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.
 

 

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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The 2013 Brussels Agreement and the Implementation Plan

As noted in Wikipedia, the Brussels Agreement was made between the governments of Serbia and Kosovo on the normalization of their relations. It was negotiated and concluded, although not signed by either party, in Brussels under the auspices of the European Union. The negotiations were led by Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dačić and Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi, and mediated by EU High Representative Catherine Ashton. The agreement was concluded on 19 April 2013.

Actually there does seem to have been an Implementation Plan initialed by the two leaders.  (I think it's them, but see for yourself below).  And relations have not be fully normalized until now and the plan never implemented.

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?

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