Kosovo as the West Bank Macedonia as Israel

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Kosovo as the West Bank, Macedonia as Israel

If it works in the Balkans, could the `state-in-transition' model be applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

It was a surrealistic experience. A small group of Israeli academics, journalists and security experts, protected by a heavily armed cordon of United Nations police, traverse the bridge over the Ibar River in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica in Northern Kosovo. At first, the commanding officer, fearing for our safety, was reluctant to allow us to cross the bridge and meet with Serbian leaders in their headquarters on the northern side of the town. In recent weeks, the Serbian enclave of Mitrovica has become a flash point of ethnic violence in Kosovo. Controled by armed gangs known as the `bridgewatchers,' it has become a no-go area for the Albanians.

Regarded by the Serbian minority in Kosovo as being biased in favor of the Albanian majority, the UN peacekeeping forces were themselves the target of attacks just a few weeks earlier. As we crossed the bridge, it was the UN soldiers who seemed the most fearful for their safety, not the members of the Israeli delegation, who had no qualms whatsoever. As we arrived at the headquarters of the symbolically named Serbian `Return' party, we were greeted by a NATO tank. Whom exactly it was protecting - the Israeli group, the UN peacekeepers, the OSCE peace monitors accompanying us or the Serb politicians - remained unclear.

Our delegation was visiting Kosovo and Macedonia as part of a fact-finding tour, sponsored by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, to learn from the experience of the peacekeeping forces in this southern part of the Balkans. Would there be lessons that we could glean and take back home that could help move our own troubled region back in the direction of peace? What were the problems encountered by the peacekeepers in Kosovo that would have to be understood if a similar arrangement were to be proposed for the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of a renewed peace agreement in the future?

During the course of our visit, we met with leading politicians from both the Albanian and Serbian communities in each country, including Bajram Rexhepi, prime minister of the National Assembly in Kosovo, and Branko Crvenkovski, the newly-elected prime minister of Macedonia. In our meetings we heard how new governmental structures were being forged in order to create greater political harmony between the ethnic communities ravaged by years of civil war and hatred, and of efforts to ensure that once the international forces leave, the region will not return to another round of savage violence and bloodshed.

We also heard from representatives of the various international peacekeeping forces and international monitors, the United Nations, NATO, the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a massive and complex multinational presence signaling the commitment of the international community to restoring order and rebuilding civil institutions in this troubled region.

International peacekeepers were sent to Kosovo three and a half years ago following the ethnic bloodshed and the horrors afflicted upon the Kosovo Albanians at the hands of Slobodan Milosevic's Serbian forces. When the million Albanian Kosovarian refugees returned to their devastated villages, they exacted revenge, expelling most of the Serbian population. A NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR), consisting of 40,000 troops from 30 nations was quickly dispatched to Kosovo to halt the violence and restore order. The United Nations declared Kosovo an international protectorate and created the United Nations Mission to Kosovo (UNMIK) to run the country and establish an interim civilian administration. The European Union was made responsible for rebuilding the economy and infrastructure of the country, while the OSCE was entrusted with creating new civil and democratic institutions and monitoring new elections. As we were told on numerous occasions, UNMIK is the government of Kosovo, and Michael Steiner, the UN special representative, is its pro-consul.

The international community left the final status of Kosovo open to discussion at some point in the future. Formally, Kosovo remains part of the Serbian state. Yet for all intents and purposes the international community is laying the groundwork for the creation of the new State of Kosovo. Kosovo has elected a National Assembly, a prime minister and cabinet, has an independent police force and judiciary, its own stamps, a nascent army (Kosovo Protection Force) while the official currency is the Euro and not the Serbian Dinar.

Nation-building

After three years of international babysitting, Kosovo Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi told us that Kosovo was now ready to take charge of its own affairs and should be allowed to join the community of nations. Not so, according the UNMIK officials. While considerable progress has been made in creating a democratic, multiethnic society, much work still remains to be done. The tensions and mutual suspicions and mistrust between the two peoples have not disappeared. They are below the surface in every meeting we have, just waiting to burst out again if the international forces depart the area before the time is ripe.

UNIMIK has laid out a number of benchmarks of good governance which Kosovo must achieve before discussions on final status can even begin. One of the major problems is the return of all Serbian refugees to their homes. Not surprisingly, the exact number of refugees differs depending on whom one speaks to. Our Albanian guide insisted that Serbs made up only 2 percent of the population prior to the war. UN officials put the figure as high as 15 percent, saying around 200,000 were expelled. In any case, only a handful of Serbs have so far returned to their homes. This suits the Albanians, who would prefer them to remain in their new, temporary, homes in the Serbian homeland to the north.

This is the second such trusteeship or international protectorate that has been put into effect in recent years. Just last month, the new State of East Timor was admitted as a member in the United Nations following a two-year interim period during which the institutions of statehood were created and nurtured under international supervision. Only when everything was in place was East Timor accepted as a full and equal member of the international community. The same sort of infrastructure is now being created in Kosovo.

This area of the southern Balkans was once part of the former federal State of Yugoslavia, a single political entity held together the strong control of Marshal Tito, a Croat, for over 40 years. Comparisons with the situation in Israel and the West Bank/Gaza cannot be dismissed: an area without sovereignty desiring independence and talks over final status; an area whose civilian infrastructure has been all but destroyed and which requires international assistance to create the necessary "standards" before attaining political status; an area with refugees who desire the `right of return" to their former homes.

There should be no reason why the sort of interim protectorate arrangement in operation in Kosovo should not be put into effect in the West Bank and Gaza if, and when it is finally accepted that the resolution of this conflict will only be through the creation of a separate, viable and independent Palestinian State alongside Israel.

During the past nine years, the Palestinian Authority was unsuccessful in its attempt to create the basic infrastructure of governance. And what was created has all but been destroyed in the past six months. Since no Israeli government, even a leftist one, would believe in the ability of the Palestinian Authority to create this infrastructure, the imposition of a powerful international force would be an important stage in the regaining of trust.

For Israel, it would mean there was a force on the ground to prevent the recurrence of violence and terrorism, ensuring the security without which no political change can take place. For the Palestinians, it would mean a protection force against the might of the Israeli army and an end to all Israeli intervention and control of the area (which did not happen under the Oslo Accords). For the international community it would mean that the basic institutions of statehood would be in place before it gave its final acceptance to the formal establishment of an independent Palestinian State.

Pandora's box

There is one thing the international community is definite about. There will be no border changes in Kosovo that will enable the Serbian minority, concentrated in the north of the country, to become part of Serbia, just as the Palestinian citizens of Israel are not going to find themselves included within the territory of a Palestinian State. Any such territorial change would open a Pandora's box, whereby other states in the region - Macedonia, Bosnia, Croatia - might all insist on their own boundary changes. What they didn't achieve through ethnic cleansing they might try to achieve through changing the borders - but the patchwork of ethnic and national groups in the Balkans is so complex that homogeneous ethnic states could never emerge.

The aim of the international community in the Balkans is the creation of democratic institutions and multi-ethnic societies in which the rights of minority groups are fully respected, before they are prepared to withdraw the peacekeepers from the region. Our experience in the difficulties crossing the bridge in Mitrovica shows that achievement of this goal is still far off. Albanians and Serbians in Mitrovica simply do not cross to the other side - if they did, their lives would be in danger. The parallels with Israelis and Palestinians in East and West Jerusalem immediately spring to mind.

If Kosovo is like the West Bank and Gaza, its neighbor to the south, Macedonia, bears similarities to Israel. Macedonia has been an independent state since 1991, following the breakup of Yugoslavia. While Albanians are a majority in Kosovo, they make up only 20 percent of the population in Macedonia (as Palestinian-Israelis do here). Although Albanian political parties have been part of the government in Macedonia for the past 10 years, the Albanian community suffers from economic discrimination and is totally under-represented in all the institutions of the state - army, police, judiciary, civil service and higher education.

Clashes between the rebel Albanian National Liberation (NLA) and the Macedonian army in the summer of 2001 threatened to get out of control. Determined to prevent yet another Balkan bloodbath, the international community was quick to intervene and negotiate a cease-fire. Through the efforts of Javier Solana, the European Union's de facto foreign minister, and George Robertson, NATO's secretary-general, the parties signed the Ohrid agreement in August 2001. This pact called for constitutional reforms aimed at meeting the demands of the Albanian community, including the use of Albanian as a second official language, the decentralization of power and the integration of Albanians into the army and police force, as well as much-needed and long overdue economic reform.

A NATO force was sent to Macedonia to oversee the disarmament and dissolution of the NLA, implementing "Operation Harvest" in an attempt to collect the thousands of weapons in the hands of the guerrilla and militia organizations. The NATO force has remained in the country to protect the OSCE international monitors who were sent to Macedonia to set up a new multi-ethnic police force, supervise new elections and ensure that the provisions of the Ohrid agreement were being implemented. But the NATO contingent is due to leave Macedonia in a few months (unless their mandate is yet again extended) and it is by no means certain that the present calm will continue once they depart.

In last month's elections, opposition leader Branko Crvenkovski, the head of the Social Democratic Alliance of Macedonia (SDSM) Party, campaigning in support of the Ohrid agreement, won 50 percent of the seats in the 120-member parliament. In a surprising move, this young, dynamic leader - he is in his early forties and has already served a previous five-year tenure as prime minister - invited the Albanian Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), headed by Ali Ahmeti, the leader of last summer's uprising, to join his new government.

Ahmeti evokes mixed emotions. For some, he is rebel leader turned peacemaker turned politician. For others, he is a terrorist (the NLA was on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist organizations). In a meeting with him in his closely guarded offices in the Albanian town of Tetovo, Ahmeti comes across as soft-spoken, cool and calculating. He says it is important for Macedonia to have a stable government that will care equally for "all of its citizens", but he leaves the audience in no doubt that unless the Ohrid agreement is fully implemented and certain ethnic demands are met in the forthcoming coalition talks, he is capable of ensuring a strong ethnic opposition to the new government - opposition that could lead to renewed violence.

For both the Macedonians and Albanians in Macedonia, the final status of Kosovo is a critical issue, just as the final status of the West Bank is a critical issue for the future of Jewish-Arab relations inside Israel. They all accept that an independent State of Kosovo will finally be established. It is important for the Macedonian majority that their own Albanian minority will want to be loyal citizens of a multi-ethnic Macedonian state, rather than seeking union with Kosovo across the border. It is thus in their own interest to ensure equal representation in government and a fair share of economic resources, so that the Albanian minority will not seek to destabilize the state.

The biggest problem at present is the undermining of the country's economy by organized crime and smuggling. This is a problem throughout the Balkans, but it is particularly acute in Macedonia. Critics of the Ohrid agreement in Macedonia argue that the Albanian rebels and NLA were linked with organized criminal gangs and accuse the government and international community of selling out to those groups. Both Crvenkovski and Ahmeti stressed the need to stamp out this illegal economy. They both complained that the international forces are not doing enough to help them in this task, but they both leave the impression that this is no more than a cover for their own inability to deal adequately with the underlying ethnic tensions, which are just waiting to break out again after the international forces depart.

The presence of the international peacekeeping forces has done much to quell the violence that marked the Balkans during the 1990s and move the region toward political reconstruction and reconciliation. For both Kosovo and Macedonia - and Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia - there is a big incentive for them to get their houses in order. The European Union has announced its latest round of enlargement - 10 new countries to join the EU in January 2004. One of these countries is Slovenia, a former Yugoslavian province that did not experience the ethnic violence of its neighbors and has worked hard to create a stable government and has experienced significant economic development. The Balkan States want to follow the Slovenian example.

Kosovo, Macedonia, the Balkans are not Israel/ Palestine, but they bear many similarities. The intervention of international peacekeeping forces and the creation of a trusteeship "state in transition" that must meet certain standards before it is accepted into the international community is a model that has not yet been tried in our own war-battered region. Perhaps it is the way forward.

David Newman and Joel Peters teach in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University. Newman is editor of the International Journal of Geopolitics. Peters is director of the Center for the Study of European Politics and Society.

_{By David Newman and Joel Peters}