Phased Self-Determination: A Way Out for Kosovo?

While the world’s sole surviving superpower remains fixed on global terrorism, civilizational clashes, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, another complex challenge is playing itself out in the Balkans, but passing largely unnoticed. This is the question of the final status of the Serbian province of Kosovo, with its predominant Muslim Albanian population — the last remaining problem from the genocidal dissolution of former Yugoslavia during the 1990s.

The lines have been drawn between the Kosovar Albanian position of (a) full independence versus Kosovar Serbs’/ Belgrade’s position of (b) “substantial autonomy.” Former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Kosovo, has responded to this complex issue by recommending what amounts to “phased independence” under European Union (EU) auspices as the only viable way out for the Kosovo problem. However, this is perceived by many, including some in the EU as well as Serbs, as a zero-sum gain for the Albanians and loss for the Serbs.

That at least some Serbs might respond with violence to even a “phased independent Kosovo” has been suggested by the recent formation of a nucleus of a Serb paramilitary unit under the banner of Knez Lazar, the 14th century Serb leader defeated on the battlefield of Kosovo by the Ottoman Turks.

Although members of this group have recently been arrested by Serb authorities, Kosovo remains for many Serbs a potent, vital component of their identity. On the other hand, if the dominant Albanian population of Kosovo does not receive even “phased” independence, then they are likely to unilaterally declare their independence or otherwise be the source of renewed hostilities in the Balkans, with potential for spillover to Bosnia- Herzegovina and elsewhere in the region (e.g., Macedonia which has a sizeable Albanian minority). Is there not a way out here for Kosovo and the region or are we stuck with a failure of imagination and another likely descent into ethnopolitical warfare?

Let’s suppose that we — the “concerned international community” — were to conduct an “experiment” and map the trajectories of implementing both of these strategies. In the shorter term (10-15 years), both trajectories look similar. It is only in the 15-25 year time frame for effective post-conflict peacebuilding that the trajectories diverge into “full independence” or “substantial autonomy.” Suppose then that a reframing of Ahtisaari’s plan as “phased self-determination” captures the overlap of these shorter term trajectories.

If that were, indeed, the case, then we could implement the phased self-determination reframing of the Ahtisaari plan, in lieu of either of the two original positions, for 10-15 years. This would buy time for effective post-conflict peacebuilding and for Kosovo to have been absorbed into the European Union where it might not matter too much who “owns” it — especially if all Kosovars had access to the security and recognition of their identities and in general, to the “good life” traditionally experienced in “virulently ethnocentric systems” only by dominant majorities at the expense of marginalized, often oppressed minorities. This reframing of Ahtisaari’s proposal does not dismiss, but rather builds upon it to render the process culminating in Kosovo’s final status as less likely to lead to a resumption of genocidal conflict in the Balkans.

It is also compatible with French President Sarkozy’s recent attempt to persuade his G8 counterparts at their annual summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, to delay for six months the UN Security Council vote on Kosovo’s final status in order to provide more time for further negotiations. Significantly, this is what the Russians (Serbia’s primary ally) want in order to preempt their threatened veto should the vote come up, in their view, prematurely.

That the EU has recently decided to restart negotiations with Serbia’s new pro-reform government about its eventual entry into the EU, a year after the EU ceased such negotiations because of Serbia’s apparent resistance in locating and handing over to The Hague.

Tribunal indicted war criminals, is a further sign that such a reframing could actually succeed! With both Kosovo and Serbia in the EU, “ownership” of the province should become a moot point.

But should ownership remain an issue, Serbia could then be allowed to retain dejure sovereignty over Kosovo while the dominant Albanian population enjoys defacto sovereignty by “leasing” the province from Belgrade, with funding provided by the international business community which would benefit from stability in the region. This would be accompanied by the Ahtisaari plan’s guarantees for protection of the human rights of Serbs and other minorities in the province, plus the promise of Kosovo’s eventual entry into the European Union along with Serbia and other states of the Western Balkans.

This reframing would be far more likely to succeed than the Athisaari plan as currently formulated — the difference being between “phased independence” for the province (which sets off alarm bells in Belgrade and Moscow) and “phased self-determination for all in the province (which remains sufficiently vague but hopeful enough to merit further attention).

Accordingly, further details would have to be worked out on just what the exact differences are between “phased self-determination” (this reframing of the Ahtisaari plan) and “phased independence” (the Ahtisaari plan), in responding to the need for bold thinking and action on the Kosovo issue as a basis for enduring peace, security, and stability in the Balkans, with implications for similar conflicts elsewhere.