The current impasse on the future of Kosovo should not be dismissed as unimportant. Of all regions, the Balkans is perhaps the one with the longest memories and most bitter animosities. The fate of the two million Kosovars could yet prove the trigger for yet another serious international crisis. The UN with Washington’s vigorous support has proposed Kosovo be granted complete independence from Serbia. Russia has vetoed the plan unless Belgrade accepts it. The Europeans have adjusted their original support for independence by suggesting they assume administrative and policing responsibility from the UN as a transitional move toward independence. The thinking is clearly that Serbia’s EU accession will be made conditional upon accepting the independence of Kosovo.
This is an option. However, while the modern great powers wheel and deal over the fate of a Balkan minority, no one appears to be paying much attention to what the Kosovars themselves think. Some 90 percent of the population is ethnic Albanian. There is a militant faction, by no means completely disarmed, who might be tempted to force the issue and declare independence unilaterally. This would very likely bring them into violent conflict with UN peacekeepers with all the extra difficulties bloodshed would engender. Such an attempted UDI might also drag in neighboring Albania.
It is most important therefore that the Kosovars be given far better assurance that their interests are being protected and considered by the proposed new arrangements. They need to be convinced that their patience will pay off in the end and that they are not part of some far greater power play. They must not allow radical hotheads within their community to force the pace of change. Similar assurances must be given to the ten percent of the population, which is still ethnic Serb. They could prove to be the flash point. If for instance Kosovar militants, already militarily in confrontation with UN peace keepers, assaulted Kosovo Serbs, trying to carry out the same heartless ethnic cleansing that Belgrade practiced against them and previously against Croats and Bosnians.
The danger here is the looming presence of the Russians and their historic commitment to their fellow Slavs and co-religionists, the Serbs. It should never be forgotten that the mass slaughter of the World War I began in 1914 when Russia mobilized against Austria in defense of Serb independence. It may seem unthinkable now, but so much of the violence that has unfolded in recent years elsewhere in the world, not least in the Middle East, was once unthinkable. Blundering interference by an outside power like the United States can wreak havoc with a complex and delicate question like Kosovo. There is however one argument that seems not yet to have been made, to convince the Serbs that the loss of the totemic region of Kosovo will ultimately be no loss at all. And that is that within a European Union, borders will finally dissolve as everyone, Kosovar, Serb, Spaniard and Gibraltarian see themselves first and foremost as Europeans.
