Kosovo: Answering Some Questions in 2010

After I left Kosovo in 2008 (and East Timor in 2010), I continued to follow events there and to respond to questions and comment.  The three items below are the responses to questions from someone doing a masters thesis and from the European Voice plus a lette to the European Voice.  (I believe the European Voice is now defunt.) If the last item was ever published, I don't have it. (Btw, you can click on these documents to read them in full original and download them.)

 

Kosovo: March 2007 -- property Issues in Bosniak Mahalla

On March 16, 2007, I had to call upon our police to stop illegal construction by a local Serb in Bosniak Mahalla,  I don't remember the details but  the person involved must have been trying to build a large dwelling in a mixed area which the local Albanians and/or others found threatening as well as illegal.  (Legality was not a leading motif in the Mahalla.) Below is the complaint from the CCK (I don't speak Serbian and cannot remember what it said) and my reply.

On March 28, I sent this report to HQ:  

Re following Police report of last night:
"On Tuesday 27th of March 2007 at approx. 19.45 hrs, an Unidentified Explosive Device exploded at the junction of "Oslobodena Str.' and "Nemanjina Str." in Little Bosnia - Mitrovica North.

Consequences: 03 individual cars slightly damages by parts of the explosive device. No people injured. "

This was apparently a "black grenade" (i.e., a fairly small device) and may have been thrown by a disgruntled young Albanian who had previously in the evening had a altercation with civpol on north side of Bridge. He reportedly threatened the police with further action. Police are still investigating but everyone at the scene -- Albanians and Serbs -- remained calm and apparently already attributed the attack to this "crazy Albanian" and not to inter-ethnic tensions. Nevertheless, police (including UNMIK-P) increased patrols in other mixed areas of north Mitrovica. UNMIK also informed CCK and Mitrovica CEO to assure that things were under control. We also drank tea with mixed group of locals at a small cafe at the scene. Everyone there was calm, including one of the damaged car owners.

Comment: The north shore and especially Bosniak Mahalla remains tense but there have been no more indications of conflict over ongoing construction. However, it is vital that UNMIK-P Enhancement Force be kept at full strength (at least 130) over the next months. We are in deep trouble if we lose control during any reaction to almost certain continued acts of isolated violence.

I should add that while I was drinking tea and smoking a cigar the owner gave me -- everyone was quite uncomfortable with my not smoking -- I heard the men joking in a mix of Serbian and Albanian.  Not many places this happens in public in Kosovo.  I joined in with the little common language we had and we all laughed in agreement that Kosovo is a crazy place and Bosniak Mahalla the craziest of all.  When I got home and was reading in bed, I heard a prolonged burst of automatic weapon fire plus the firing of a pistol.  Jumped out of bed and opened by door to the balcony.  Scared a poor fellow across the street taking a piss.  But I guess it was nothing.  Took my heart a little time to slow down enough to permit sleep. 

Kosovo: An UNMIK Police Report on the March 17, 2008 Coutrthouse Debacle

The document below is an UNMIK Police report prepared on the events leading up to and on the day of March 17, 2008.  It should be read in conjunction with the prior piece.  I was kept in the dark about UNMIK HQ's planning for re-taking the Court.  Suspecting something was afoot, I pressed for confirmation and was finally given a briefing the night before the action by the UNMIK Police Regional Command in Mitrovica. They had by then been superseded by UNMIK HQ.  They joked that the entire plan was simply to go and arrest Serb thugs.  Indeed, UNMIK HQ had disregarded our warnings about the likely violence that would surround any use of force against the Courthouse and UNMIK Police (and KFOR) was woefully unprepared for events that day.  I later learned that the initial seizure of the Court appeared to have been allowed by UNMIK police sent by Pristina HQ to guard the building.  I believe that the UNMIK Pristine leadership provoked the entire sad episode.  None of this is reflected in the police report which apparently made it into my hands on May 5, 2008.

 

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.