The world looks with baited breath at Afghanistan, wondering not so much what will happen to the Taleban — their time is past — but whether the victors will now fall out among themselves. Given current circumstances, especially with the mixed signals coming out of the Northern Alliance about its intentions, it is not easy to be particularly optimistic about the country’s immediate future. But just as Rome was not built in a day, it is unrealistic to expect a new Afghanistan to rise instantly out of the rubble of the old. Afghanistan has endured war and civil unrest for almost 30 years. Even if there is complete unanimity among the anti-Taleban opposition, with all enmities put aside, it will take some time for it to come up with a workable and lasting political system.
Events several thousand miles further west bear that out. It is two-and-a-half years since NATO forces entered Kosovo as liberators. But it was only yesterday that the Kosovars went to the polls to elect their first parliament and president. That exercise is not an end of the process. Kosovo will now have a government — early indications were that it would be led by the moderate Democratic League of Kosovo led by Ibrahim Rugova — but it would be a limited government. It will deal only with issues such as health, education, transport, welfare and agriculture — the very areas over which Kosovo’s last legitimate administration presided before Slobodan Milosevic stripped the province of its status as an autonomous region within Serbia. But the new administration will not be allowed to conduct foreign affairs, administer law and order, or arrange security and defense. The former two remain the preserve of the UN administration while the latter stays in the hands of the NATO-led peacekeeping force.
There will be further change in a year or so, however, as the UN and NATO remove themselves from the scene. No one can say what those changes will be. The Albanian Kosovars want to sever all links with what remains of Yugoslavia, although they are divided whether they should go for independence or union with neighboring Albania. The UN is determined, at least for the moment, that independence will not happen. It wants Kosovo to be a constituent republic within federal Yugoslavia, alongside Serbia and Montenegro. The only certainty is that, one way or another, further changes to Kosovo’s status will be made. But it is going to take yet more time.
Next-door Macedonia provides yet further evidence of how long these things can take. Only two days ago did its parliament finally approve constitutional amendments to improve the rights of the country’s Albanian minority. They were agreed last August. It has taken all this time to bring Macedonian MPs round to supporting the deal. Even so, it is not the end of the road. It is now a matter of how those changes are implemented. Again, it will take time.
How illogical then to imagine that the conflict in Afghanistan, with its far-more-complex ethnic divisions, can be resolved at a stroke. All we can hope is that the process moves toward a workable and just settlement without opening a fresh chapter of violence. If it can do that, then there may yet be peace.
