Kosovo’s future has hung in the balance since Nato’s bombing and subsequent occupation of the province in 1999. Years of ensuing diplomacy have been fraught with setbacks and obstructive rhetoric – from both sides. Gridlock has long been the order of the day.
Now, however, the de facto UN protectorate is closer than ever before to independence. For the first time since the end of the war, the would-be nation has a shot at resolving the question of its final status, according to the six-nation Contact Group (US, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Russia), which represents the major powers that deal with the former Yugoslavia and which monitors and supervises international policy in the province.
breakthrough
The breakthrough came in February when Serb and Albanian negotiators sat down for the first time for face-to-face meetings. Three further rounds followed under the UN-appointed chairmanship of former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, and a fifth is due on May 23-24.
Following Ahtisaari’s “bottom-up” approach, the talks so far have concentrated on internal matters such as refugee returns and self-government for the minority Serbs inside the province. What has been left out is the most pressing question: Kosovo’s final status.
For the Kosovans, the issue is simple. “Kosovar Albanians will never accept anything less than independence,” Ardian Gjini, a key member of Kosovo’s negotiating team in Vienna, and environment minister, tells Emerging Markets. “I expect that Kosovo will become a new member of the society of nations by the beginning of January 2007.”
At the end of January, the Contact Group issued a statement that said in effect that they had decided Kosovo would be independent, but that strong safeguards needed to be put in place to protect its Serbs. Serbia’s leaders, however, responded angrily. The leader of the Radical Party said that he and Serbia’s premier, Vojislav Kostunica, had decided that if Kosovo became independent against Serbia’s wishes it should be declared “occupied territory”.
domino effect
Aleksandar Simic, Kosovo adviser to the Serbian prime minister and member of Belgrade’s negotiating team, tells Emerging Markets that Kosovo will be granted substantial autonomy. “Belgrade does not want to rule over the Albanian population in Kosovo,” he says. “But independence is definitely ruled out for us for legal and international order reasons.” Referring to the numerous ethnic minorities in other Balkan countries, Simic warns: “Any changing of the borders in the Balkans will have a domino effect.”
Alexander Anderson, Kosovo project director for the International Crisis Group think-tank, believes that the determination of both sides not to give in on the issue of independence will result in independence being imposed by the international community.
As for Simic’s warning of a domino effect, Anderson points out that such a fear was also behind the Contact Group’s refusal to redraw Kosovo’s internal borders, allowing the three Serb municipalities adjacent to Serbia proper to be partitioned off from Kosovo. Just the definition of borders differs.
Independence, however, will not be unconditional, explains Anderson. “You are still going to have an international mission here in Kosovo,” he says. “But it is going to change its spots and come more from Brussels than from New York. It is still an open question to what extent the European Union structures themselves are going to be willing to take on some sort of reserve powers, investigating organized crime, having international prosecutors and judges still embedded in Kosovo’s justice system, maybe having, similar to Bosnia, some sort of high representative with veto powers with regard to some legislation.”
poor economy
Apart from its political status, Kosovo has major problems with its economy, making it “possibly the poorest place in the region”, according to Anderson.
Poor infrastructure is a particular concern. “The whole of Kosovo’s infrastructure, especially the energy, water supply, agriculture and also some mining sectors were connected to Serbian industry,” says Simic. “The lignite coal is not exploited and the province is without electricity, which is unbelievable at the beginning of the 21st century.” Simic believes that by building two new power stations, Kosovo can both solve its own power problems and export electricity to neighbouring countries.
While agreeing with Simic for the need to build power stations, Gjini also highlights the building of a road link to the Albanian port of Durres as of major importance to Kosovo to break out of its geographical isolation.
Independence will also have a strong impact on Kosovo’s economy, says Gjini. “It will open up possibilities for us to have trade agreements, to agree long-term deals with the IFIs, to be able to give directly sovereign guarantees and attract foreign investment. So not immediately, but quite fast, we are coming towards the end of severe difficulties that we have had with the economy,” he says.
Corruption and establishing rule of law are other weighty concerns that Gjini acknowledges but claims that Kosovars are beginning to tackle. For Anderson, despite such troubles, Kosovo’s greatest economic problem is that it has a “very poor standard of education and, to be honest, a lack of interest in education. The vast amount of young people should be a comparative advantage for Kosovo, but this will only come good if education is sorted out here.”