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.
 

 

May 2007 Vienna Meeting on Kosovo

Went to Vienna at the end of May, 2007 to take part in a meeting of UNMIK & KFOR (NATO in Kosovo) top command with the person designated to be chief of the International Community Office (ICO) mission formed by the US and EU and meant to replace UNMIK after the UN leaves.  (Note:  The UN is still there.). Subject, northern Kosovo.  UNMIK North had spent some months trying to educate the EU on the need for a gradual approach and fending off their efforts to get us to do some difficult "chores" -- like dealing with the local Serb's using dinars and Serbian license plates -- before we hand over to them.  I met Pieter Fieth, who would be the head man, when he visited Khartoum as EU envoy for Darfur.  He said he remembered me well.  But I also heard that he did not like Americans.  In any case, once he took over, and with the help of NATO, he proved to believe the best way to "tame" the north was to use force.  (See:  http://www.transconflict.com/2011/11/kosovo-quint-brinksmanship-241/,  http://www.transconflict.com/2011/09/kosovo-nato-actions-illegal-illogical-and-immoral-309/  and related pieces at http://www.transconflict.com/author/gerard-gallucci/.
Here follows the text of the agenda for the Vienna meeting with my annotations for my use as talking points:

Brainstorming on the north of Kosovo

Date: 31 May

Location: Vienna

Participants:

EU

- Pieter Feith, Yves de Kermabon

- Stefan Lehne, Pedro Serrano

- Torbjorn Sohlstrom, Casper Klynge

UN

- Joachim Ruecker

NATO

- Pardew, Naples, COMKFOR

US

- Fletcher Burton

Agenda

1) Preventing hard partition (lead UNMIK+KFOR)

Questions to answer:

• Are all partners fully prepared for all possible scenarios? Basic issue: If northerners try to hard partition (e.g., by crossing UNMIK’s three red lines not simply through rhetoric), choice is to counter it through diplomacy and political work or to assume IC military/administrative control of the north. In the latter case it becomes how many troops and police, readiness to counter/arrest/shoot those who resist and appropriate human and financial resources to administer the north for whatever period of time it takes to find locals and local resources to do it.
• What actions might be necessary during the transition period? How can we ensure full IC support?
• Belgrade handling?
• UNMIK actions to prepare for status implementation, e.g. establishment of new municipality of N. Mitrovica. Underway but need direct and practical support of EU and US to focus UNMIK.

2) Integrating the north over time (lead ICR+ESDP+IMP).

Questions to answer:

• Which measures are needed to integrate the north/parallel structures? Patient diplomacy and political work with local and central officials plus the resources to offer practical cooperation with IC and between communities and to replace over time resources supplied by Belgrade.
• How should these measures be paced and timed?
• Which positive, reassuring, or face-saving measures can be used to accompany ‘hard’ measures? How in the world will you do any “hard” measures without using force? And what will “face saving” look like after taking away ‘their country” and using force to make them submit to the Albanians (which is how they will see it). This strikes me as dangerous thinking because based more on a conception of how things should go rather than an understanding of reality.)
• When and how should the ICR announce the ‘red lines’ for the north? Should there be a clear signal of strength at the start? I think you “signal strength” quietly through presence. Much more useful will be clear signal of understanding and readiness to work with all communities on practical cooperation. The essential redline to signal directly and quietly – within context of assurances of continued cooperation – is that if local Serb officials refuse to engage with ICO at working level, IC will have no alternative but to consider assuming direct control.
• How does the ICR ensure international support for his plan and for measures to be taken?
• Which measures need to be taken vis-à-vis Belgrade, and by whom?
• How does the ICR deal with a full boycott by the north? Having made clear the above redline, a little patience during the “testing” phase of a “boycott” to see how serious they are or if it is just for form sake and how much and quickly it will “leak.”
• Agreed end states after 6 or 12 months?
• How to use the regional EU perspective?
• How to involve donors at an early stage? With money for QIPs on both sides of River and some infrastructure/job creation activity using private sector.

Intelligence: how do we make sure that ICR and ESDP HoM have good intel? Best way is people on the ground in each municipality – including internationals – with locals who will need to be carefully “milked” by their international colleagues.

PR: benefits (and limits) of an information campaign?

_________

A Map for a New North Mitovica municipality in 2006

I prepared this map in 2006 for Martti Ahtisaari, the UNSG Special Envoy for the negotiations over Kosovo status between Belgrade and Pristina.  I was serving as the UNMIK Regional Representative for Mitrovica (and northern Kosovo).  I had met Ahtisaari some 20 years previously while working on Angola.  We met in June in UNMIK HQ in Pristina and had other meetings during the summer.  One of his staff asked me to prepare the map which I delivered to Ahtisaari's team before the year's end.  It was supposed to balance the ethnic realities by giving the K-Albanian South Mitrovica a bit of the north while dividing the territory in a way acceptable to the majority K-Serbs in the north.  It was predicated on an eventual agreement in the UN Security Council on the status of Kosovo, some acceptable form of autonomy or "independence."  Despite Ahtisaari's best efforts, the US and Russia could not agree.  Pristina declared independence unilaterally in February 2008.  Ahtisaari later became President of Finland.

The light red line was the existing border of Mitrovica (which spanned the Ibar River).  The darker red line would have been the new border with the Serb majority North Mitrovica to the east and a mixture of Albanian and Serb villages as part of South Mitrovica to the west.  The area north of the Ibar were other Serb-majority municipalities