Co unterPunch
February 15, 2008
George Szamuely
A Saga of Injustice and Hypocrisy
The Absurdity of "Independent" Kosovo
By GEORGE SZAMUELY
With their unfailing passion for the inconsequential and their knack
for doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, NATO leaders appear
determined to carve the province of Kosovo out of Serbia and grant it
"independence." That they lack the physical, legal and moral power to
bestow independent statehood to a part of a state that is neither a
member of the E.U. nor NATO appears only to have emboldened them to
use this issue to demonstrate Western resolve. Just as in the 1990s,
and just as erroneously, a self-righteous West has seized on the
Balkans as an opportunity to parade before the world in the unfamiliar
guise of champion of democracy and national self-determination, and
protector of Muslims.
Much as it did before the invasion of Iraq, the United States has said
it will do whatever it wants to do — namely, recognize independent
Kosovo — with or without U.N. sanction. Unlike Iraq, this time the
Europeans intend to take an active part in the Easter egg hunt and are
as determined to ignore the United Nations as the Americans. Confident
that the new state of Kosovo will prove to be a reliable NATO/E.U.
satellite, key European countries, and especially the ever-compliant
British, promise to recognize Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of
independence on the very day it happens.
The line from Brussels and Washington is that the status quo in Kosovo
is unsustainable and that the status of Kosovo needs to be settled
once and for all. Final status means "independence" and only
"independence." The Serbs have been told to forget about Kosovo and
all the talk of historic patrimony and to focus instead on "Europe"
(the grand name the European Union has arrogated to itself).
Curiously, the Kosovo Albanians are not told forget about their
national aspirations and focus on Europe. Yet their claim to statehood
is particularly dubious since an Albanian state already exists in
Europe. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to have two Albanian
states.
Kosovo’s status is governed by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244,
which envisages only self-government for Kosovo, and acknowledges the
"sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia." Kosovo’s status can’t be changed without a new
resolution.
To be sure, the status quo is unsustainable. But this status quo is
one entirely of NATO’s making. Eager to demonstrate that it had
relevance even though the Cold War had long ended, NATO pulverized
Yugoslavia with cluster bombs, depleted uranium and cruise missiles
for 11 weeks, in the name of its newly proclaimed mission of
humanitarian intervention. As the adoring media told and, in
subsequent years, retold the story, the United States and its
supposedly supine European allies were knights in shining armor,
selflessly killing and destroying in order to rescue the oppressed
Kosovo Albanians from the bloodthirsty Serbs. NATO forces marched into
Kosovo, stood by passively as more than 250,000 Serbs fled or were
driven out of the province and then cowered in the safety of their
barracks in March 2004 as the Kosovo Albanians went on a bloody
anti-Serb rampage.
Meanwhile, making use of the engineering skills of Halliburton
subsidiary, Brown & Root Services Corp., the United States built a
giant military base, Camp Bondsteel, covering some 955 acres or
360,000 square meters. The camp also includes a prison. According to
Alvaro Gil Robles, Human Rights Commissioner for the Council of
Europe, who visited the prison in 2005,
"What I saw there, the prisoners’ situation, was one which you
would absolutely recognize from the photographs of Guantanamo. The
prisoners were housed in little wooden huts, some alone, others in
pairs or threes. Each hut was surrounded with barbed wire, and guards
were patrolling between them. Around all of this was a high wall with
watchtowers. Because these people had been arrested directly by the
army, they had not had any recourse to the judicial system. They had
no lawyers. There was no appeals process. There weren’t even exact
orders about how long they were to be kept prisoner."
Shamelessly, but not at all surprisingly, the U.S. political
establishment, particularly its Clintonian wing (the bunch that did so
much to destroy Yugoslavia), seized on the March 2004 anti-Serb pogrom
as evidence that the Kosovo Albanians deserved independent statehood
immediately. On March 28, 2004, columnist Georgie Anne Geyer quoted
Richard Holbrooke as saying " ‘The recognition of an independent
Kosovo and eventual membership in the European Union would be the best
way to bring permanent peace and stability to the Balkans.’ The
leadership in Belgrade ‘should finally come to terms with the new
reality and choose either Kosovo or the E.U.but if Serbia chooses
Kosovo over the E.U., it will end up with neither."
Holbrooke, permanent secretary of state in waiting, notoriously
negotiated an agreement with President Slobodan Milosevic in October
1998. In return for the United States agreeing to put off the bombing
of Yugoslavia for a few months, Milosevic agreed to withdraw Serbian
security forces from Kosovo and permitted the arrival of an OSCE
mission-the so-called Kosovo Verification Mission. The agreement
wasn’t binding on the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose
members armed themselves and committed terrorist attacks, the purpose
of which was to provoke the Serbian forces to retaliate and thereby to
provide a pretext for the bombing the Clinton administration was
itching to launch. Milosevic, well aware of the trap that was being
laid for him, went out of his way to avoid being provoked. The Kosovo
Verification Mission did not remain passive in all of this. Led by
William Walker, U.S. ambassador to El Salvador during the 1980s, the
KVM actively colluded with the KLA, going so far as to fake the Racak
incident in January 1999 that served to trigger the NATO onslaught. It
isn’t surprising, therefore, that Holbrooke, who played such a crucial
role in that earlier charade, should play an equally crucial role in
today’s Kosovo charade.
Another establishment ticket-puncher, this time a member of its
Republican branch, also weighed in early demanding independence for
Kosovo. Frank Carlucci, a former secretary of defense and national
security adviser in the Reagan administration and a former chairman of
the Carlyle Group, global private equity firm for ex-government
officials, wrote in the New York Times on Feb. 22, 2005,
The only solution that makes long-term sense is full independence
for Kosovo, and the only question that remains is how to get there.
The best approach would be for Washington and its five partners in the
so-called Contact Group-Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia-to
initiate a process for a final settlement, or Kosovo Accord. First the
powers would have to establish a timeline and some ground rules. The
goal would have to be independence for the entire province, and all
other options — partition, or union with Albania or slivers of other
neighboring states where ethnic Albanians live — would be off the
table from the outset. Given the events of last March, the Kosovo
Albanians would be informed that that the pace of their progress
toward independence will be set by their treatment of Serbs and other
minorities.
So progress toward independence should depend on how the Albanians
treat Kosovo’s minorities. Holbrooke had no time for this. He
ridiculed the notion that independence should in any way be connected
to the Albanians’ treatment of the Serbs. "Standards before status,"
he sneered in the Washington Post on April 20, was merely a delaying
policy that "disguised bureaucratic inaction inside diplomatic
mumbo-jumbo. As a result, there have been no serious discussions on
the future of Kosovo."
Standards before status or status before standards, it really didn’t
matter too much. The United States pushed U.N. Secretary General Kofi
Annan to launch a fraudulent process that would — so it was it
believed — result in an independent Kosovo. In June 2005, Annan
appointed Norway’s ambassador to NATO, Kai Aide, to determine if
Kosovo has made sufficient progress in meeting accepted standards on
democracy and minority rights to merit a decision on its final status.
In October 2005, Aide duly reported to Annan that, yes, Kosovo had
made splendid progress and that any further delay on resolving its
final status would lead to catastrophe. Actually, the report said that
the "Kosovo Serbs fear that they will become a decoration to any
central-level political institution with little ability to yield
tangible results. The Kosovo Albanians have done little to dispel it."
The report concluded that "with regard to the foundation for a
multi-ethnic society, the situation is grim." Nonetheless, there
wasn’t a moment to be lost. "What’s important," Annan said, "is that
talks begin soon."
Talks did indeed begin. Annan appointed former Finnish President Marti
Ahtisaari as his special envoy to lead the negotiations on Kosovo’s
final status. Talk about rewarding terrorism! The Kosovo Albanians
rioted for several days in March 2004, and here they were, some 18
months later, about to be made a gift of independence. Ahtisaari was
as likely to act the honest broker as Holbrooke. One of the posts he
holds is chairman emeritus of the International Crisis Group (ICG),
one of those George Soros-funded organizations staffed by
out-of-office international worthies who invariably advocate for NATO
expansion/intervention and unhindered U.S.-E.U. foreign investment.
The ICG has for a long time been a fervent propagandist for an
independent Kosovo. On its board sit such veteran bomb-the-Serbs
alumni as Wesley Clark, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Joschka Fischer, Morton
Abramowitz and Samantha Power.
The negotiations under Ahtisaari’s aegis inevitably went nowhere, as
they were meant to. Given that key NATO/E.U. officials had already
declared that independence was inevitable, the Kosovo Albanians knew
they only had to sit tight, reject any option other than independence
and prepare to collect their reward within a few months.
In March 2007, Ahtisaari reported to the new U.N. secretary general,
Ban Ki-moon, that "the negotiations’ potential to produce any mutually
agreeable outcome on Kosovo’s status is exhausted. No amount of
additional talks, whatever the format, will overcome this impasse."
Therefore, he announced,
"I have come to the conclusion that the only viable option for
Kosovo is independence, to be supervised for an initial period by the
international community. My Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo
Status Settlement, which sets forth these international supervisory
structures, provides the foundations for a future independent Kosovo
that is viable, sustainable and stable, and in which all communities
and their members can live a peaceful and dignified existence."
Washington, London, Brussels and other capitals immediately embraced
Ahtisaari’s proposal and his noble, but entirely vacuous, sentiments.
Since a massive NATO military presence had not sufficed to ensure that
Kosovo’s "communities and their members" lived an even minimally
"peaceful and dignified existence" (as even Kofi Annan’s envoy Kai
Aide had admitted), the idea that in an independent Kosovo the
province’s minorities would be flourishing was laughable. Kosovo’s
Serbs — the few that remain — live behind barbed wire and need armed
escort whenever they step outside their enclaves. According to a
recent European Commission report, "only 1 per cent of judges belong
to a minority group and less than 0.5 per cent belong to the Serbian
minority. Only six of the 88 prosecutors belong to minority groups."
Overall, the report concluded, "little progress has been made in the
promotion and enforcement of human rights."
None of this really matters. The United States, the European Union and
Ahtisaari himself are as serious about protecting Kosovo’s minorities
as they are about creating an independent state there. In fact, the
last thing one would call the state that Ahtisaari envisages is
"independent."
To be sure, land would be taken away from Serbia, and the Kosovo’s
Serbs, Turks, Roma and other minorities would be booted out, even as
NATO/EU officials will doubtless go on avowing their commitment to a
multicultural, multiethnic, multi-whatever Kosovo. To be sure,
Brussels will probably succeed in bribing a few Serbs to come back to
— or even make a home in — Kosovo. These "returnees" will then be
touted as evidence that Kosovo is embracing "European values."
However, there is no plan to permit Kosovo’s Albanians to run their
own affairs. First of all, as in Bosnia, ultimate power will reside
with an internationally-appointed bureaucrat. This position of
colonial viceroy known as the International Civilian Representative
(ICR), will be held by one of the West’s innumerable, interchangeable
has-been politicians moving from one sinecure to another. The ICR
will, for example, have the authority to "[t]ake corrective measures
to remedy, as necessary, any actions taken by the Kosovo authorities
that the ICR deems to be a breach of this Settlement." Such corrective
measures would include "annulment of laws or decisions adopted by
Kosovo authorities," "sanction or remov[al] from office [of] any
public official or take other measures, as necessary, to ensure full
respect for this Settlement and its implementation," final say over
the appointment of the "Director-General of the Customs Service, the
Director of Tax Administration, the Director of the Treasury, and the
Managing Director of the Central Banking Authority of Kosovo." There’s
democracy for you.
In addition, the European Union is to establish a European Security
and Defense Policy (ESDP) Mission. This mission "shall assist Kosovo
authorities in their progress towards sustainability and
accountability and in further developing and strengthening an
independent judiciary, police and customs service, ensuring that these
institutions are free from political interferenceand shall provide
mentoring, monitoring and advice in the area of the rule of law
generally, while retaining certain powers, in particular, with respect
to the judiciary, police, customs and correctional services."
The ESDP mission will have "[a]uthority to ensure that cases of war
crimes, terrorism, organised crime, corruption, inter-ethnic crimes,
financial/economic crimes, and other serious crimes are properly
investigated according to the law, including, where appropriate, by
international investigators acting with Kosovo authorities or
independently." The mission will have the authority to ensure crimes
are "properly prosecuted including, where appropriate, by
international prosecutors acting jointly with Kosovo prosecutors or
independently. Case selection for international prosecutors shall be
based upon objective criteria and procedural safeguards, as determined
by the Head of the ESDP Mission." The mission will have the "authority
to reverse or annul operational decisions taken by the competent
Kosovo authorities, as necessary, to ensure the maintenance and
promotion of the rule of law, public order and security." The mission
will have "[a]uthority to monitor, mentor and advise on all areas
related to the rule of law. The Kosovo authorities shall facilitate
such efforts and grant immediate and complete access to any site,
person, activity, proceeding, document, or other item or event in
Kosovo."
There is also to be an International Military Presence (IMP)
established by NATO; it is to "operate under the authority, and be
subject to the direction and political control of the North Atlantic
Council through the NATO chain of command. NATO’s military presence in
Kosovo does not preclude a possible future follow-on military mission
by another international security organization, subject to a revised
mandate." Furthermore, the IMP is to "have overall responsibility for
the development and training of the Kosovo Security Force, and NATO
shall have overall responsibility for the development and
establishment of a civilian-led organization of the Government to
exercise civilian control over this Force, without prejudice to the
responsibilities of the ICR." The IMP will be "responsible for:
Assisting and advising with respect to the process of integration in
Euro-Atlantic structures" and advising on "the involvement of elements
>From the security force in internationally mandated missions."
So, Kosovo will have no say on taxation, on foreign and security
policy, on customs, on law enforcement. The only thing independent
about "independent" Kosovo is that it will be independent of Serbia.
In fact, there is not the slightest pretense that duly elected Kosovo
authorities will have any say about anything other than perhaps refuse
collection, though, doubtless even here, the authorities will have to
follow E.U. guidelines or pay a penalty.
Not that this talk of "mentoring," "monitoring," "training,"
"assisting," "advising" and "investigating" should be taken too
seriously. After all, the United Nations hasn’t taken it too seriously
during the past 8_ years; why should the European Union? Given the
E.U.’s contempt for international law, its pride over its
member-countries’ participation in the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, its
dismissive attitude toward Serbia’s concerns about the loss of its
sovereign territory and its jurisdiction over its nationals, the idea
that the E.U. is now ready to draw its sword and to come to the aid of
Kosovo’s minorities is laughable. The soaring rhetoric over Kosovo’s
supposed extraordinary progress, under U.N. auspices, contrasts
starkly with the reality. According to Amnesty International’s recent
report on U.N.-style justice in Kosovo,
[H]undreds of cases of war crimes, enforced disappearances and
interethnic crimes remain unresolved (often with little or no
investigation having been carried out); hundreds of cases have been
closed, for the want of evidence which was neither promptly nor
effectively gathered. Relatives of missing and ‘disappeared’ persons
report that they have been interviewed too many times by international
police and prosecutors new to their case, yet no progress is ever
made.In terms of recruitment, it appears that at no stage were serious
efforts made to identify and recruit the most highly qualified,
experienced and appropriate candidates in the world for the job.A
significant concern regarding the fairness of the trials conducted by
international judges and prosecutors is the lack of attention that has
been given to the rights of the defense.Many of the trial
proceedingsare conducted in a language not understood by the accused
or their counsel. They are not simultaneously translated in full, but
simply summarized. In some cases, translated transcripts of trial
proceedings are not available until long after the time for an appeal
has passed.It is disturbing that of the war crimes cases conducted
only onehas involved a non-Albanian victim. In that case one of the 26
victims was Serb.
Some of the problems Amnesty mentioned: Trials are conducted "in
absentia"; there’s "use of anonymous witnesses"; "reconstructions of
the crime" take place "without the accused and defense counsel being
present"; "poor translation and interpretation and use of summaries by
interpreters instead of verbatim interpretation"; "poorly reasoned,
unclear and ‘incomprehensible’ decisions; "judgments based on
eyewitness testimony contradicted by forensic evidence or the prior
testimony of the witnesses"; "discrepancies between the evidence and
the verdict or insufficient evidence to support the verdict"; and
"significant differences between the oral judgment and the written
judgment." Otherwise, the judiciary is in great shape, and likely to
get even better under E.U. guidance.
No report about Kosovo’s dismal human rights record or its economic
and political failure as a ward of international busybodies, no
invocation by Serbia and Russia of international law, the Helsinki
Final Act or U.N. Resolution 1244 makes any difference: Washington
says it will do what it before the invasion of Iraq — ignore the
United Nations and recognize independent Kosovo. Brussels says it will
do likewise. Unlike 2003, however, the Russians this time have a card
up their sleeves. If Kosovo is to be permitted to secede, the Russians
have argued, then why not other nationalities or ethnic groups living
as minorities within someone else’s state? As examples, President
Vladimir Putin pointed to South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh
and Transnistria. But he could have mentioned innumerable others: the
Hungarians in Slovakia and Rumania, the Basques and Catalans in Spain,
Corsicans in France, the Flemish in Belgium, Russians in Estonia and
Latvia, the Turkish Cypriots.
The West responded with fury to the Russians’ argument. "Russia’s
position is cynical. It has no power to regain Kosovo for Serbia and
the Kremlin plays its own secessionist games in Georgia and Moldova.
President Vladimir Putin has simply been using Kosovo as a handy stick
to beat the West and to remind the world that Russia still wields a
Security Council veto," the New York Times thundered in an editorial
on Dec. 6, 2007. Holbrooke accused Putin of seeking "to reassert
Russia’s role as a regional hegemon." The suggestion that Kosovo has
any bearing on any other territorial dispute was "spurious," he
declared. Kosovo "is a unique case and sets no precedent for
separatist movements elsewhere." Why? "[B]ecause in 1999, with Russian
support, the United Nations was given authority to decide the future
of Kosovo." This is a typically shameless Holbrooke lie. The U.N. was
authorized to set up an interim administration "under which the people
of Kosovo can enjoy substantial autonomy within the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia."
Moreover, given the utter failure of the U.N. administration to
fulfill most of the provisions of 1244, invoking this resolution as
authorizing the U.N. to do something is particularly egregious.
According to 1244, among the responsibilities of the interim
administration was "Demilitarizing the Kosovo Liberation Army,"
"Establishing a secure environment in which refugees and displaced
persons can return home in safety" and ensuring that "an agreed number
of Yugoslav and Serbian personnel will be permitted to return to
perform the following functions: Liaison with the international civil
mission and the international security presence.Maintaining a presence
at Serb patrimonial sites; Maintaining a presence at key border
crossings." Needless to say, none of this ever took place. In any
case, even if the U.N. was given the authority to decide Kosovo’s
future, then that’s precisely what Russia, as permanent veto-wielding
member of the Security Council, is insisting on by rejecting
unilateral secession.
That Kosovo was "unique" has been the Western officials’ mantra for
months. On Dec. 19, Zalmay Khalilzad, permanent U.S. representative to
the U.N., told the U.N. Security Council that "Kosovo is a unique
situation — it is a land that used to be part of a country that no
longer exists and that has been administered for eight years by the
United Nations with the ultimate objective of definitely resolving
Kosovo’s status.The policies of ethnic cleansing that the Milosevic
government pursued against the Kosovar people forever ensured that
Kosovo would never again return to rule by Belgrade. This is an
unavoidable fact and the direct consequence of those barbaric
policies."
On Dec. 21, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian
Affairs Daniel Fried said "Kosovo is obviously a unique case because
there’s no other place in the world where the UN has been
administering a territory pursuant to a Security Council resolution.
So there’s nothing else like it, so it clearly isn’t a precedent. It
is our view that Kosovo is not a precedent, not for any place. Not for
south Ossetia, not for Abkhazia, not for Transnistria, not for
Corsica, not for Texas. For nothing. Nothing." On Nov. 28, Under
Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns declared "It’s a unique
situation. Milosevic tried to annihilate over one million Kosovar
Albanian Muslims. He was denied that by NATO. We fought a war over it.
And the United Nations and NATO and the EU have kept the peace there
for eight-and-a-half years. And now, fully 94 or 95 per cent of the
people that live there are Kosovar Albanian Muslims."
The sheer absurdity of Burns’ hysterical statement illustrates the
lengths to which Western officials will go to justify what obviously
can’t be justified. Milosevic tried to annihilate over one million
Kosovar Albanian Muslims? The Foundation for Humanitarian Law led by
Nata_a Kandi_, much beloved and much bankrolled by Western governments
and non-governmental organizations, runs a project seeking to
establish the number of dead and missing in Kosovo. According to an
article in the Croatian magazine, Globus, "The project has documented
9,702 people dead or missing during the war in Kosovo from 1998 to
2000. Of this number, as things stand now, 4,903 killed and missing
are Albanians and 2,322 are Serbs, with the rest either belonging to
other nationalities or their ethnic identity remaining uncertain." One
should add also that these numbers say nothing about how people were
killed, whether in combat or otherwise, and by whom. And there’s no
clarification as to how many were killed by NATO bombs. What these
numbers do reveal is that it was the Serbs, not the Albanians, who
suffered disproportionately in Kosovo. If Burns is right and "fully 94
or 95 per cent of the people that live there are Kosovar Albanian
Muslims," that means that there are 19 times as many Albanians as
there are Serbs in Kosovo. Yet, according to these numbers, the
Albanians’ casualty numbers are only slightly more than twice the size
of the Serb casualty numbers.
The war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh resulted
in far worse casualty numbers. The U.S. State Department itself
admits, "More than 30,000 people were killed in the fighting from 1992
to 1994."According to the CIA, "over 800,000 mostly ethnic
Azerbaijanis were driven from the occupied lands and Armenia; about
230,000 ethnic Armenians were driven from their homes in Azerbaijan
into Armenia."
In any case, if bad treatment of the local population were to
disqualify a state from exercising sovereignty over part of its
territory, then an awful lot of countries would be eligible for
enforced amputation: Turkey would have to be stripped of Turkish
Kurdistan; Israel would long ago have been given the boot from the
West Bank and other occupied territories; Indonesia would be denied
Aceh and Papua; Pakistan would lose Waziristan.
Kosovo’s claim to independent statehood is based on one fact only: The
Albanians are the overwhelming majority in Kosovo. They are Muslims in
a Christian state to which they don’t want to belong. Yet this
argument is convincing only to the willfully ignorant. First, the
majority of Kosovo may be Muslim; but the Kosovo Albanians are only a
small minority within Serbia as a whole. Kosovo would vote
overwhelmingly for independence; Serbia would vote overwhelmingly
against. Serbia is a legal entity; Kosovo is not. A Serbian vote
trumps a Kosovo one. Second, there is nothing unusual about an
overwhelmingly-Muslim inhabited province existing within a state that
is overwhelmingly non-Muslim. There are the Muslim Moros who inhabit
Mindanao in the Philippines. There is the Xinjiang province in China.
There is Kashmir, overwhelmingly Muslim, many of whom live under
Indian rule. Russia is replete with provinces in which the population
is overwhelmingly Muslim — Tatarstan, Bashkiristan, Dagestan,
Chechnya. Northern Cyprus is overwhelmingly Muslim — yet, except for
Turkey, no country in the world recognizes it as an independent state.
Muslim Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala provinces in Thailand are waging
an insurgency to free themselves from Bangkok’s Buddhist rule. And of
course, there is the West Bank, yet another Muslim population,
subjected to the rule of non-Muslims. In all of these cases, there has
been an Islamic insurgency, a war seeking to liberate Muslims from the
rule of non-Muslims, and considerable government repression. Yet,
Western leaders do not splutter about unsustainable status quos, they
do not demand immediate U.N. Security Council action, they do not
insist that independence must be granted immediately and they do not
threaten to ignore the United Nations and embrace a seceding state.
Moreover, Kosovo has hardly made an even remotely plausible case for
its having earned independence. First, for all the talk of "Kosovars"
and "Kosovans," the residents of Kosovo identify themselves as either
Serb or as Albanian; the languages they speak is either Serbian or
Albanian. Creating a second Albanian state in Europe makes no sense
whatsoever. It doesn’t govern itself. It is a ward of various
international bodies. Economically, it is a basket case, and lives off
vast handouts. Kosovo is an example of an ethnic minority grabbing a
piece of territory, permitting unrestricted immigration by its
co-nationals from a neighboring state, ethnically cleansing the
territory of all other groups and thereby creating an artificial
overwhelming ethnic majority, and then demanding that these actions be
rewarded by the bestowal of independent statehood.
By comparison, the provinces whose demand for recognition the West
rejects have been self-governing entities for years. A
newly-independent Kosovo would have poor relations with Serbia and
would be subjected to an economic blockade. Its electric grid is
integrated within Serbia’s electric grid. Its debt has been taken care
of by Serbia.
Compare Kosovo with Transnistria. Transnistria declared itself
independent of Moldova in 1990. Transnistria functions as a
presidential republic, with its own government and parliament. Its
authorities have adopted a constitution, flag, a national anthem and a
coat of arms. It has its own currency and its own military and police
force. Yet the U.S.-E.U. position is that Transnistria has no right to
independence, and that Moldova’s territorial integirty must be
respected. In 2003, the U.S. and E.U. announced a visa boycott against
the 17 members of the leadership of Transnistria, accusing them of
"continued obstructionism." In 2006, Ukraine introduced new customs
regulations on its border with Transnistria, declaring it would only
import goods from Transnistria with documents processed by Moldovan
customs offices. The U.S., E.U. and OSCE applauded Ukraine’s action,
even though it was effectively imposing a blockade. In 2006,
Transnistria held a referendum in which 97.2 percent of voters voted
for independence. The OSCE refused to send observers, and the E.U.
immediately announced that it wouldn’t recognize the referendum
results. This is the same OSCE, E.U. and U.S. that, a few months
earlier, had leapt to recognize the results of Montenegro’s
independence referendum, despite the fact that the vote in favor of
independence was a bare majority, rather than the two-thirds normally
required for a constitutional change, and that Montenegrins living in
Serbia were denied the right to vote in the referendum.
Compare Kosovo with South Ossetia. Ossetians have their own language.
South Ossetia had been an autonomous oblast within the Soviet
Socialist Republic of Georgia. In 1990, the Georgian Supreme Soviet
revoked its autonomy. The OSCE declared its "firm commitment to
support the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia." In
November 2006, 99 percent of South Ossetians voted for independence
>From Georgia. The usual gaggle of international bodies howled with
indignation. The European Union, OSCE, NATO and the USA condemned the
referendum. The Council of Europe called the referendum "unnecessary,
unhelpful and unfair.[T]he vote did nothing to bring forward the
search for a peaceful political solution." The OSCE declared South
Ossetia’s "intention to hold a referendum counterproductive. It will
not be recognized by the international community and it will not be
recognized by the OSCE and it will impede the peace process." NATO
Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said "On behalf of NATO, I
join other international leaders in rejecting the so-called
‘referendum’.Such actions serve no purpose other than to exacerbate
tensions in the South Caucasus region."
Nagorno-Karabakh can also make a vastly stronger case than Kosovo for
independence. Since 1923, the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast had
been part of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, even though
about 94 percent of its population was Armenian. In November 1991, the
parliament of the Azerbaijan SSR abolished the autonomous status of
the oblast. In response, in December 1991, Nagorno-Karabakh held a
referendum, which overwhelmingly approved the creation of an
independent state. Yet the E.U., the OSCE and the United States took
the line that Nagorno-Karabakh must remain a part of Azerbaijan,
irrespective of the fact that almost 100 per cent of the populace
wants out. Interestingly, in declaring itself independent in 1991,
Azerbaijan claimed to be the successor state to the Azerbaijan
republic that existed from 1918 to 1920. The League of Nations,
however, did not recognize Azerbaijan’s inclusion of Nagorno-Karabakh
as part of Azerbaijan’s claimed territory. This makes
Nagorno-Karabakh’s inclusion within Azerbaijan even more questionable.
If the states that seceded from the Soviet Union are to be regarded as
independent states, it’s hard to see on what basis parts of those
states are to be denied the right to independence.
In 2002, Nagorno-Karabakh held a presidential election; in response,
the European Union presidency declared "The European Union confirms
its support for the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, and recalls
that it does not recognise the independence of Nagorno Karabakh.The
European Union cannot consider legitimate the ‘presidential
elections.’…The European Union does not believe that these elections
should have an impact on the peace process."
In December 2006, Nagorno-Karabakh held another referendum on
independence: Something like 98 per cent favored independence. The
European Union immediately announced it wouldn’t recognize the results
of the referendum and said "that only a negotiated settlement between
Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenians who control the region can bring a
lasting solution.The E.U. recalls that it does not recognize the
independence of Nagorno-Karabakh. It recognizes neither the
‘referendum’ nor its outcome." The E.U. added that holding the
referendum pre-empts the outcome of negotiations and that it "did not
contribute to constructive efforts at peaceful conflict resolution."
The E.U.’s attitude here is strikingly different from its attitude on
Kosovo. On Kosovo, the E.U. holds Serbia’s refusal to relinquish its
sovereign territory as the reason for the failure of negotiations,
which supposedly is the justification for Kosovo’s declaration of
independence.
The West’s entire approach to Kosovo has been marked by sordid
dishonesty and bad faith, supporting national self-determination and
the right to secession in one place and territorial integrity in
another, cheering on ethnic cleansing by one ethnic group and
demanding war crimes trials for another, trumpeting the virtues of
majority rule when it’s convenient to do so and threatening to impose
sanctions and penalties on majorities when that’s convenient. For the
Americans, Kosovo is nothing more than the hinterland of a giant
military base, a key presence in the eastern Mediterranean should
Greece or Turkey prove unreliable. As for the duly grateful Albanians,
they are expected to repay their benefactors by agreeing to be cannon
fodder in future imperial wars. For the Europeans, Kosovo is an
opportunity to show the world that Europe counts for something and to
conduct various pointless social experiments in multiculturalism and
multiconfessionalism — particularly pointless since Kosovo will be
one of the most ethnically homogeneous places in Europe.
George Szamuely lives in New York and can be reached at [email protected]