Building peace in the Balkans
Le Monde diplomatique
July 1999
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Just as they did in Bosnia after the Dayton Agreements, the Western powers are getting ready to place Kosovo under their guardianship, with the declared aim of restoring peace and democracy. Yet the protectorate, a modern form of colonialism, risks putting a seal of approval on the ethnic partitioning of the province.
by ANDEJA ZIVKOVIC
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A spectre is now haunting the world community, one that many believed was a thing of the past: the return of the empire. Taking its legitimacy from the implosion of former Yugoslavia and the civil war in Somalia, the idea of the protectorate has invaded diplomatic thinking in the West. In the minds of Western leaders, the situation in Kosovo today has even made it a cure-all.
The policy of the protectorate follows on naturally from the approach taken by international bodies in the post-cold war world. They see it as a way of satisfying their need to rebuild democratic institutions, as well as their wish to be in charge (1). One hears it said, echoing the paternalism of colonial days, that in states still untouched by Western liberalism, long-tern international intervention is the only road to peace and security. This argument was used to justify the “humanitarian war” waged by Nato to defend the rights of the Albanians who live in Kosovo. Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, has stressed the point: “There is emerging international law that countries cannot hide behind sovereignty and abuse people without expecting the rest of the world to do something about it”(2).
Yet taking the outcome in Bosnia alone, the most recent of the protectorates set up by the West after the Dayton accords of November 1995, we see that where peace and democracy are concerned things do not always work out as they are meant to. Officially the Dayton goal was to restore an autonomous government in Bosnia, based on national reconciliation. Account had to be taken of how one or other entity in Bosnia has dominated the other, and of the inclination of both sides towards “cleansing”. As this exercise in realpolitik aimed at “stability in the region” progressed, Nato’s mandate was extended well beyond its purely military mission.
Starting from a redistribution of territory, Nato had to take on the role of a peace-keeping force for which it had not necessarily been prepared. A high-ranking UN representative, wielding full powers even though unelected, was able to settle civil conflicts and quarrels, as he could override judgements by representatives of the Bosnian people and could even dismiss them (3). With international supervision like this, elections in Bosnia are no more than high-grade opinion polls (4).
It comes as no surprise, then, that four years on from Dayton little progress has been made in either overcoming ethnic divisions or achieving national reconciliation. Voting along purely ethnic lines is still the rule, and only a minority of the 2.1 million refugees who fled because of the war have returned to their homes. The result is a neocolonial-style protectorate governing a Bosnia weakened at every institutional, political, administrative and legal level, and whose affairs are now run by international organisations – from Nato to the IMF – acting without any real democratic mandate.
In spite of a hotchpotch of powers like this, the international “protectorate” is unable to do much more than bridge a widening gap between the Bosnian people and its own institutions. The indefinite extension in December 1997 of the mandate given to the international community confirms the impasse in which the idea of a protectorate now finds itself.
The contradictions in Western policy in the Balkans have now shifted to Kosovo, where Milosevic at first had free rein to treat the problem as a Yugoslavian “internal matter” until it became plain that his campaign in the province was a means of staying in power. The Rambouillet text of February 1999 was presented to him as a way of keeping Kosovo an integral part of Yugoslav territory, while shielding the fate of this province from the diktats of his regime.
In order to avoid a self-appointed Albanian government impeding the settlement of a local dispute – for instance by proclaiming an independence that would open the way to a Greater Albania – there was once again recourse to calling for an international protectorate. This would mean, if one follows the Dayton logic, that real power in the region would stay in Nato hands – a situation Milosevic would be unable to accept, no matter what concessions he made following the Nato bombing and the Rambouillet negotiations. For Nato at the moment there is also a consideration that goes beyond its territorial commitments – the simple fact that it is celebrating its 50th birthday.
Any protectorate placed under the sovereignty of an independent state and at the same time cut off from that state by the actions of external forces has always been bound to create more than merely an autonomous province – possibly an independent state, though one bereft of sovereign attributes. Anything that may have been said at Rambouillet has now been undermined by Milosevic’s policies, which have brought about the flight of at least two million people who have become wide-scattered refugees. United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright admits that it will be “difficult” to envisage Serbs and Albanians living together again in Kosovo, while conceding the need to maintain, for Serbs just as much as for Kosovars, access to their holy places. In other words, an international protectorate will once again have the task of supervising ethnic segregation of the communities in Kosovo, and in doing so will be rubber-stamping the ethnic cleansing that Milosevic sought.
It is a safe bet that the Kosovo agenda is going to include a second Dayton meeting, which will mean a partition along ethnic lines, quite independent of the actions or effects of a UN protectorate.
At the time of writing, diplomatic activity seems to be heading towards partition (6). Whatever the arrangements in the final agreement are, it is certain that hundreds of thousands of refugees will not go back to their homes in a compartmentalised Kosovo. The Serb minority is likely to continue its exodus from the province. Corralled in areas defined on ethnic criteria, Serbs and Albanians will end up once again facing one another – grist to the mill of nationalists in both camps, and leading inevitably to the breakdown of national institutions whose unity only international pressure can try to preserve. What is more, political instability in a fragmented Serbia could well provide the excuse for extending this cordon sanitaire within Yugoslavia.
Kosovo will, in the words of Peter Galbraith, former US ambassador to Croatia, be “a de facto independent state”, though without real independence or a real autonomous government. While the Western coalition is preparing in practice to separate Kosovo from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, it will remain resolutely opposed to true independence for the province for fear of opening up a Pandora’s box. One can therefore expect there to be clashes before long between an armed Albanian nationalist movement and the colonial authorities. At stake will be partition, the nature of an autonomous government, and ultimately the future of Kosovo. So it is easy to see why the protectorate will, just as in Bosnia, be extended indefinitely to prevent any further disintegration of the status quo in the region. And as a consequence it will become an obstacle to democratic settlement of the problem of nationality in the Balkans.
Rules, and applying them
Where reconstruction proper is concerned, one has only to turn to the texts discussed at Rambouillet. Chapter 4a of article 1 specifies that the economy of Kosovo is to operate in accordance with market principles. Once again Dayton supplies the rule and says how it is to be applied (7). Supervised by a governor appointed by the International Monetary Fund who does not know the region, the Bosnian central bank has been able to play only a secondary role since it has not been allowed to create the currency needed to finance credit. The state is authorised to share in the reconstruction only if it contracts with the international financial institutions a substantial debt that will ensure their domination of Bosnia in the future. Thus Kosovo, like Bosnia, finds itself in the same situation as many a developing country.
The European Union, now that it has upset the stability of the region and caused massive dislocation of the economy, is talking – somewhat hypocritically – about full-speed-ahead reconstruction of democracy, security and prosperity in the Balkans. The “stability pact” established under its aegis speaks of integration via a new kind of contractual relationship (8). In other words, the EU is staying in the wings. Only Albania and Macedonia have been offered stabilisation and association agreements – though these fall apart when one looks at the European agreements signed by the countries of central Europe.
We cannot talk about a new Marshall plan. This is more a hierarchical grouping of states decided on by the EU, where countries find greater or lesser favour depending on how they align themselves with Western economic and security interests. Rebel states, like Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, will be left out of this new deal. The pact is basically designed to introduce market mechanisms wherever possible, and it is a fair bet that many of the Balkan states are going to find this kind of reconstruction just as painful as the war.
The war will certainly help Nato reposition itself, and indeed rearm itself for the 21st century. It will have brought the Yugoslav republic to its knees, sown the seeds of future regional conflicts, and opened up for the colonial governments that will be succeeding each other in Kosovo a future that can be counted in decades. The Trojan horse of a fake Marshall plan fits in with Western interests. The only outcome will be nationalist backlashes, and in the long run democracy and peace will have been sacrificed on the altar of “humanitarian intervention”. As Tacitus put it, “They made a wilderness and call it peace”.
(1) See David Chandler: Faking Democracy after Dayton, Pluto Press, London, 1999
(2) Quoted in the Financial Times, London, 26 May 1999.
(3) This power to dismiss properly-elected persons was illustrated in March 1999 when the UN representative Carlos Westendorp evicted the republic’s president, Nicola Poplasen, because the latter had himself sacked the prime minister, Milorad Dodik.
(4) David Chandler, op. cit.
(5) See Peter Gowan, “The Nato Power and the Balkan Tragedy”, New Left Review No 234, March-April 1999, pp. 83-105
(6) See Guy Dinmore, “Belgrade may still secure a better deal”, Financial Times, 5 June 1999.
(7) The European Commission has put the cost of reconstruction in Kosovo at between $2-3_ m dollars. See Charles Pretzlik, “UK plans company task force”, Financial Times, 5 June 1999.
(8) According to an Agence France Presse despatch of 27 May 1999, this pact would involve no less than bringing together Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Hungary, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Turkey, the US, Nato and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe as international donors.
Translated by Derry Cook-Radmore
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