TFF PressInfo

Prior to the 2003 International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated that “Gender-based violence is perhaps the most shameful human rights violation. As long as it continues, we cannot claim to be making real progress towards equality, development and peace.” In this article we seek to relate the gender-based violence to the issue of human security and ideas about a new type of defence policy. (When this was written in Swedish at the time of the debate about the future of Sweden’s official defence policy, it was refused by a series of leading newspapers, right, middle and left). The Swedish edition of this article here From patriarchal exertion of power toward human security and democracy We know of no one, neither men nor women, who want war and death. 99 per cent of people on earth do not want violence in their lives...

By whom, one might humbly ask, by what circles? It is true that mainstream media often describe the ICG as prestigious or well-respected. People who are not too familiar with politics and conflicts may go for the names and public relations of an organisation, and in those terms, ICG is certain world-leading, in spite of the fact that virtually all the top names are “have-beens”. However, professionals in conflict-analysis, -resolution and peacemaking may find reasons to question the image ICG promotes of itself. In what follows, the focus is on general status and connections as well as on intellectual/research pertaining to a couple of conflicts – thus not excluding that Crisis Group may do better work elsewhere.   Non-governmental? Independent? A visit to Crisis Group’s website reveals that 40% of its funds come from governments: Agence Intergouvernementale de la francophonie, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Holland, Finland, France,...

Summary: From “Only one solution” towards democracy and peace  Kosovo Solution Series # 10    PressInfo # 218  April 7, 2005 By Aleksandar Mitic, TFF Associate & Jan Oberg, TFF director   Kosovo is moving up again on the international agenda. The time to think about the framework, the alternatives and the consequences of the talks on the future status of Kosovo is now. Despite the highly unlikely possibility that Kosovo will be able to achieve in the next few months the key standards necessary to initiate the final status talks, it would be gullible to believe that these criteria will not be once again downsized, shrunk to fit the path to the status talks. Pro-Albanian lobbyists such as the International Crisis Group, Richard Holbrooke and various US members of Congress argue that “independence is the only option.” However, this option can also be seen as unjust, dangerous, archaic and...

Kosovo Solution Series # 1 This is the first in a series of TFF PressInfos about Kosovo. It follows PressInfo 208 about the United Nations praising the potential war criminal, former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj. Relevant background links for this series here. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY As Kosovo these very days marks the anniversary of the massive anti-Serb violence of March 2004, the path towards talks on its final status appears set. The mainly Albanian populated province of southern Serbia has extradited its Prime minister Ramush Haradinaj, indicted for war crimes during the Kosovo conflict, to the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague. Belgrade is doing the same with its own former generals indicted for war crimes during the conflict, thus paving the way for a positive stance by Brussels on its EU Feasibility Study. The roadblocks towards a true, negotiated and long-lasting agreement on Kosovo remain numerous, but should by no means prevent the international...

Fra serien “Løsninger på Kosovo” Dette er den første i en serie af TFF PressInfos om Kosovo. Den følger efter PressInfo 208, om at FN lovsynger den mistænkte krigsforbryder, tidligere premierminister Ramush Haradinaj. Relevante baggrundslinks til denne serie findes her. Officielt resumé I disse dage, et år efter den massive antiserbiske voldsbølge i marts 2004, ser det ud til, at vejen mod samtaler om den fremtidige status er udstukket. Provinsen i det sydlige Serbien, hvor befolkningen er overvejende albansk, har udleveret sin premierminister, Ramush Haradinaj, som er anklaget for krigsforbrydelser under Kosovokonflikten, til det internationale krigsforbrydertribunal i Haag. Beograd gør det samme med de af sine fhv. generaler, der anklages for krigsforbrydelser, hvorved vejen er banet for en positiv tilkendegivelse fra EU om Serbiens adgang til EU. Der er stadig mange forhindringer for en virkelig, forhandlet, langtidsholdbar aftale om Kosovo, men de skal ingenlunde forhindre det internationale samfund og de væsentlige parter i...

 Kosovo Solution Series # 10 Kosovo is moving up again on the international agenda. The time to think about the framework, the alternatives and the consequences of the talks on the future status of Kosovo is now. Despite the highly unlikely possibility that Kosovo will be able to achieve in the next few months the key standards necessary to initiate the final status talks, it would be gullible to believe that these criteria will not be once again downsized, shrunk to fit the path to the status talks. Pro-Albanian lobbyists such as the International Crisis Group, Richard Holbrooke and various US members of Congress argue that “independence is the only option.” However, this option can also be seen as unjust, dangerous, archaic and anti-European. The option of an “independent Kosova” implies that one of the sides (the Kosovo Albanians) would achieve its maximalist goal and that the other side (Belgrade...

Many models for a future Kosovo  Kosovo Solution Series # 9    PressInfo # 217  April 7, 2005 By Aleksandar Mitic, TFF Associate & Jan Oberg, TFF director   Four ways of making peace By way of starting, some words of caution. What’s the egg and what’s the hen in the question about the future status of Kosovo? What is form and what content, the means and the goals? People who strongly want independence tend to see that as both a means and the goal: “if only we become an independent state, everything will be fine.” There have been enough post-independence and post-colonial conflicts and wars in the world for anyone to see that this is not necessarily so. With the decision-making on the future status – form – moving to the top of the international agenda, it is likely to tilt the general attention away from issues of substance,...

Relevant background links for this series here. The pro-Albanian lobby program in Brussels, Washington, New York and other Western capitals has been up and running for decades now. An advocacy campaign pushing for the independence of Kosovo as the only alternative to bloody conflict and instability has been the primary theme of this campaign, fought through well-established consultants, PR groups, think-tank lobbyists, contacts with key policymakers and the media. The fight for the agenda-setting and the context of the Kosovo issue has been set by Albanian lobbyists during Tito’s communist Yugoslavia – well before anyone ever heard of a man called Slobodan Milosevic. The quest for the independence of Kosovo has been a long and strategic policy of the Albanian community in Kosovo and abroad at a time when Serb politicians in Belgrade and in Pristina were still loyal to a “dream” of a multi-ethnic Yugoslavia and unable to formulate a...

Kosovo Solution Series # 3 Relevant background links for this series here. In the first PressInfo of this series, we outlined four general criteria (a-d) for what it means to have solved a conflict. To arrive at a sustainable solution in the concrete case of Kosovo, a minimum of professional principles and considerations are necessary. This PressInfo offers the following: 1. The solution has to be acceptable, optimally satisfactory, for all parties inside Kosovo and surrounding Kosovo. The idea that anyone can get or should be given all it wants must be given up at the outset. 2. No solution can be imposed, it must be negotiated by all relevant parties. To solve a conflict means that the parties voluntarily accept to live with a new order of things. Thus, any talk about deciding the final status outside a comprehensive negotiation structure – something that will invariably take time – should be avoided. Also, the process...

Kosovo Solution Series # 4 Relevant background links for this series here. Not even the hardest pro-Albanian lobbyists deny the importance that Kosovo plays in the hearts and minds of the Serbs. Kosovo holds the cultural, religious and national heritage of the Serbian people. It is home to 300,000 Serbs – currently in Kosovo or displaced since 1999 – not to mention the hundreds of thousands who left the province for economic or other reasons in the decades before. Some 1,300 monasteries, churches and other religious objects testify of the richness of Serb presence in the province. There is however an attempt on the behalf of pro-Albanian lobbyists to present the issue as simply the “Kosovo myth” which the Serbs must get rid of if they want to get “closer to Europe”. Near-governmental organizations such as the ICG and newly-born Balkan specialists tell the Serbs: leave Kosovo as the French left...

 Kosovo Solution Series # 5 Relevant background links for this series here. While the ICG, the International Crisis Group, and other pro-Albanian lobby groups argue that the independence of Kosovo is a means or necessity in order to avoid another “March 2004” and general chaos, the counterargument would be this: wouldn’t the granting of full independence to Kosovo be a reward for years of policies of ethno-nationalism and ethnic cleansing led by Albanian extremists? Would it not mean rewarding violent struggle by the KLA and punishment of the largest non-violent movement in ex-Yugoslavia – that of the Kosovo-Albanians before KLA became the dominating force? Would it not mean rewarding the two aggressions that to a large extent was instigated by factors in Kosovo, namely that in Southern Serbia and that in the 8 months war in Macedonia? When the Hague war crime indictee and Kosovo’s now former Prime minister Ramush Haradinaj promises that...

Still, the Albanian lobby suffered a blow with the outcome of the US presidential elections: Wesley Clark lost the Democratic nomination race, Richard Holbrooke’s bid to become Secretary of State in the John Kerry administration failed, the hopes of George Soros and the “Albright group” to become the key ideologists of the reborn Clinton-era policy slant towards the Balkans also miserably vanished. On the other side, the problem remained: Belgrade does not have an effective PR strategy to counteract this impressively well-organized, well-oiled and paid pro-Albanian lobby campaign, nor does it follow a pro-active media approach which could put its objective demands on the table. Even Belgrade analysts do not agree on whether Serbia has a lobby in Washington and Brussels, let alone whether it is effective. Belgrade is thus left behind again in a disproportionate media battle. Failing to hear Belgrade’s views in the media and among think-tanks and...