisions a return of a limited contingent of Yugoslav army personnel to Kosovo to safeguard religious and cultural objects. Needless to say, this never happened. Secondly, the whole "standards before status" exercise was basically scrapped when it became clear that Kosovo would never come close to meeting even the wishy-washy standards, which were to be a prerequisite for consideration of status.

Finally, there is an eight-year long history of representatives of the International Community presenting a consistently over-optimistic picture of Kosovo, which downplayed the level, and threat of violence to minorities, the problems with freedom of movement, and the continued strong hostility among the ethnic groups. Why should Serbs believe that any International Civilian Representative one or two years from now would do any different? This is a very high hurdle for the International Community to overcome and I am not at all sure that it realizes or accepts the extent of this credibility problem. Unless it is adequately addressed, there is no hope that the Kosovo Serbs will put their faith in any agreement.

The best way to begin to deal with this concern, as well as the vagueness in some of the annexes (such as the lack of specific ethnic quotas in all government organizations and government-owned enterprises, the police; and the military) would be a concentrated negotiating effort focused on strengthening the annexes and even providing for a series of specific, verifiable factual measures which had to be fulfilled before the International Civilian Representative can depart or transfer his authorities to the Kosovo government.

This is the path, which the International Community very much wants Serbia and the Kosovo Serbs to take. If they did so, it would provide the very best chance of a normalized life for the Kosovo Serb population (inside an independent Kosovo, of course); help to stabilize the region; and would put Serbia on the path towards Euro-Atlantic integration. For Europeans who went through centuries of warfare with repetitive changes of territory (look at Germany's experience, for example), this is a logical continuation of the philosophy, which led to the European Union.

Borders there have become far less important. Just as the International Community may not understand the depth of emotional ties to Kosovo on the part of many Serbs, the Serbs do not appreciate sufficiently how their failure to adopt an "EU" approach to Kosovo sets them significantly apart in mindset from the European Union.

The chances are very high that the negotiations scheduled for February 13 will not play out as described above. Serbian political leaders determined to "save" Kosovo understand that the only chance that they have rests with a Russian veto of any Security Council Resolution, which in any way authorizes or permits any form of independence. They believe that to keep Russia in line, it is absolutely essential that virtually all the Serbian political parties remain united, on message, and show no daylight between them.

Moreover, for internal political purposes, the goal will be to lock virtually all the parties into the process in a way which both insures that they will receive equal blame for Kosovo's loss and will place many in the uncomfortable position of having to either endorse hard-line, aggressive stands that they do not really support or appear as "traitors" to Serbia.

This in turn guarantees that a great deal of political maneuvering will take place in Serbia prior to the dispatch of any negotiating team. The consultations over the new coalition government are definitely hostage to the Kosovo process and interwoven with it as well. The machinations within Serbia will sorely test the patience of the International Community. It is also certain that if a Serbian negotiating team ever does go to Vienna, it will have instructions to focus almost totally on the specific points in the recommendations that directly or indirectly give Kosovo the status of an independent state. Russia's role in this process will be to urge delays in the process to give the Serbian government time to form and adequately respond and to thus prevent serious Security Council discussion for a far longer period than the Western Contact Group countries envision.

Part of the problem of the International Community is that it has never fully appreciated either the degree of emotion and commitment on the part of many Serbs to Kosovo or the passionate resistance of Serbs to be a minority anywhere. Those two factors are both at play in the current Serbian reaction. The latter factor, to a significant extent, helps to explain events in Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990-96 period.

I witnessed in February 1996, after the Dayton Agreement was signed and the International Community had taken full control over Bosnia (including with over 60,000 soldiers) the mass departure of Bosnian Serbs from their homes in the parts of Sarajevo, which the Dayton Agreement had given to the Federation. While the Bosnian Muslims clearly were pleased with this outcome, they were not primarily responsible for bringing it about. It was the leadership of the Bosnian Serbs (Radovan Karadzic), the Bosnian Serb media based in Pale, and the fears and hostility of the Serbs themselves, which encouraged the mass exodus of Serbs from Sarajevo.

Despite the massive international security presence, the Bosnian Serb leadership --- and most of the Serbs --- did not want to be a minority in the Federation.  That exodus tremendously complicated reconciliation in Bosnia to this day, as a strong, vigorous Serbian community in Sarajevo would have had a major, positive impact on the Bosnian reconciliation process. While many of those Bosnian Serbs have legally recovered their properties in Sarajevo, a much smaller number has actually ever returned to live there full time.

I recall this episode because I am greatly afraid that the same will ultimately happen in Kosovo and it will be a tragedy for the Kosovo Serbs involved, for Serbia (faced with an upswing in nationalism and tens of thousands of new refugees); and the stability of the region as a whole. I am also afraid that the interests of the average Kosovo Serb may conflict with the fierce determination of Serbian politicians to fight to the bitter end to maintain "ownership" of Kosovo.

It is hard to foresee now just how the whole Kosovo scenario will play out, but it seems clear that unless the Serbian side in a timely way engages in thorough, point-by-point negotiations with Ahtisaari and his advisors on the comprehensive proposals:

a) The ultimate Ahtisaari recommendations will be far less helpful to the Kosovo Serbs than would otherwise be the case.

b) Serbia will find itself moving further from the European Union rather than closer to it

c) The Kosovo question will loom even greater in the political life and developments of Serbia than it has until this point (even if this may seem to be impossible)

d) The chances for violence in Kosovo will increase, as will the unpredictability of what will happen there.

In other words, we seem to be locked onto a path with no good ending and a determination on all sides to proceed ahead with their chosen policies and prejudices regardless of the potential cost.