Kosovo: the Politics of Delusion

201 Pages·2001·9.153 MB·English

by  Michael Waller, Kyril Drezov, Bulent Gokay

Kosovo:
The Politics of Delusion
There really was, it seemed, a nation on this earth prepared to fight
for the freedom of other men, and to fight at her own expense, and at
the cost of hardship and peril to herself; a nation prepared to do this
service not just for her near neighbours, for those in her part of the
world, for lands geographically connected with her own, but even
prepared to cross the sea in order to prevent the establishment of an
unjust dominion in any quarter of the globe, and to ensure that right
and justice, and the rule oflaw, should everywhere be supreme.
Livy (Titus Livius, 59Bc-AD17), The History of Rome from its
Foundation, XXXIII-33 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976),
p. 127 - on the reaction of the Greeks to the Roman victory
over their former Macedonian overlords.
'If men were all virtuous', returned the artist, 'J should with great
alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be the security of the
good, if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against
an army sailing through the clouds, neither walls, nor mountains, nor
seas, could afford any security. A flight of northern savages might hover
in the wind, and light at once with irresistible force upon the capital
of a fruitful region that was rolling under them.'
Doctor Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia,
first published in 1759 (Shorter Novels, Eighteenth Century,
Everyman, 1930, p. 14).
Kosovo:
The Politics of Delusion
Edited by
MICHAEL WALLER, KYRIL DREZOV
.. ..
BULENT GOKAY
and
~ ~~o~~~~n~s~~up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published in 2001 by
FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS
This edition published 2013 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OXI4 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an iriforma business
Copyright of collection © 2001 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd
Copyright of chapters © 2001 contributors
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Kosovo: the politics of delusion
1. Operation Allied Force, 1999 - Evaluation 2. Security,
International 3. Intervention (International law) 4. Kosovo
(Serbia) - History - Civil War, 1998- 5. Kosovo (Serbia)
Politics and government - 1980- 6. Yugoslavia - Foreign
relations - 1992-
I. Waller, Michael, 1934- II. Drezov, Kyril III. Gokay, Bulent
949.7'1'03
ISBN 978-0-7146-5157-6 (hbk)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kosovo / edited by Michael Waller, Kyril Drezov, and Bulent Gokay.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7146-5157-5 (hbk)
1. Kosovo (Serbia)-History-Civil War, 1998- 2. North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
I. Waller, Michael, 1934- II. Drezov, Kyril. III. Gokay, Bulent.
DR2087 .K664 2001
949.7103-dc21
2001017197
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced
into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher
of this book.
Typeset in 10.5/12 pt Baskerville by Vitaset, Paddock Wood, Kent.
Contents
Introduction Vll
PART I
1. Kosovo/Kosova: A Land of Conflicting Myths 3
Aleksandar Pavkovic
2. Albanian Schooling in Kosovo 1992-1998: 11
'Liberty Imprisoned'
Denisa Kostovicova
3. The Growing Pains of the Kosovo Liberation Army 20
Tim Judah
4. The Kosovo Liberation Army: The Myth of Origin 25
James Pettifer
5. Tirana's Uneasy Role in the Kosovo Crisis, 1998-1999 30
Miranda Vickers
6. Kosovar Refugees in Albania: The Emergency Response 37
Alba Bozo
7. 'Come,friendly bombs .. .': International Law in Kosovo 43
Patrick Thornberry
8. Collateral Damage: The Impact on Macedonia of the 59
Kosovo War
Kyril Drezov
9. 'Kosovized' Bosnia 71
Zoran Cirjakovic
PART II
10. Bombing Yugoslavia: It Is Simply the Wrong Thing to Do 79
Kyril Drezov and Biilent Ceikay
11. Should NATO Bomb Serbia? 83
Christopher Brewin
12. Looking Neither Forward Nor Back: NATO's Balkan 90
Adventure
Andrew Fear
13. Gardening 95
Alex Danchev
14. Rational Means to Useful Ends 98
Michael Waller
15. Kosovo: Why Intervention was Right 104
Matthew Wyman
16. So Much Expended for So Little Good III
John Sloboda
17. Lessons of Kosovo 120
Martin Dent
18. The Limitations of Violent Intervention 131
Sofia Damm
19. The Natural Environment and the Balkan Conflict 138
Andrew Dobson
Conclusions 142
DOCUMENTS
The Rambouillet Text, February 1999 (Appendix B: Status 157
of the Multi-national Military Implementation Force)
Press Statement by Dr Javier Solana, Secretary-General of 162
NATO, 23 March 1999
UN Security Council Resolution 1244, 10 June 1999 164
Annex 1 (G-8 Statement, 6 May 1999) 168
Annex 2 (Milosevic-Chernomyrdin-Ahtisaari Agreement, 169
3 June 1999)
Chronology of Events 172
Maps 178
Notes on Contributors 181
Index 184
Introduction
On the night of24 March 1999, NATO forces started their air offensive
against Yugoslavia. The bombing of Yugoslavia continued until 10 June
-lasting 79 days, with 1,200 aircraft dropping around 20,000 bombs
and hundreds of missiles from a height of 15,000 feet. According to
NATO estimates made during the campaign, around 5,000 members
of the Yugoslav armed forces were killed and hundreds of their tanks
and heavy guns were destroyed in Kosovo; in the meantime about 1.4
million Kosovo Albanians were forced from their homes - 500,000
were allegedly displaced inside Kosovo, and 850,000 fled to the neigh
bouring countries; 100,000 Albanian men were reported missing,
presumably killed by the Serbs. The picture that emerged after the end
of the bombing looked somewhat different: in Kosovo NATO's bomb
ing had destroyed 13 tanks and killed about 400 Serbian soldiers
(an equal number had been killed by the Kosovo Liberation Army),
throughout Yugoslavia anywhere between 500 and 1,400 civilians
were killed by NATO bombs - a 'collateral damage' that could be three
times higher than the Serbian military casualties; some 2,000 Kosovo
Albanians - both KLA fighters and civilians - were killed by Serbian
forces after the beginning of the air campaign. NATO's takeover of
Kosovo in mid-June changed the refugee statistics as well: half of the
850,000 refugees outside the province returned to Kosovo by the end
ofJ une, the expected half a million internally displaced Albanians did
not materialize, and about 100,000 Serbian refugees (half of the local
Serbian population) fled or were evicted from Kosovo.
Why did Kosovo become the focal point of NATO's undeclared
war against Yugoslavia? The American-inspired 'international com
munity', with NATO as its military arm, is the next in a long succession
of outside powers - the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the
Habsburg Empire, the Soviet empire - to impose order on the Balkans.
In 1995 NATO acquired its first Balkan protectorate in Bosnia, follow
ing a clash with Slobodan Milosevic and the forces of Serbian national
ism under his control. Routine human rights violations, escalating
violence, irreconcilable claims and danger of a spill-over into neigh
bouring states, made Kosovo the natural candidate for another NATO
involvement in the Balkans.
Vlll Kosovo: The Politics of Delusion
For centuries Serbs and Albanians have inhabited Kosovo, and from
the nineteenth century it became the centre of competing claims and
ethnic strife. For the Serbs, Kosovo is the heartland of the medieval
Serbian kingdom where many of the important monuments of the
Serbian Orthodox Church are situated. And for the Albanians, Kosovo
is the cradle of their struggle for independence, the place where the
Prizren League was founded in 1878.
Over the centuries administrative power in Kosovo changed hands
many times between Serbs and Albanians, Christians and Muslims.
Domination of one ethnic group over another emerged as a defining
feature of Serb-Albanian relations in Kosovo, whether during the
Ottoman period, the world wars or under communism.
Under Tito and his successors Kosovo was the poorest and most
volatile part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The period
of Serbian control and repression under security police chief Aleksandar
Rankovic (1945-66), was followed by a period of Albanian domination
(1967-89). According to the 1974 constitution Kosovo enjoyed a quasi
republican status within Yugoslavia, although it remained formally an
autonomous province of Serbia. Albanian demonstrations for full
republican status within Yugoslavia were suppressed by federal troops
in 1981, and relations between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo took a
turn for the worse. In the late 1980s the Serbian leadership under
Milosevic discarded the rhetoric of communism and embraced the
hitherto dissident ideas of Serbian nationalism - in particular the
call for the restoration of full Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo. In this
way the Serbian communists managed to keep power and prevented
the emergence of genuine opposition to their rule. Kosovo was just a
pawn in this power game. The Serbs had already lost effective control
of Kosovo due to the demographic preponderance of the Kosovo
Albanians. However, the adoption of the traditional Serb obsession
with Kosovo as MiloseviC's official policy implied that Kosovo should
be kept at all costs. In 1989 the autonomy enshrined in the 1974 consti
tution was severely curtailed, and full Serbian control over Kosovo was
re-established.
The Kosovo Albanians met the imposition of Serbian rule over
Kosovo with determined resistance. The Serbian takeover of Kosovo's
institutions provided the Albanians with a rationale for the creation
of their 'parallel state' in Kosovo. At the same time as the Serbs were
reintegrating Kosovo within the Serbian legal framework, the Kosovo
Albanians declared Kosovo first a republic within Yugoslavia (1990)
and then an independent state (1991).
After the abolition of Kosovo's autonomy the Serbs and the
Albanians inhabited two separate, yet parallel worlds. The Serbs took
over all administrative, social and economic posts in the province. The
Introduction
IX
Albanians in turn established their own political institutions, and
developed a vibrant private sector outside the official Serbian economy.
Albanian students from the primary school to the university level were
enrolled in their own parallel education system. In the evenings,
Serbian youngsters went out to Serbian cafes, and Albanians to their
cafes. There was total ethnic segregation, with no mixing between
Serbs and Albanians.
Both Serbs and Albanians were caught between the clash of two
exclusive national projects: the Serbs wanted to keep Kosovo as part
of Serbia at any cost, irrespective of Albanian opposition, and the
Albanians wanted to turn Kosovo into an independent state, irrespec
tive of Serbian opposition. For nearly ten years most Albanians were
committed to non-violent struggle for independence, but in 1998 and
1999 they gradually switched their support to armed struggle. The
initial successes of the Kosovo Liberation Army led to a violent Serbian
backlash, the massacre of civilians, NATO threats of air strikes, failed
negotiations at Rambouillet, NATO air strikes and, finally, the negoti
ated withdrawal of all Serbian forces from Kosovo and their replace
ment by NATO troops. It was in this way that the international
community acquired its second Balkan protectorate.
This collection of essays examines both the escalation of the Kosovo
conflict to a full-scale war and the aftermath of that war. It looks at the
origins and implications of the Kosovo conflict in two stages: Part I
deals with the background and history of the conflict, while Part II
gives diverse opinions on NATO's attack on Yugoslavia and the con
sequent occupation of Kosovo by KFOR. There is also a separate
section of documents relating to Kosovo, and a chronology of events.
The collection presents the results of six seminars which took place
in Keele and Cambridge between 26 October 1998 and 15 December
1999. It combines a dispassionate treatment of key aspects of the
Kosovo conflict with highly charged personal opinions about the rights
and wrongs of NATO's intervention.
Special thanks are due to Diego Garro for designing the book cover.
Michael Waller; Kyril Drezov and Bulent Gokay
July 2000