Kosovo: November 2, 2007 Meeting of the Task Force on the Mitrovica Area

In April 2007, the EU began to ready for assuming its role in a "post-independent" Kosovo and sent its EU Planning Team (EUPT) to begin coordinating with UNMIK on its plans to take our place.  In UNMIK Mitrovica's first meetings with the EUPT in Pristina, it was clear that the the EU people believed they were the knights on white horses sent to clean up the mess left by the UN.  They were not much interested in our views and wanted from us only what was necessary to leave the stage for them.  Things didn't work out that way and as of February 2019, both UNMIK and the EU are still there.  Indeed, it was only years later that the EU was allowed to place staff (other than police) in the north.  Here follows the minutes of the first meeting of the Mitrovica Task Force formed to start planning for the establishment of the EU''s International Civilian Office (ICO) that they saw becoming the new boss in Mitrovica.  They proved to be clueless.  (Two more meetings were held and those minutes will follow.)

November 2, 2006

Minutes of the Task Force on the Mitrovica Area meeting

Participants: Gallucci, Efimov (both UNMIK), Daca (OSCE), Carver, Stadler (both ICO PT), Zuccarini (EUPT), Guehenneux, Bruno (KFOR)

Ad 2) The Task Force (TF) agreed on its main goals: to identify and analyze key issues in the region that needed international attention regarding the transition and status periods, and to present policy-makers with options (“TO DO” list) for addressing those issues, namely in 3 areas: 1. list of potential breaches of the status settlement (i. e. parallel structures), 2. list of priorities of implementation of the settlement in the North and 3. tool-box to enforce the implementation (sticks and carrots).

Ad 3) The TF identified and reviewed advantages and disadvantages to locating the International Civilian Office - Mitrovica (ICOM) on either side of the Ibar. Several participants noted the need for access and the value of exposing the two major ethnic groups to each other, which could be more easily achieved by an office in southern Mitrovica. Some participants voiced concern that locating an office in northern Mitrovica could be interpreted as endorsing a partition of Kosovo. Others thought that an office in the northern part sends more proper political message, since the ICOM’s target population would mostly be K/S. The TF agreed that it is difficult to judge the physical security advantages of either location without knowing what the security environment will be under status. It was noted that good coordination with EUPT will be needed when deciding on the physical location of ICOM to plan and deploy ESDP component accordingly.

Ad 4) The TF reviewed possible numbers of ICOM staff members and discussed the option of maintaining ICO personnel in each of the northern municipalities. TF members observed that such a presence could provide the ICO more and better opportunities to intervene in status implementation issues; besides it would actually offer direct help and guidance to K/S locally. Such an ICO presence could also reassure Albanian minorities in those municipalities as well as demonstrate that the ICO would not allow partition of the north from the rest of Kosovo. TF agreed that ICOM would be the only communication link between Pristina and the North. Some participants noted the double standard of maintaining a presence in the northern municipalities while not doing so in the southern ones. The majority of participants supported the option of co-locating one ICO advisor in the OSCE field office in each of the municipalities at least part of every work day with the ICO branch office located in northern Mitrovica.

Ad 5) The TF identified several issues for possible review in future meetings (ranking below does not necessarily correspond to accurate prioritizing):

- property: linked to returns (particularly of K/A to the North), including social housing and rental schemes;

- privatization, with the core case of Trepca, linked to pensions;

- economic decentralization with infrastructure and utilities (electricity, water, phone lines, media transmission);

- economic development and job creation;

- freedom of movement (returns and security issues); transportation; travel documents and licence plates;

- security and the rule of law mission (core case of the Bridge);

- financial transactions and money flows; currency;

- modalities of implementation of the new decentralization: replacing the UAM;

- the university and the hospital: any new arrangements;

- the parallel courts and police;

- future of the KPC (in the North);

- facilitation of inter-ethnic contacts and cooperation;

- public communication strategy and access to the media.

Ad 6) The TF agreed to meet Thursday, November 9, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., in the ICO PT offices in Pristina to discuss security issues.

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:

Fears of a Kosovo Partition (July 2006)

By mid-2006, Western concern over the unstable Kosovo situation had come to take the form of UNMIK Pristina worrying over a possible move by the northern Kosovo Serbs to implement a "hard" partition of the north to preempt an expected unilateral move by the Kosovo Albanians south of the Ibar to declare independence from Serbia.  (In the event, the northern K-Serbs never did seek partition -- though they hoped, and still hope, that Belgrade would thus save them -- while the K-Albanians did take the first move by declaring independence in February 2008.)  UNMIK's HQ stood in the middle of the K-Albanian capital of Kosovo -- Pristina -- and was under the direct influence of the Western countries (and especially the US and UK) which fully supported the K-Albanian position.  (At the US Office's July 4th celebration that year, the head of the office publicly called the northerners that UNMIK Mitrovica worked with "troublemakers.)  Under those influences -- channeled by the Office of Political Affairs (OPA) -- the UNMIK leadership grew quite paranoid about a northern partition.  OPA prepared a strategy paper outlining how UNMIK might work to prevent it.  OPA drafted a Code Cable in July to be sent to New York to cover the paper.  I don't remember UNMIK Mitrovica being given the chance to be involved in the preparation.  However, the PDSRSG was not unaware of the realities of the north so the OPA paper had to recognize that UNMIK had little to work with beyond continued diplomacy and peacekeeping.  In the event, in late July, he and I had the opportunity in Vienna to brief senior Western officials and Martti Ahtisaari (the UNSG's Special Envoy for Kosovo negotiations, UNOSEK) on the north.  It became clear that the Western dictum against partition was little more than words.  The draft code cable follows.  (I'm not sure it was sent.)  The full draft strategy paper is too long to provide here.

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