Kosovo: The March 17, 2008 Coutrthouse Debacle

Despite our warning to UNMIK HQ Pristina  (acting according to guidance from the US) and to UN DPKO New York (unwilling to "second guess" the clueless leaders of UNMIK), UNMIK launched an action on March 17, 2008 to retake the courthouse in north Mitrovica.  Here follows my email the following day sent to everyone in UNMIK and DPKO I could think of to make clear the damage done to our peacekeeping efforts in the north and along the Ibar and to forestall further ill-considered actions.  

Balkanalysis.com has my fuller account of the background events leading up to what happened that day.

 

2011: Kosovo: Time for a New Approach

I left Kosovo in October 2008 with some encouragement from the UNMIK leadership and DPKO.  (I transferred to UNMIT in East Timor as chief of staff.)  But I continued to follow events in Kosovo, contributing pieces to TransConflict, and had visited northern Kosovo in June, 2011.  I can't quite remember how the invitation came up to testify in November to the US Congress on Kosovo but I did.  Here follows the text of my comments to the Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia, Committee on Foreign Affairs, US House of Representative.  (Note:  The Quint refers to the Contact Group on Kosovo -- the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Russia -- without Russia, which opposed Kosovo independence.  EULEX is the EU's rule of law entity in Kosovo and its police.)

(Note:  All documents posted in this space can be and enlarged and downloaded by clicking on them.)



 

Kosovo 2007: Understanding the North

Following up the previous entry, from my journal for November 27, 2007.:


Had to go to Pristina today for lunch with the chief DPKO guy for Europe, who encouraged me to keep doing what we are doing and to let them know when UNMIK HQ strays into anything that will upset the apple cart in the north. They liked my dissent messages and share our view that the basic thing is to get the UN out of here before the real crisis hits. That means before Kosovo becomes a failed state and the north fully partitions. The UN New York plan is to somehow squeeze between competing pressures from the West and Russia to leave five months after the UDI expected in the 2nd half of January, turning things essentially over to the EU, before it fully understands what it will be getting. I suggested we won't be able to last five months.


The second code cable I drafted follows here:

Kosovo 2007: UNMIK HQ Gets the North wrong

From my 2007 journal:

October 23:  Today was a difficult day.  Went down to Pristina early to meet the DPKO Assistant Secretary General and brief him on the way up for meeting in Mitrovica.  I think the briefing -- which I used to broach the perceptions of reality from up here and how they differ from UNHQ Pristina -- and the meetings -- in which he could see and feel the intractable situation we face -- went well.  But I have been blindsided before by a polite hearing that hid an already established agenda.  Yesterday I saw a "code cable" to New York that was blatantly misleading about Serb "parallel institutions.  I had the ASG meet with my whole senior staff so he could hear from them.  He encouraged me to put our views down on paper through a cable to NY.  I already keep a number of NY people on my email list.  He is inviting me to help correct the picture before a Nov 6 meeting to be chaired by the Secretary General.  All and all, I'd say we are reaching some internal "cleansing of the spears."  

November 5: ... Had an inconclusive meeting with the SRSG this afternoon.  He is clueless but not absolutely stupid.  He understands that I cannot be run down or over but still doesn't know what to do with me and still doesn't understand the depth of the lake of shit all around us and what we need to do to keep from having it flood the little Potemkin village we live in.

I drafted two code cables per the ASG's suggestion, the first follows below the second will be in the next post.  Both were sent.