Commentary No. 87: The Status of Kosovo: Political and Security Implications for the Balkans and Europe

Mark Biondich

Spring 2005
Unclassified

Editors Note: Mark Biondich holds a Ph.D. in history and is presently employed as an analyst with the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Section of the Department of Justice Canada, in Ottawa. He has authored one book and a number of articles on Balkan history and politics."

Disclaimer: Publication of an article in the Commentary series does not imply CSIS authentication of the information nor CSIS endorsement of the author's views.

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1. Introduction

With these words, the Danish diplomat, Mr. Søren Jessen-Petersen, took up his duties in August 2004 as the sixth United Nations (UN) administrator for Kosovo since 1999. His appointment could not have come at a more inauspicious moment. Five months earlier, in March 2004, Kosovo was wracked by violence. More than 50,000 Albanians participated in anti-Serb riots in a two-day rampage that killed 19 people, injured 900, forced 4,000 persons to flee their homes, and left the UN mission in turmoil.

The province of Kosovo is today officially part of the Republic of Serbia, which itself is one of two constituent units of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, the successor state to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1992-2003). Since 1999, Kosovo has been administered by a UN mission, known as the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMiK), and 'policed' by a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-led peacekeeping force known as Kosovo Force (KFOR). This state of affairs resulted from the spring 1999 NATO intervention in Yugoslavia that was provoked by President Slobodan Milosevi 's policies towards Kosovo's Albanian population, which at the time was waging an armed insurgency for independence. The ultimate political status of Kosovo remains undetermined.

It is that uncertain political status which continues to plague the province, its immediate neighbours and arguably the entire Balkan Peninsula. For over a decade, the Balkans has presented the international community with one of its greatest challenges of the post-Cold War era. The dissolution of Yugoslavia produced four distinct but interrelated violent conflicts, that had implications reaching far beyond that state's borders and that consumed billions of dollars in Western aid. In March 1999, a crisis in the Balkans helped trigger NATO's first use of force in the half-century of the alliance's existence. Although no longer in the headlines, the Balkans remains significant for many reasons and has an importance that goes beyond the region. The peninsula is home to over 70 million people, and it remains important to regional, Euro-Atlantic and global security. Events in the Balkans continue to have an impact on relations between the West and Russia, which has historically had strategic interests in the region; between the West and the Islamic world, given the sizeable Muslim populations in Kosovo (roughly 80 percent of the population), Albania (70 percent), Bosnia-Herzegovina (40 percent), and Macedonia (25 percent); and, for multilateral organizations important to Canada, such as NATO, the European Union (EU), and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), all of which have invested considerable resources in helping to maintain Balkan peace. Although disputes over Balkan policy between the EU and the United States (US) are no longer as intense as they were in the 1990s, they still occasionally challenge that relationship at a time when the bond has weakened as a result of the war in Iraq.

Since the beginning of conflicts in the early 1990s, Canada has had a significant role in the Balkans. Canada has committed some of its largest peacekeeping operations to the Balkans; at any given time between 1992 and 2003, Ottawa deployed an average of 1,200 to 2,000 peacekeepers in the region. Canada participated in the 1999 NATO campaign in Kosovo, which was the largest Canadian involvement in any military campaign since the Korean War (1950-53). One of Canada's largest refugee programs involves the Balkans: over 30,000 refugees have entered Canada from the region since 1996, most of them from the Yugoslav successor states. Canada remains active in a range of diplomatic activities aimed at restoring Balkan stability. Furthermore, since 1999, Canada has provided over $200 million (Canadian) for peace- building, including humanitarian aid; helping re-establish security and rule of law; supporting human rights and free media projects; and, fostering economic cooperation. In short, Canadian foreign policy interests were and remain at stake on many levels: in terms of maintaining security and stability in Europe; supporting multilateral institutions, such as the UN and NATO, both of which are deeply involved in the Balkans; and, strengthening trans-Atlantic relations and the international coalition against terrorism.

In light of the region's importance, the international community has made a major investment in regional stability. Among its initiatives are the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1993; UNMiK and KFOR in Kosovo in 1999; the Office of the High Representative (OHR), mandated to oversee implementation of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accord in Bosnia-Herzegovina; NATO-led operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Stabilization Force or SFOR, 1995-2004), now known as EU Force (EUFOR); and, the 'Stability Pact for South East Europe,' launched in June 1999 and bringing together donors and Balkan countries to secure long-term peace and prosperity. Currently, upwards of $5 billion in assistance is provided annually to the Balkans.

At the centre of the international community's efforts in the Balkans is Kosovo. The Albanians and Serbs of Kosovo remain deeply divided over the future status of the province. Albanians want the province to become an internationally recognized independent state, while Serbs insist that it must remain de jure part of Serbia. How the question is resolved will unquestionably have ramifications for the entire region. The Kosovo issue will without doubt impact upon the future of individual states like Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Serbia-Montenegro, not only in terms of their ability to advance political and economic reform, but also in terms of their very survival as states. As such, the issue has ramifications for regional security. Kosovo is today the locus of an extensive and sophisticated organized crime network in the Balkans, a problem that emerged as a result of the war in former Yugoslavia and which continues to be linked to the weakness of the region's states and the instability that still plagues the western Balkans. What security implications might the Kosovo issue have for the Balkans and the EU? Will the EU, the US and NATO be able to deal jointly with the Kosovo problem and its related issues? Will the region become a European 'black hole' where crime, corruption, human trafficking, and smuggling continue to flourish? These are all pertinent questions that Western policymakers must confront sooner or later.

2. The Background to the Kosovo Question

Albanians and Serbs both employ history to buttress their contemporary claims to Kosovo. Although these claims have been shaped more by considerations of modern nationalist thinking than by historical fact, it is nevertheless useful to try to understand the region's history in order to put the present conflict in its proper context.

Kosovo's distinct status as a province dates from the modern period, but its nationalities have for the most part lived there for over a millennium. Albanians claim direct descent from the Illyrians, a people who populated the Balkans in the classical period. They claim that Serbs, who are descended from Slavic-speaking tribes that came to the Balkans in the late 7th and 8th centuries, are therefore relative newcomers. Serbs readily acknowledge the longer pedigree of Albanians in the Balkans, but they assert that Albanians appeared in growing number in Kosovo, whose frontiers have experienced considerable flux over the centuries, only with the advent of Ottoman Turkish rule in the 15th century.

There is little controversy on the point that Kosovo was an administrative and cultural centre of the medieval Serbian state. In 1389, however, in the famous Battle of Kosovo Polje, Serb forces and their Christian allies were defeated by an Ottoman Turkish army. Seventy years later, in 1459, the Serbian despotate (with Kosovo) was incorporated directly into the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman conquest proved to be a watershed, for in the decades that followed a large segment of the Albanian population converted to Islam while most Serbs remained adherents of Serbian Orthodoxy. Divided by language, the two communities were now also separated by religion, which over time affected their social status. During the Ottoman period, the Serb share of the population undoubtedly declined while that of the Albanian population increased.

The emergence of modern national ideologies in the 19th century transformed social and political relations in the Balkans. The Ottoman Empire, which controlled the peninsula at the dawn of the modern period, was eventually challenged by all the Balkan nationalities, who hoped to achieve independence. Serbia was among the first to achieve autonomy (1817) and then independence, following the Congress of Berlin (1878). This Serbian state did not initially include Kosovo, however, which was also claimed by the nascent Albanian national movement. In response to the Congress of Berlin, Albanian nationalists met at the town of Prizren, in Kosovo, and formed what later became known as "The League of Prizren." This group sought the amalgamation of all predominantly Albanian-speaking districts into an autonomous Albanian province, including Kosovo, within the Ottoman Empire. Dreams of autonomy within the Ottoman Empire proved illusory. The League of Prizren was crushed by Ottoman troops (1882), and thereafter Albanian hopes were generally ignored by Ottoman officialdom.

During the Balkan Wars (1912-13), the Ottoman Empire was expelled from almost the entire Balkan Peninsula by Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece. As a result of Great Power intervention, which was enshrined in the Treaty of London (1913), Serbia gained sovereignty over Kosovo. At the same time, Albania was born as an internationally recognized independent kingdom while historic, geographic Macedonia was partitioned by the Balkan states. The Balkan Wars undoubtedly marked an important demographic shift in the modern history of Kosovo and the Balkans. Albanians fled or were forced out of Kosovo in large number by the victorious Serbs. The First World War (1914-1918) halted this trend only temporarily. The interwar Yugoslav state (1918-41) was a highly centralized Serb-dominated state in which Kosovo, known to Serbs also as 'Old Serbia,' was treated as an integral part of Serbia. Hostilities between the Serbian authorities and Albanians in Kosovo never remained far beneath the surface. Albanians were seen by Serbs as a hostile group that wanted independence, and were treated accordingly. A policy of ruthless serbianization was conducted by Belgrade, which included colonization of the province by Serb settlers and the appropriation of land belonging to Albanians; in 1931 the population of Kosovo was still 63 percent Albanian. The Second World War in Yugoslavia (1941-45) brought Axis invasion and partition, as well as Albanian reprisals against Serbs. Kosovo became part of an Italian-ruled Great Albanian state (1941-43) and then experienced German occupation (1943-44).

Yugoslavia was reconstituted in 1945 as a communist federation of six republics. Kosovo became an 'autonomous region,' first under federal and then Serbian jurisdiction. In Yugoslav parlance, the Albanians eventually came to be treated as a 'nationality' rather than a 'nation,' a designation reserved only for six peoples (i.e., Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnian Muslims, Macedonians, and Montenegrins) who alone possessed for that reason the right to republican status within the Yugoslav federation. Only after 1966, when the head of the Yugoslav security police, Aleksandar Rankovi , a Serb centralist, was removed from office, did a significant change take place in Kosovo's status. This occurred as part of a larger process of political reform in communist Yugoslavia. Concessions in the realm of culture and education were made to the Albanian population. In 1974, amendments to the Yugoslav constitution improved Kosovo's status; constitutionally it remained an 'Autonomous Province' of Serbia, but with voting rights at the federal level and the ability to veto certain decisions of the Serbian republican leadership. Although not a republic, Kosovo's status within the federation had been markedly enhanced. The changes introduced in the 1970s produced, by the early 1980s, an exodus of Serbs from the province.

In 1981 Albanian riots were sparked by student grievances at Pristina University. These protests gradually spread throughout Kosovo and acquired political and nationalist overtones; tensions between Albanians and Serbs grew apace. Public opinion in Serbia turned against Albanians. By the mid-1980s there was an increased out-migration of Serbs from Kosovo in response to alleged discrimination at the hands of Albanians, who were by that time increasingly dominating the local administration, political institutions and the police. Kosovo was quickly becoming a symbol of supposed Serb decline within communist Yugoslavia.

In 1986 some of Serbia's most distinguished intellectuals (academics, writers, and others), all of whom were members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Art, drafted a 'Memorandum' on the plight of Serbs in communist Yugoslavia. This document has since emerged as one of the most controversial texts in modern Serbian (and Yugoslav) political history. Stolen from the Academy's offices and then leaked to the press, the 'Memorandum' spoke of Serb victimization in Yugoslavia and the decline of the Serb people under communism. Its importance as a Serb nationalist text lies "in the extreme language it uses to depict the situation of the Serbs and in the conspiracy theory it relies on to explain it." Furthermore, its claims made it "very difficult to envisage how a common state is possible with nations who are perpetrating 'genocide' or plotting to 'repress' the Serbs." Kosovo was cited as one example of this supposed victimization. The document is significant because it openly challenged some of the basic tenets of Yugoslavia's political system and called into question the ability of Serbs to cohabit with anything other than a centralized, Serb-run state. The 'Memorandum' called for a reversal of Serbia's supposed decline, including the revocation of Kosovo's autonomy.

In April 1987, the new leader of the Serbian communists, Slobodan Milosevi , visited Kosovo for the first time. Local Serbs organized a protest rally demanding that the Serbian authorities intervene in the province to rescue them from alleged imperilment at the hands of the local Albanian communist leadership, which was headed at that time by Azem Vllasi. Although the rally was suppressed by the local Albanian police, Milosevi took up the cause of the protesters. This he did for his own political reasons, to help solidify his position within the Serbian communist party. By doing so he became a champion of Serb nationalism against a Serbian party leadership that had supposedly passively observed or ignored the violation of Serb rights in Kosovo; the consequences were revolutionary for communist Yugoslavia. The 1986 Serbian Academy 'Memorandum' had articulated a number of grievances (and prejudices) prevalent at that time in Serb nationalist and dissident circles, but it also implicitly articulated a Great Serbian program by calling for a political policy that would reverse the supposed decline of Serbdom within Yugoslavia. The Serb communist leader Slobodan Milosevi began speaking to various alleged threats confronting Serbs and found in the document an intellectual rationale and justification for his policies. Under his leadership, the implementation of this Great Serbian program began, whether by design or by circumstance is still a matter of debate. It was first put into operation in Kosovo (1989-90), then Croatia (1990-91), Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-95) and, finally, again in Kosovo (1998-99).

The process to abolish Kosovo's autonomy began in earnest in March 1989 via amendments to the Serbian constitution, the net result of which was to give Serbia direct control over the province. On 28 June 1989 a massive political rally was held at Kosovo Polje to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Serbian defeat at the hands of the Ottomans in 1389; the event symbolized the extent to which Kosovo still mobilized Serb nationalist opinion. That same year, Vllasi and other Albanian leaders were arrested for opposing growing Serbian control over Kosovo. The following year, in July 1990, the Serbian government deprived the Kosovo Assembly of the right to convene and issue legislation without Belgrade's directive. Civil disturbances by Albanian protesters grew throughout 1990. Violence occasionally resulted, the Serbian security forces usually responding with a disproportionate use of force. When Kosovo's Albanian parliamentarians assembled on the steps of the recently dissolved Assembly, and proclaimed a 'Sovereign Republic of Kosova,' within the Yugoslav federation, the Serbian authorities officially dissolved Kosovo's government and assumed executive control. The complete removal of Kosovo's autonomy was completed in September 1990 when a change in the Serbian constitution redefined Kosovo as a region within Serbia. From that point onward, the local Albanians created a system of parallel (or underground) civil institutions, including their own schools and medical facilities, which operated outside the Serbian system. Serbian actions in Kosovo did not go unnoticed in other parts of Yugoslavia, where Slovenes and Croats were already attempting to augment the sovereignty of their republics.

When the Yugoslav war began in June 1991 with the secession of Croatia and Slovenia from the Yugoslav federation, Kosovo Albanians were living in a virtual state of segregation. In the elections of the 1990s in the rump Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, conceived in April 1992 as a union of Serbia and Montenegro, the Kosovo Albanian leadership adopted a boycott under the pacifist intellectual Ibrahim Rugova. At no time did the Serbian authorities or the Serbian political opposition make a serious effort to accommodate the Albanians, or bring them into the political process. In fact, Belgrade deliberately marginalized and ignored the Kosovo Albanians, and more often than not simply treated them as dangerous separatists who wanted the creation of a Great Albanian state in the Balkans. For its part, the post-communist Albanian state has generally been unconcerned with the cause of Great Albania and, in the event, has been and remains far too weak to achieve such a state. The Dayton Peace Accord of 1995, which brought an end to the Bosnian war, disillusioned many Albanians, as it failed to recognize their long-standing demand for autonomy and treated their nemesis Milosevi as a legitimate peace broker. For the Albanians of Kosovo, Dayton appeared to sanction the use of violence and to reward the ethnic cleansers.

Frustrated by the lack of Western intervention and the ineffectiveness of passive Albanian resistance under Rugova, some Kosovo Albanians turned to violence as a means of challenging Serbian rule. The first step in this direction was the creation of the 'Kosova Liberation Army' (or UCK). The UCK entered into a campaign of terrorism by assassinating Serbian officials, policemen and border guards. Harsh Serbian police and military counter-measures followed. The turning point came in March 1997, when civil government in Albania collapsed as a result of failed financial pyramid schemes. Weapon stockpiles and military barracks in Albania were plundered and many of these weapons invariably made their way to Kosovo, where the nascent UCK engaged the Serbian authorities in a full-fledged war for independence. Throughout this period, the Democratic League of Kosova of Ibrahim Rugova remained committed to a non-violent solution.

The international community responded to the crisis in 1998, through the formation of a 'Contact Group' consisting of the US, UK, Russia, France, and Germany. Most of the responsibility for the violence was placed on Milosevi and the Serbian authorities. The failure in February 1999 of the Rambouillet peace conference in France and a subsequent meeting in Paris, together with the spiralling violence in Kosovo, eventually prompted NATO intervention. The bombing was initiated on 24 March 1999 to stop ethnic cleansing and the killing of Albanians in Kosovo. Serbian forces stepped up their war with the UCK. In the most detailed study to date, Human Rights Watch has estimated that Serbian forces expelled 862,979 Albanians from Kosovo into Macedonia and Albania, and that several hundred thousand more were internally displaced; in total, more than 80 percent of the entire population of Kosovo (or 90 percent of Kosovo Albanians) was dislocated from their homes. The final death toll from the Kosovo war remains unknown and is still the focus of considerable debate. The ICTY has exhumed the bodies of more than 4,300 victims, all or most of whom are presumed to be Albanian. More than 3,500 persons remain missing, the vast majority of whom are Albanian. Many of the vacated homes in Kosovo were burned by Serbian forces. The Yugoslav authorities finally relented and on 5 June 1999, Yugoslavia and NATO signed an agreement, according to which Yugoslavia withdrew its military, police and paramilitary forces; permitted the return of all refugees; and, allowed the entry of a NATO peacekeeping mission. The agreement between NATO and Belgrade was formalized by UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which was adopted on 10 June 1999. UNSCR 1244 established the right of return of refugees and displaced persons, and the commitment of all member states to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, of which Kosovo de jure remained a part. UNSCR 1244 also called for a "political process" providing for "substantial" self-government for Kosovo while recognizing "the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia." It was recognized by all sides in 1999 that this was not a permanent solution to the Kosovo crisis. Indeed, at the Rambouillet and Paris negotiations that preceded NATO intervention, the international community had proposed a three-year timeframe for a political solution to the future status of Kosovo.

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The situation in Kosovo has stood unchanged since 1999. Over the last five years there has barely been a dialogue worthy of the name between Serbs and Albanians; both view the UN as unfit to run the province. KFOR continues to maintain about 20,000 troops in the province. While the UN Security Council pays lip service to its stated goal of a multiethnic province, it is unable to achieve this in practice. Even Jessen-Petersen remarked, upon assuming his duties in August 2004, that "there can be no stability, peace, and perspective for the ... Balkans without solving the Kosovo issue." The Danish diplomat must now try to revive the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina and provide greater clarity on Kosovo's future status, in addition to addressing lesser but nonetheless important questions such as allegations of rampant incompetence, corruption, and cronyism in UNMiK and local institutions. UNMiK continues to insist on implementation of the so-called "standards before status" policy, which laid out eight standards to be achieved by the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government before Kosovo's final status could be addressed. Those standards concerned: functioning democratic institutions; the rule of law; freedom of movement; returns and reintegration; economy; property rights; dialogue with Belgrade; and, the formation of a Kosovo Protection Corps.

The October 2004 election in Kosovo, the second since the implementation of the UN regime in the province, was supposed to accelerate the transfer of additional responsibilities to locally run institutions. Instead, the election only highlighted the need for a new policy on the part of the international community. UN officials had long argued that Serb participation in the election was essential before negotiations could begin on the province's future. The province's Serb minority boycotted the election, however. Over 100,000 Serbs who fled the province in 1998-99 cannot return, primarily out of fear for their safety. (Estimates for the number of Serbs in Kosovo vary from 70,000 to 120,000, compared to an estimated Albanian population of 1.8 million.) For their part, the Serbian premier, Vojislav Kostunica, and the Serbian Orthodox Church called on Serbs to abstain from the vote, although the Serbian president, Boris Tadi , did urge them to participate. The clear victor was Ibrahim Rugova's party, the Democratic League of Kosova, which won 47 percent of the vote and now controls 48 of the 120 seats in the Kosovo Assembly. The party of former UCK guerrilla leader, Hashim Thaci, polled at 28 percent and controls 26 seats. These two parties, like all Albanian parties in the Kosovo Assembly, support independence for the province. In early December 2004, Ramush Haradinaj, a 36 year old former UCK leader and member of the Alliance for the Future of Kosova (or AAK), and also, according to some sources, possibly a war crimes suspect of the ICTY, was appointed Prime Minister. That move incensed the Serbian authorities and is widely viewed as a setback among Western diplomats and international officials.

While the international community is reluctant to admit it, the current policy of "standards before status" in Kosovo appears to have reached an impasse. Many have begun openly to question the efficacy of several aspects of current international policy. At issue is whether Kosovo will remain part of Serbia or, as the majority Albanians insist, become independent. While the Serb boycott appears to have reinforced the deep political and ethnic divide in the province, the province's demographic makeup still makes it difficult for Serbs and Albanians to live entirely separate lives. Two-thirds of Kosovo's Serbs live in enclaves and villages dispersed across the centre and south of the province, making self-rule difficult. Only in the north do they hold the majority.

The UN would like to hand over additional powers to the new government of Kosovo. It has set aside 10 seats in the 120-member Parliament for members of Kosovo's Serb minority and another 10 for its ethnic minorities, like the Roma. The UN mission is also planning a series of projects to give the remaining Serb communities greater power. The Serb boycott and the election of Haradinaj as Prime Minister have seriously complicated those plans, however, and will undoubtedly delay any political solution to the province's status. Serbian President Boris Tadi recently warned that Kosovo "must not become independent" because that would "destabilize one part of the Balkans and Southeastern Europe on a long-term basis." But a resolution of Kosovo's status issue is essential for improving the overall political and security situation in the Balkans. The status quo increasingly satisfies no one.

The effects of the international community's current policies in Kosovo are clearly discernable in the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro. The EU is responsible for the creation of this union, has worked hard to keep it in place since 2003, and it has brought enormous pressure to bear on the Montenegrin authorities to abstain from an independence referendum. Independence for Montenegro would have obvious and potentially dire implications for the policy of the international community in Kosovo. Thus far the EU's policy toward Montenegro has succeeded, but the future of the union remains open to question. The governing coalition in Montenegro is committed to holding a referendum on independence in 2006 if a peaceful dissolution of the joint state cannot be negotiated in the meantime. There are elements in Serbia who have reached the conclusion that the joint state is dysfunctional and should be dissolved or at the very least seriously redefined.

The EU recently decided to adopt a 'two-track' approach in negotiating a Stabilization and Association Agreement with Serbia and Montenegro, as each of the two constituent republics has its own internal market and customs system. Some observers suspect that this may be the EU's first move away from its previous insistence on maintaining the joint state. That seems unlikely, however. Montenegro's secession from the joint state would in all likelihood be peaceful, but the implications of such a step for Kosovo would be ominous. Conversely, the implications of a radical redefinition of Kosovo's status, be it independence or enhanced autonomy, are obvious. It would in all likelihood sanction the break-up of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro. For that reason, the EU appears determined to try to stop the continuing dissolution of former Yugoslavia by the independence of Montenegro and Kosovo and by warning of a catastrophic regional "domino effect" if either or both become independent.

3. Kosovo and the Albanian Question in Macedonia

The Kosovo question continues to affect neighbouring Macedonia, where one quarter of the population is Albanian. Soon after the Kosovo conflict had ended in June 1999, tensions spilled over into Macedonia. The seven-month long conflict in 2001 between the Macedonian authorities and Albanian rebels, known as the 'National Liberation Army' (or UCK), took at least 80 lives and forced more than 120,000 people to flee their homes. By the standards of the Yugoslav wars, these figures are unimpressive. But that is why they are deceptive. In a relatively small country like Macedonia, with only two million people, the violence was in fact shattering.

When the Republic of Macedonia seceded in September 1991 from the Yugoslav federation, the "Macedonian Question" was reborn and again haunted Western policymakers, as it had in the late 19th century. Without the protection of Yugoslavia, however, Macedonia's security was weakened and as a response both to Bulgarian and Greek attitudes and policies, a more assertive strain of Macedonian nationalism emerged. This aggressive Macedonian nationalism masked the insecurities and weaknesses of the Macedonian elite and state, but had a significant influence on Macedonian-Albanian relations. The Preamble and the 1991 Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia proclaimed Macedonia to be "a national state of the Macedonian people." The problem is that equality of citizens is not necessarily the same as equality of national communities; the Preamble implied that the Macedonians are the primary owners of the state.

After 1991, the Macedonian leadership tried to preserve and protect the exclusive link between the Macedonian people and the Macedonian state, both from outside threats and from within the Macedonian republic, where the Albanian minority posed the greatest challenge to the consolidation of a Macedonian nation-state. Unlike Greece and Bulgaria, Albania never rejected the existence of a Macedonian nation. However, given the relatively large Albanian population, it did object to the constitutional structure of the state which made Macedonia a state of the Macedonian majority where Albanians were relegated to the status of second-class citizens. Similarly, the Albanian minority wanted the status of a constituent nation, on an equal footing with the Macedonian nation. From a Macedonian perspective, however, there continues to be widespread fear that if that happened, the Macedonian nation-state would dissolve; the territorial integrity of Macedonia is inextricably linked with the preservation of a Macedonian national identity.

In August 2001, the leaders of what were then Macedonia's four governing parties, two of which were Macedonian and two Albanian, signed the "Framework Agreement" or "Ohrid Peace Accord," for the town where it was negotiated. The Ohrid Accord ended seven months of fighting between the UCK and Macedonian security forces. The Albanian minority was granted many concessions: the majority of UCK members were pardoned in an amnesty; Albanian was to become a second official language in those administrative districts where the Albanians comprise more than 20 percent of the population; equal opportunity was to be implemented in higher education; and, equal representation in the state administration and security forces was to be applied. Many ethnic Macedonians instinctively opposed the Ohrid Accord, as they felt the Albanian minority had been rewarded for starting a civil war. Many Albanians feel the deal did not go far enough.

The last reforms to be introduced as part of the Ohrid Accord concern a series of laws designed to reorder the Macedonian local administration. The reforms will transfer additional powers to the local administrations and reduce the number of districts from 123 to 76 by 2008. In early September 2004, a Macedonian nationalist lobby group known as the World Macedonian Congress presented a petition with more than 180,000 signatures to the Macedonian Parliament calling for a referendum on the government's plans. Held on 7 November 2004, the referendum failed, as the required majority of registered voters did not participate in the vote while the Albanian minority boycotted it altogether.

The outcome of the referendum is hardly encouraging, however. Those Macedonians who voted - in all, one-quarter of all registered voters turned out to vote - did so overwhelmingly against the reforms. That indicates significant discontent with the policies of the Macedonian government, at least as they relate to the Albanian minority. It also indicates an ongoing unease with the Albanian minority. Many Macedonians continue to fear that giving in to greater Albanian demands regarding language, education and administrative autonomy will only lead to a de facto division of the country and perhaps also to attempts by the Albanians to secede.

Many Western observers and policymakers arguably have failed to comprehend the underlying reason for the Macedonians' unwillingness to grant the Albanians the status of constituent nation. Simply put, Macedonians continue to fear that if Albanian demands are met, the territorial integrity of the Macedonian state might be compromised, which in turn could have disastrous consequences for the Macedonian nation. That is why Macedonia's future is closely linked to the status of Kosovo. A decision on Kosovo's future could play out in many ways in Macedonia, none of them encouraging for regional stability. Any move in the direction of an enhanced autonomy or even independence for Kosovo, will bring to bear additional strains on the Macedonian state because the Albanian minority will undoubtedly try to gain a similar status. A partition of Kosovo between Serbs and Albanians would place similar pressures on Macedonia. Strengthening Belgrade's hand in Kosovo, an unlikely scenario to be sure, might be used by the Macedonian authorities to scale back the rights granted heretofore to the Albanian minority. The continuation of the status quo will merely perpetuate the uneasy situation in Macedonia. Regardless, Macedonia remains a fragile place and its fate seems intimately linked to that of Kosovo.

4. Kosovo and the Future of Bosnia-Herzegovina

Kosovo will also impact upon the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the only consensus among Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats appears to be that the Dayton Peace Accord of November 1995 has outlived its usefulness and must be replaced. The international community continues to insist on the integrity of the Bosnian state, as envisaged by Dayton, but a change in Kosovo's status would undoubtedly force some fundamental changes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which may in turn have a negative impact on the wider Balkan region.

The Dayton agreement unquestionably served its immediate purpose of ending the fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina. But the question remains: has the constitutional system crafted at Dayton become dysfunctional? It provided for a loose central authority over two separate 'entities,' the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Republika Srpska (RS). Additionally, the town of Br ko and its immediate environs comprise an internationally-run district. Br ko's constitutional status was so contentious that it was left unresolved at Dayton. Before the war, the Bosniak and Croat populations together had a plurality (69.77 percent) in Br ko municipality, which was seized and ethnically cleansed in the spring of 1992 by Bosnian Serb forces. In 2000, Br ko was established as an entity jointly governed by the RS and the Bosniak-Croat Federation but still under the supervision of the international community. The international community's policy on Br ko shows how delicate Dayton remains to this day: had Br ko been awarded to the Federation, the Dayton Accord might have collapsed because of Serb opposition; Br ko serves as the only link between the eastern and western halves of the RS. Conversely, awarding the district to the RS would have sparked Bosniak and Croat protest, for such a decision would have been seen as rewarding the policy of ethnic cleansing.

Throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina, political power at most levels is carefully distributed by nationality. Elected officials are still mostly drawn from the three leading prewar political parties: the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) of the Bosniak community; the Serb Democratic Party (SDS); and, the Croat Democratic Community (HDZ). At the pinnacle of this complex constitutional structure is the Office of the High Representative (OHR), currently headed by the British politician Lord Paddy Ashdown, who is the unelected representative of the international community. He possesses the authority to remove elected Bosnian officials at will, without any right of appeal. Since 1995 the authority of the OHR was backed up by a NATO peacekeeping mission, known as Stabilization Force (SFOR); in December 2004, SFOR was supplanted by the 7,000-strong EU Force (EUFOR), the EU's largest peacekeeping mission to date.

Many critics of Dayton believe that the constitutional system imposed by that agreement is no longer productive. Change seems inevitable, if not immediate, and is most likely to come from a modification of Kosovo's current status. Continuing the current regime, which ultimately rests on the OHR as the most effective mechanism for breaking the power of nationalists in all three communities, seems like a short-term solution. Doing away with the OHR, however, would undoubtedly at this point bring about the end of the Dayton system. But there is no consensus on a new constitutional order; the SDA wants a strong central government that will strengthen the hand of the Bosniak element; the HDZ prefers a Croat entity with the same status as the RS; while the SDS wants to enhance the powers of the RS. If the SDS and HDZ had their way, the Bosnian state would in all likelihood be completely undone. Indeed, a partition would likely occur on the grounds that Bosnia is unlikely ever to become a truly multiethnic society.

Such a solution might very well reward the policy of ethnic cleansing and trigger reactions elsewhere in the Balkans. Thus, tampering with Dayton could undermine regional Balkan stability. The international community is cognizant of that fact, which is why it is reluctant to alter the status quo in Kosovo. If Kosovo's status were to change, for example, if it were to become an independent entity, the Bosnian Serbs and the Belgrade authorities might legitimately ask why the RS should not become an internationally recognized independent state. The same question would apply to Montenegro and the Albanian minority in Macedonia. Constitutional and/or frontier changes in Kosovo might well have unpredictable consequences, including renewed violence, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and elsewhere.

The fact remains, however, that the main issue standing in Bosnia's path is its inability to function as a single and strong state. The international community's High Representative, Lord Ashdown, continues to hold virtually absolute power, which places him in a rather paradoxical role of occasionally having to impose international standards by fiat in the face of opposition or inaction by democratically elected Bosnian officials. His authority, and willingness to use it, has generated considerable resentment in some (especially Bosnian Serb) quarters, where it is seen as tantamount to colonial-style rule; some parallels between the current regime and the period of Austro-Hungarian occupation (1878-1908) of Bosnia-Herzegovina, are unmistakable.

Indeed, in December 2004, the Leader of the Bosnian Serb government, Dragan Mikerevi , and Bosnia-Herzegovina's Foreign Minister, Mladen Ivani , who is a Serb, both resigned to protest what they see as the High Representative's unconstitutional interference in their government's affairs. Lord Ashdown recently dismissed nine Bosnian Serb law enforcement and security officials over their failure to locate and arrest war crimes suspects. In June 2004, he fired 60 Bosnian Serb officials for failing to pursue Radovan Karad i and General Ratko Mladi , who led the Bosnian Serbs between 1992 and 1995 and have since been indicted for war crimes by the ICTY in The Hague. The underlying problem remains the differing conceptions of Bosnia-Herzegovina's constitutional order held by Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks. The international community has increasingly argued that while the Dayton Accord helped to end the war, it has only ensured the country's division along lines of nationality. Greater central powers are needed to make the country a modern, functioning state. This will not go over well with the Bosnian Serbs, who fear that the international community is trying to unite the two halves of the country completely. In a parting shot directed at Lord Ashdown, former foreign minister Ivani condemned his "efforts to try to use the UN tribunal to rearrange Bosnia-Herzegovina." Kosovo faces a similar problem. The two are closely linked in the wider Balkan jigsaw, and any attempt to redefine the constitutional and political status of one will assuredly influence the other.

5. Organized Crime and Terrorism

Organized crime remains a daunting problem in Kosovo and the Balkans, one linked very closely to security issues and terrorism. Sex trafficking and the drug trade are leading troubles. The German journalist Norbert Mappes Niediek, who has spent years researching organized crime in the Balkans, sees the problem as a fundamental part of the Balkan landscape, and largely a by-product of a decade of war in the former Yugoslavia. Throughout the 1990s, politics and organized crime were closely linked, so much so that they still remain enmeshed. Organized criminals have also been linked to terrorist groups. Although the Serbian and Macedonian authorities have repeatedly pointed to the links between the UCK and Albanian organized crime, as a way of undermining Albanian claims to greater rights in Kosovo and Macedonia, the reality is that organized criminal groups in all these societies remain far more powerful than any of these governments, including those at Belgrade and Skopje. Indeed, during the 1990s the Milosevi government maintained numerous links to the Serbian criminal underground, as a way of covertly funneling arms and funds to Serb groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. The assassination in March 2003 of the Serbian premier, Zoran Djindji , is normally interpreted as the handiwork of the Serbian criminal underground; it appeared at the time that Djindji was preparing to launch an assault on this element of Serbian society. However, one noted expert on Serbian organized crime, Marko Ni ovi , believes that Djindji 's death was the result of his association with one of the two big Belgrade mafia clans. He claims that Djindji had tried to work with some sections of the mafia, in order to fight against others. In any event, according to Ni ovi and Mappes Niediek, Djindji 's assassination exposed how deeply organized crime continues to penetrate the political establishment in Serbia. Nearly two years later it still remains unclear whether the post-Milosevi Serbian state is stronger than the criminal underground in Serbia, which continues to thrive in an environment where the state is too weak to enact serious reform. According to Ambassador Maurizio Massari, who heads the OSCE mission in Belgrade: "This original problem is not only Serbia-Montenegro; the whole western Balkans could become a black hole in the middle of Europe unless they fight against organized crime."

The domestic political authority of the Balkan states remains problematic. These states remain relatively impotent because, on the one hand, they are themselves linked to organized crime and, on the other, in the eyes of their own citizens they have little to offer and long ago lost much of their credibility. The citizenry of these states do not see state authority as an autonomous agency, the political parties continue to wield great influence over bureaucracies, and contemporary Balkan states today offer less to their citizens in the way of social security and stability than did their communist predecessors. Unemployment rates in most Balkan states continue to range from 20 to 60 percent. Such weak states can hardly be expected to prevail against organized crime or other serious threats. The international community has acknowledged as much for years. The US Department of State, in its 1998 "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report, noted that in the Balkans "poor internal security provides an environment conducive to terrorist activity." The 2001 edition of the same report noted, with regard to Albania: "Grossly insufficient border security, corruption, organized crime, and institutional weaknesses, however, combine to make Albanian territory an attractive target for exploitation by terrorist and Islamic extremist groups." This description remains apt for much of the Balkans.

Admittedly, since September 11 the US has brought tremendous pressure to bear on Balkan governments to clamp down on known and suspected Islamic terrorist groups operating in the region. In Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, NGOs and charitable organizations with links to alleged terrorist groups in the Middle East have been closed, and a number of Algerian, Jordanian, Egyptian and Afghani volunteers who fought in the Bosnian and Kosovo wars have been detained; some have even been turned over to the US authorities. The level of indigenous support for Islamic terrorist groups generally remains quite low, however. The problem of terrorism in the Balkans remains one of weak governments and organized crime, which together enable terrorist organizations to hide or move people and money.

Speaking at a November 2002 international conference on crime in the Balkans, the British Foreign Office Minister Denis MacShane remarked that "the more we do to defeat organized crime in the southeast corner of Europe, the more we . [will do to] defeat the flows of money that go to terrorism through conduits there [and] the people who come into our countries via channels and agents in that region." By disrupting organized crime, the international community's efforts against global terrorism will be significantly enhanced. An OSCE conference held at Maastricht in 2003 on threats to security and stability in the 21st century, noted that: "Threats of terrorism and organized crime are often interlinked . Cross-border movement of persons, resources and weapons, as well as trafficking for the purpose of financing and providing logistic support play an increasing role for terrorist activities." Indeed, the parties to the Stability Pact, which was formed in June 1999 on the EU's initiative, have explicitly linked regional security issues to the war on organized crime and terrorism.

The recent formation of the Regional Center for Combating Trans-Border Crime, which is a unit of the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative (SECI) in Bucharest, remains a small step in the right direction. In addition to operations aimed at interdicting narcotics and contraband smuggling, the Center has conducted three regional sweeps against traffic in human beings, mainly of young women for sexual exploitation. It is estimated that as many as 200,000 women are trafficked annually through the Balkans, thanks largely to porous borders, corrupt officials, and well-organized criminal enterprises. Linked to this problem is the fact that the Balkan Peninsula remains, next to the states of the former Soviet Union, the leading gateway for illegal immigrants from Asia to the EU.

Where does Kosovo fit into this problem? Over the last half decade, the province has become the nexus of a wider criminal network in the Balkans. To be sure, organized crime in the Balkans knows no frontiers and nationality has never served as a barrier to cooperation between these criminal undergrounds. All these criminal elements share a common thread: they thrive on politically unstable, disorganized and relatively poor regional states. Since Kosovo is the linchpin of this Balkan puzzle, whose fate will do most to affect the rest of the region, the decisions of the international community in Kosovo will determine whether the province remains a potential source of danger to the region's stability for some time to come. Clarity on Kosovo is needed before organized crime and terrorism can be dealt with effectively.

6. Conclusion

Just weeks after the September 11 disaster, a noted observer of the Balkans remarked that in a post-9/11 world, "nobody can afford the luxury of a fractious Balkans." He feared that, as the US and EU diverted their resources into the struggle against global terrorism, the Balkans might become a hotbed of terrorism. Although Misha Glenny's fears never came to pass, he was right when he wrote that "the problems they [the Balkan states] face are very real and very dangerous." Three years on, much of the region still remains "a jumble of chronically weak states and quasi-protectorates run by the international community's ill-disciplined army of acronyms - SFOR [now EUFOR], KFOR and the rest."

The main beneficiaries of this state of affairs in the Balkans are the criminal mobs, who dominate vast and sophisticated underground networks based on their trade in illegal immigrants, prostitutes, weapons, and drugs. These mafias do not recognize national boundaries, and their work is greatly assisted by the presence in the region of numerous weak states with corrupt officials and porous borders. In a region where per capita incomes are far below the European average, where between 20 and 60 percent of the population is unemployed, and where corruption is a considerable problem, relatively small sums of money can buy almost anything, from forged identity papers, to weapons, to human lives. Since the underground economy, dominated by well-organized criminal elements, forms such an important cornerstone of society, dubious characters of all stripes continue to be drawn to the region. It is relatively easy for organized criminals and even terrorist groups to hide in this quagmire. Given the proximity to Western Europe, the Balkans remains an appealing place.

In June 1999, at the end of the Kosovo conflict, the international community determined that a major effort was needed to bring long-term stability to the Balkans. An EU proposal was accepted to establish a 'Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe,' intended to catalyze change, act as a mechanism to coordinate donor programs, and promote integration into European structures. The Stability Pact, which now includes forty countries and institutions, is "the first serious attempt by the international community to replace the previous, reactive crisis intervention policy in South Eastern Europe with a comprehensive, long-term conflict prevention strategy." It was supposed to serve as a forum for political dialogue and the resolution of regional security issues, and as a framework for guiding the region's states into the European political mainstream. To that end, it was tasked with three separate areas of endeavour: Democratization and Human Rights; Economic Reconstruction, Cooperation and Development; and, Security Issues, among which it counted the fight against organized crime and terrorism. In March 2000, a Pact Regional Funding Conference was held in Brussels which pledged over $9 billion, mostly for infrastructure projects in the region. (At the same conference, Canada pledged $144 million and since then has worked on a number of specific projects aimed at fostering regional cooperation.)

Although the Balkan Peninsula is no longer a primary consideration of US, Canadian or even EU foreign policy, it simply cannot be ignored. It can still cause problems in the trans-Atlantic relationship, as witnessed by the November 2004 decision of Washington to recognize Macedonia under its current name, and the outcry of protest in Greece, an EU and NATO member. The region is certainly not without its strategic importance, especially as Turkey increasingly moves towards EU integration; geography will dictate that the Balkans serve as the EU's gateway to Turkey and the Middle East. The US, Canada and the EU need to adopt a policy in the region that will contribute to long-term political and economic stability and that will underwrite regional security and prosperity. The Stability Pact is a step in that direction. For their part, Balkan governments and politicians need to make a more concerted effort at reform, which has lagged seriously for the better part of the last decade. The Balkans still has a long way to go to achieve security.

Peace in the former Yugoslavia has not brought stability or regional security to the Balkans. Achieving lasting reform in the Balkans will require the stabilization of the region and a hastening of its integration with EU institutions. In order for this to happen, the question of Kosovo will in all likelihood have to be addressed in one form or another. Western policymakers face a number of daunting policy options. One possibility is to maintain the status quo, until such time as more moderate forces emerge to negotiate a solution. However, this policy rests on the potentially flawed assumption that more moderate forces will eventually emerge and be able to sell a compromise solution to their constituencies. In the event, the policy has not yielded the expected results in Bosnia-Herzegovina a decade after the cessation of hostilities. Moreover, this policy does little in the short term to strengthen the region's chronically weak states, which are in fact a significant part of the problem, or to give the peoples of the region any cause to hope for a better future. In fact, Søren Jessen-Petersen, the head of the UN's civilian administration in Kosovo, told the BBC in December 2004 that one of the lessons of the violent March 2004 riots in Kosovo is that "you cannot keep Kosovo as a holding operation forever." Indeed, the UN's special envoy to Kosovo, Ambassador Kai Eide, concluded recently that a primary cause of the recent violence in Kosovo was the growing frustration among the Albanian majority over prolonged colonial-style rule and a lack of perspective for the province's future. In the fall of 2003, the former American diplomat responsible for helping to negotiate the Dayton Peace Accord, Richard C. Holbrooke, and the French politician and first UN administrator in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, wrote that "as long as its [Kosovo's] final status is left undetermined, the international community, represented by NATO for security and the UN as civilian administrators, seems stuck." They urged the international community to give Kosovo's people "control over their own internal affairs," for it is the failure to resolve the status question "that keeps the troops and the UN tied down."

Another possibility, one that Holbrooke and Kouchner raised implicitly in their article, is to consider a major redefinition of Kosovo's status. However, such a policy would have to take into consideration a series of concomitant and potentially violent consequences affecting the entire western half of the Balkans, from Serbia-Montenegro to Bosnia-Herzegovina. A third possibility is a partition of Kosovo, which is occasionally heard in some Serb circles as the only means of ensuring that the Serbs retain control of at least part of the province. This option would acknowledge the failure of both the international community and local leaders to resolve the problem and the inability of Kosovo to survive as a multiethnic society. As such, partition would be regarded by many as a political and moral failure and would likely have dire consequences for Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Yet another option is to make Kosovo an EU protectorate, with associate status. This option is politically unpopular in most EU countries, and therefore seems unlikely to happen, but it might hold out the promise of EU integration, something to which all Balkan nationalists aspire. After all, the history of EU expansion over the last quarter century shows that it has been driven as much by considerations of politics, in the case of Greece, Spain and Portugal, as by economic principles. One thing is certain: were the EU to close its doors for the foreseeable future to the Balkans, the political and security situation would remain bleak and probably deteriorate. If that were to happen, then the Balkans might become within Europe what Latin America has long been within the Americas, namely, a zone of political instability, economic marginality, and endemic crime.

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