By Max Boot,
the Journal’s editorial features editor.
The Wall Street Journal
November 2, 1999
PRISTINA, Kosovo–Rumors of colonialism’s demise have been much exaggerated. In recent years the United Nations has taken over the administration of Cambodia (1992-93), Bosnia (1995-present), Kosovo and now East Timor. Nowhere is this process further advanced than in Kosovo. Here, unlike in Bosnia, there has been no indigenous government at all (at least none that is officially recognized) since the Serbs left in June. So how is colonialism, U.N.-style, going?
That question was on my mind as I tried to concentrate above the thacka-thacka-thacka of a big Chinook helicopter ferrying a group of journalists and policy makers from Macedonia into Kosovo. Although the Italian crew members–part of KFOR (Kosovo Force)– diligently manned their heavy machine guns as we swept in over the countryside, our journey last week was a peaceful one.
Pristina, Kosovo’s capital and main city, turns out to be in better shape than I expected. The leaders of our delegation, organized by the German Marshall Fund and the New Atlantic Initiative, had warned us not to expect electricity or hot water. Pristina’s Grand Hotel, though it doesn’t deserve the five stars it displays on the roof, turned out to have both–well, most of the time anyway.
There is also little war damage–though much ugly architecture–to be seen in the city. The streets are bustling with shops selling everything from eggs to laundry detergent. Every apartment seems to sport a satellite dish. If you ignore the occasional KFOR armored vehicles rumbling by, life appears to be back almost to normal.
But this surface success masks deeper problems. The United Nations administration, run by Frenchman Bernard Kouchner, has fallen behind schedule in many of its tasks. There still has been no census, for instance, and without knowing who lives where it’s impossible to bill customers for utility services, hold elections or perform myriad other government functions.
Much of the blame goes to U.N. members that have failed to deliver on their pledges of support. Although the U.S. often gets castigated for not paying U.N. dues, here it is the Europeans who are deadbeats. Without their promised donations, the U.N. is unable to pay the day-to-day expenses of government. Public employees, from school teachers to former Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas enrolled in the Kosovo Protection Corps, are not getting paychecks, and they are getting restless, as demonstrations in front of the U.N. headquarters attest. “You can’t feed a guy with pledges,” grumbles Klaus Reinhardt, the white-haired German general who commands KFOR.
Another major problem is tangled lines of authority. Running Kosovo are the U.N., the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the European Union and of course KFOR with its 30 national contingents. Coordinating all these soldiers and bureaucrats is a nightmare, especially since their mission is self-contradictory.
Under U.N. Resolution 1244, the U.N. is supposed to run Kosovo but preserve the fiction that it’s still part of Serbia. Mr. Kouchner has gotten into hot water with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for making the German mark Kosovo’s currency. No action has been taken yet on a establishing a new international dialing code, postal service, tax system, license plates or the other attributes of sovereignty that Kosovars need.
One illustration of Mr. Kouchner’s difficulties: the legal system. Albanian Kosovar judges (the Serbian ones having resigned) refuse to administer Yugoslav law. But there is no other way of trying some 300 prisoners captured by KFOR for crimes ranging from looting to murder. The U.N. is hurriedly writing an interim law for Kosovo but in the meantime the judicial process has ground to a halt.
The good news is that Albanian violence against Serbs has declined. Gen. Reinhardt brags that Pristina is now safer than Washington, D.C. Part of the credit for the drop in violence goes to the 50,000 KFOR soldiers and the 1,700 U.N. police officers. But the major reason is that the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo has been completed. Less than half of the prewar population of 170,000 Serbs remains–and most of them are concentrated in ethnic enclaves in the north, where they are being radicalized by Slobodan Milosevic’s agents. Given the undying enmity between Albanians and Serbs it is had to imagine how the enclaves could ever be integrated into a Kosovar state.
The tensions between the two groups can erupt in savagery at any moment. Not long before my arrival a Bulgarian U.N. worker was killed because he was overheard speaking Serbian on Pristina’s streets. (This was one time my lack of linguistic ability was a definite plus.) Just after we left, a convoy of Serbian Kosovars under KFOR protection was attacked by Albanians. No wonder the few Serbs remaining in Pristina cower behind closed doors, afraid to venture out even to buy groceries.
Kosovo is divided not just ethnically but politically as well. Vying to lead this–province? country? colony?–are Hashim Thaci, the former KLA leader who now heads an unofficial “provisional” government, and Ibrahim Rugova, a pacifist elected as Kosovo’s president in 1991.
Mr. Thaci has State Department’s support (“I consider him a friend,” one U.S. official told us), but in a meeting he comes across as an unregenerate thug. Asked about freedom of the press, he gives the strong impression that he prefers freedom from the press. He especially rails against New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges, who has written scathing exposes about Mr. Thaci’s use of violence to cement his leadership. One independent Albanian editor here, Veton Serroi, tells us that he has been the subject of a fatwa for publishing condemnations of Albanian violence against Serbs.
Mr. Rugova, who receives us in a darkened room of his house (electricity is out that afternoon) without his trademark scarf, is clearly more tolerant than Mr. Thaci, but he displays little of his rival’s charisma or energy. Many of Mr. Rugova’s supporters are troubled by his reclusiveness and lethargy.
And neither Mr. Rugova nor any other Albanian leader shows much appreciation for the radical economic reforms needed to jumpstart Kosovo’s moribund, state-controlled economy. Unlike in Eastern Europe, no one here quotes Hayek and Friedman to visiting Westerners.
At the end of our trip, the idea of Kosovo as anything but a ward of the international community seems remote. “As far as I’m concerned,” Mr. Rugova told us, “KFOR can stay here forever.”
© Copyright 1999 The Wall Street Journal
See more about Kosovo at the Transnational WIRE 5.11.
