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Kosovo’s Partition is a Dangerous Solution

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Vuciç ThaçiPartition of Kosovo or adjusting borders between Kosovo and Serbia would destabilise the region and potentially spark violence, argues a former adviser to the US State Department./

By David L. Phillips/

Partition would herald the demise of Kosovo as a multi-ethnic society, and mark the failure of the EU-facilitated dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia aimed at mutual recognition within Kosovo’s current frontiers.
Partition is not a new idea. It was first raised in the mid-1990s by writer and politician Dobrica Cosic, the so-called ‘Godfather of Serbian nationalism’, and others at the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Germany’s ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger discussed partition in the summer of 2007, when UN-tasked negotiators from the US, EU and Russia, known as the ‘Troika’, tried unsuccessfully to broker a deal between Serbia and Kosovo.
Last year, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic argued that “everyone needs a lasting solution of the Serbian-Albanian conflict, which can be reached only through an agreement… where everyone will win something and lose something”.
Dacic and Prime Minister Ana Brnabic recently discussed partition with US presidential adviser Jared Kushner. After the meeting, Dacic pronounced: “All cards are on the table.”
Evaluating partition starts with a clear understanding of what Serbia wants.
Dacic proposes that Serbia would give up its claim to all of Kosovo in exchange for lands north of the Ibar River. Serbian enclaves in other parts of Kosovo would have autonomy and exercise executive powers. The Serbian Orthodox monastery of Visoki Decani and other Orthodox monasteries in Kosovo would gain special protected status.
Serbia wants financial compensation for properties it claims in Kosovo, including industrial and energy facilities. Serbia would resettle Serbia refugees currently residing in Serbia proper to lands it gains through partition.
The proposal for partition gives rise to many questions.
Is the ruling Serbian Progressive Party prepared to amend Serbia’s constitution to recognise Kosovo? Will Serbia abandon its efforts to obstruct countries from recognising Kosovo, as well as Kosovo’s membership in multilateral institutions? Is the European Commission prepared to start negotiations with Kosovo over its EU membership?
What actions are foreseen from EU non-recognisers – Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia? Would a deal on partition automatically trigger their recognition of Kosovo?
Membership in the UN must also be part of the package. However, acquiescence from Russia or China is far from guaranteed.
Demarcation is a stumbling block. Exchanging lands north of the Ibar River for ethnically Albanian lands in Serbia such as Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac is a complicated procedure. Would the swap be symmetrical or based on estimated value of the territories concerned?
Population transfers would be messy. What would happen to ethnic Albanians currently residing north of the Ibar River? Would they remain or would there be a managed process for their migration and compensation?
Would Kosovo Serbs in the south have the option of immigrating to lands north of the Ibar River? What mechanism would be established to manage population flows?
What would happen to the existing agreement for an Association of Serb Municipalities, one of the agreements between Belgrade and Pristina, intended to provide some enhanced powers to Kosovo’s Serbs? Would Belgrade still seek an Association of Serb Municipalities for Serb communities in south Kosovo?
Compensation is also tricky. A Property Compensation Commission would be required to review titles, determine ownership, determine the value of properties, and arrange compensation.
Ownership of the Trepca Mines, an important mining and metallurgical complex in northern Kosovo which both Belgrade and Pristina claim, is another issue. The mines are currently split along ethnic lines, with Serbs running parts that lie in the Serb-controlled north of Kosovo and Pristina running parts in the south.
Are the Trepca Mines rich in gold or largely depleted? Who would own the Trepca Mines? Would Trepca be placed into a trust for Kosovo? Who would be responsible for developing Trepca’s mineral resources, managing the trust, and distributing funds going forward?
Other natural resource issues would have to be addressed, such as the Gazivoda Lake, a large reservoir that supplies water and electricity to central Kosovo.
Partition would open wounds from the war. There are still thousands of missing persons. Victims demand accountability. How would a deal on partition address accountability?
Other ethnic partitions have led to violence and mass migration, for example the division of India into India and Pakistan. Partition could spark a new phase of ethnic conflict in Kosovo and the region, destabilising fragile multi-ethnic states.
Would the Republika Srpska in Bosnia seek to join Serbia? Would ethnic Albanians in Macedonia be next in line to unify Albanian territories?
Many people died to preserve the ideal of democratic, ethnically diverse states in the Western Balkans. Slobodan Milosevic’s goal was always to unify the Serbian nation and establish ‘Greater Serbia’. Partition of Kosovo would achieve at the negotiating table what Milosevic failed to achieve through ethnic cleansing.
Partition requires major symbolic and substantive concessions with political, economic and security ramifications. Transparency is critical. Partition cannot be negotiated behind closed doors.
Partition would be the defining event in Kosovo’s history. It requires debate in political circles and with civil society, as well as guarantees from the international community.

*David L. Phillips is Director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights. He served as a Senior Adviser to the US Department of State under Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama. Author of ‘Liberating Kosovo: Coercive Diplomacy and US Intervention’, Phillips worked closely with Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke on Bosnia and Kosovo.

Russian Media See NATO ‘Beachhead’ Near Russia’s Borders

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By Tom Balmforth/
Foto: NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg speaks to reporters in Brussels about the alliance’s plans to bolster its eastern flank./
MOSCOW — NATO’s insistence that it is a defensive alliance has always received short shrift in Russia. So when the alliance approved plans to deter Russian aggression by bolstering its eastern flank, the icy reaction of the Russian media came as no surprise.
The tone of the outrage varied greatly, but the opposition was largely uniform across mainstream TV, radio, and print media after NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg announced that a multinational NATO force will be rotated through the countries of Eastern Europe to deter Russian aggression.
Pro-Kremlin news and commentary website Vzglyad cast the plans as the building blocks of a NATO “beachhead” on Russia’s doorstep that would “fracture the foundations” of European security.
Vzglyad characterized NATO’s announcement of rotations and regular exercises — rather than a permanent base — as a “sneaky” way to get around a promise, in the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, to defend itself without “additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces” near Russia “in the current and foreseeable security environment.” 
“The tactic of ‘getting around’ rather than once and for all tearing up [the Founding Act] is most likely being conducted because of pressure from a range of Western European countries, primarily Germany, which are not interested in unnecessarily provoking a Russian response,” Vzglyad wrote.
The tone on TV, radio, and social media was more vitriolic.
And state TV tried to turn NATO’s assurances that it poses no threat to Russia on their head, calling any notion of Russian aggression a “myth.”
 
“The NATO secretary-general is in no hurry to ease relations,” watchers of the Vesti evening news program were told on February 10, not long after Stoltenberg spoke. “On the contrary, while frightening the world about the myth of Russian aggression, he intends to increase the military presence in Eastern Europe.”
The number of troops to be involved in the NATO exercises will be decided at an alliance summit in Warsaw in June. The plans may help allay fears, particularly among NATO’s easternmost member states, sparked by Russia’s 2014 takeover of Crimea and its backing for separatists in a conflict that has killed more than 9,000 people in eastern Ukraine. Russia denies it has sent regular troops into eastern Ukraine, despite mounting evidence.
Aleksei Pushkov, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, took the idea of NATO promulgating the “myth” of a Russian threat to social media.
“The NATO secretary-general says that the alliance is not going to fight [Islamic State]. Understood. That’s not NATO’s role. Its main task is confrontation with Russia amid commotion over the Russian threat.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova opined that Brussels had dreamed up the Russian threat to make itself feel better after proving unable to resist Islamist militants on the continent.
“Take a look at the terrorist attacks in Paris, for instance. Did NATO fall on the grenade to protect everyone from the terrorists? No, of course not, because it is not capable of this,” Zakharova said in comments carried by the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper on February 10.
Newspapers including the popular tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda latched onto a comment from Ruslan Balbek, a member of the Russian-imposed government of Crimea, who said NATO’s deployment plans were a blatant psychological test of Russia’s resilience.
“NATO has dropped its sheep’s clothing and intends to rattle the saber. But nobody has ever succeeded in scaring Russia, and nobody will ever succeed,” he said.
Igor Korotchenko, the pro-Kremlin editor in chief of National Defense magazine, hit the airwaves to accuse NATO of gearing up for war on Russia.
He told Vesti FM listeners that NATO is “working on real plans to conduct military action against Russia in the European theater of military activity.”
“This would seem completely unthinkable in the context of the 21st century, in the context of a global world. But unfortunately this is the reality. And we need to take these realities into account,” Korotchenko said.
He was clear on how the Kremlin should respond.
“We must understand that the only guarantee that the U.S. and NATO plans do not become reality is an increase in the readiness of the armed forces, the work of the military industrial complex, and of course the development of our strategic nuclear forces that are the guarantee against large-scale aggression against our country.”