LONDON, 10 September 2003 — As we focused on the weekend’s football in Skopje, Macedonian security forces were launching a major assault against paramilitaries of the Albanian National Army (ANA) just 20 miles from the stadium. It followed a week of ANA violence in northern Macedonia — a horrific attack by a gunman on a group of Serb children swimming in the Bistrica river in neighboring Kosovo, and armed clashes between ANA fighters and police in south Serbia.
These may look like just two more hangover incidents from a decade of armed conflict in the Balkans, but they should be viewed as something rather different — a warning that unless the pressure that has built up in Kosovo since 1999 finds some controlled release soon, there is a real danger it will explode.
The international community has been “nation-building” in Kosovo for four years and the operation is frequently touted as a success. Certainly, violence has dropped dramatically since 1999; but, despite Security Council backing, UNMIK (the international administration in the province) has not come close to establishing a functional society. A core reason is that, since the end of the war, Kosovo has existed in constitutional limbo. It is governed in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1244. This accepts that the province is part of Serbia and Montenegro, but under the authority of UNMIK until the Security Council agrees upon its final status. At issue is whether the province will become independent or remain part of Serbia. The Kosovo Albanians want independence; the Serbs oppose it.
The Serbs maintain the killings were the work of the ANA; Albanians insist they were a provocation by Serb nationalists to discredit Albanian demands for independence. But in one sense it doesn’t matter who did it, as militants on both sides have a common aim: To scupper negotiations between the Serb government in Belgrade and the Albanian-dominated government in Pristina which are due to begin this autumn. For these talks to succeed, they will have to end in a compromise that nationalists on either side do not want.
The European Union and the United States have agreed that the former should take the primary political role in the long-term stabilization of the Balkans. The EU has an excellent track record in helping to reconcile and advance divided societies, such as Spain, Portugal and Greece. But on Kosovo, it appears to be asleep at the wheel. The Kosovo conundrum is at the heart of a wider Balkan gridlock that affects Serbia and Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Europe is constantly berating the US for its policy of pre-emptive force. But what alternative does it offer? Here, the EU has an opportunity to defuse the powder keg of the Balkans once and for all. Now that would be an advertisement for the superiority of European values over America’s.
The prospect of EU membership is a mighty lever in southeastern Europe — used imaginatively, it would solve not only the Kosovo problem, but all others once and for all. For too long, the EU’s Balkan policy has been in the hands of bureaucrats. If Europe wants to show its vision, the Balkans could be its big chance.
