Croatia: “If you want a fight, we’ll give you one”

Croatia’s president Stipe Mesic has informed Bosnia’s Serbs that if they attempt to secede from Bosnia then he will despatch Croatian troops to crush them. At the moment, Bosnia is federated into two regions, one for ethnic Serbs and one for ethnic Croats and Bosniaks*, but the country remains grossly dysfunctional and still under international supervision. President Mesic of neighbouring Croatia seems to believe that the sulky Serbs of Bosnia plan to organise a referendum on secession, after which they will seek to unify with their pals in Serbia proper. Should they try such a thing, his plan is not to launch an all out war against them, but to send forces to cut the narrow corridor that links the two sub-units of the Bosnian Serb region.

Milorad Dodik, the prime minister of Bosnia’s Serb region, has reacted angrily to Mesic’s threat.

I do not know how likely the Bosnian Serbs are to declare independence, nor if Mesic is serious about intervening militarily against them. Mesic is coming to the end of his term of office, with his successor already elected, and he may be engaging in a bit of sabre rattling to give posterity something to remember him by. At the same time, Mesic has hitherto demonstrated an interest in maintaining the integrity of Bosnia, forcibly rebuffing the pretensions of Bosnian Croats who wished for a closer union with his country.

Even if the former Yugoslavia is not quite ready to descend into another bout of war, the incident also demonstrates the problematic nature of the Bosnian state. Its constitution seems based on a series of externally imposed compromises that ended the war of the early 1990s but did not create anything approximating to viable institutions of governance. How to get the country into some kind of shape that allows it to govern itself will be one of the great conundrums of the years ahead.

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*you know, Bosnian Muslims

Phantom Countries: Kosovo

Kosovo (capital city: Pristina) was formerly a part of Serbia. Although considered by Serbs to be the cradle of their civilisation (seemingly because in some mediaeval battle there the Serbs were stuffed out of it by the Turks) the area is predominantly inhabited by ethnic Albanians. In the Yugoslav period, the area became an autonomous region within Serbia, but it was never raised to the status of a full constituent republic.

Kosovo's history and the rise and fall of Slobodan Milosevic are closely intertwined. Milosevic shot to prominence by embracing Serbian nationalism and the cause of the Serbian minority in Kosovo. On achieving power in Serbia, he succeeded in closing down the region's autonomous government, shutting the ethnic Albanians out of public life. In the early 1990s, though, armed Kosovar rebels struck against Serbian rule, and Milosevic's attempt to crush them triggered the NATO bombing campaign that effectively forced a Serbian withdrawal from the region, fatally undermining Milosevic's credibility.

Kosovo thereafter assumed a somewhat anomalous status. The international community basically ran Kosovo as protectorate while preserving the fiction that it was still part of Serbia. Eventually, though, Kosovo was allowed to declare independence in 2008. There was much grumpiness about this in Serbia (and among ethnic Serbs in Kosovo), but the Serbs were unable to prevent this development. Because of the general distaste in international law and politics for secessionist regimes, Kosovar independence was justified on the convoluted grounds that Milosevic's 1994 crackdown constituted an effective Serbian repudiation of sovereignty over the province.

Now, one might wonder why I am bothering to list Kosovo as a phantom country. It does, after all, have a lot of international recognition, including by three permanent members of the UN Security Council. Kosovo's status nevertheless remains somewhat anomalous, for a number of reasons. Firstly, its state apparatus is still a bit ramshackle, and the country remains dependent on civil and security support from the international community. One could argue, therefore, that despite the relatively wide recognition afforded to it, Kosovo's independence is actually notional, with the region remaining a protectorate. Another problem is that although Kosovo has received plenty of recognition, many other countries actively reject it as an independent state. The Serbian state continues to maintain that it has jurisdiction over Kosovo. Although the Serbs do not really count for much, they are pals with the Russians, whose Security Council veto stands in the way of Kosovar membership of the United Nations. Spain, meanwhile, bedevilled by its own would-be secessionists, has also declined to recognise Kosovo, and may well block any move towards Kosovar membership of the EU. Kosovo is therefore likely to remain outside the world of key international organisations for some time.

Kosovo also has internal problems. The Serbian minority are not that taken with separation from the rest of Serbia. Serbs in the border areas adjacent to Serbia-proper have effectively seceded from Kosovo, rejecting Pristina's authority in favour of Belgrade. Relations between Serbs and Albanians in the rest of the country remain tense, partly triggered by memories of intercommunal violence during the Milosevic years.

It is hard to know what the future holds for Kosovo. One possibility is that some kind of comprehensive Balkan settlement will see Pristina and Belgrade make friends as they jointly move to EU candidacy and Kosovo becomes fully accepted into the family of nations. For this to happen, though, it will be necessary for Kosovo to build an effective administration and to achieve some kind of rapprochement with its internal Serbian minority. It would not surprise me if the areas abutting Serbia succeed in seceding from Kosovo, or are at least allowed to permanently remain under Serbian administration even if showing up on maps as part of Kosovo.

An aside – there is apparently very little likelihood of Kosovo ever becoming part of Albania. Although Kosovo has a large majority of ethnic Albanians, ethnic Albanians do not seem to have the kind of pan-nationalist sentiment seen in some members of other ethnicities. There seems little or no interest in forming a Greater Albanian state out of Albania, Kosovo, and the bits of surrounding countries that have large Albanian populations.

Another aside – I think that ethnic Albanian Kosovars refer to their country as Kosova, but I am opting for the generally accepted international version of the country's name.

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EUROVISION IN CRISIS

One big question that Kosovan* independence raises the worrying prospect of the Eurovision Song Contest being dragged into Serbia's conflict with the rest of the world. As you know, this year's contest is being held in Belgrade, providing a handy opportunity for Serbia to show its non-recognition of Kosovan independence. I do not know what the criteria are for accepting new member states of the Eurovision Song Contest Organisation, but at this short notice it is unlikely that Kosova would be able to join up in time to compete (even allowing for the likely hostility to it from Russia and certain other countries). So we will be spared the possibility of the Serbian presenters refusing to hear the votes of juries for the Kosovan song. But there are other ways in which the contest could be marred by Balkan politics. The introductory bit where the host nation paints a picture of how great and interesting it is could be turned into a whiny nationalist whinge-fest, with a re-enactment of the first battle of Kosovo and loads of maps of Serbia pointedly showing Kosova as still an integral part of the country. Or perhaps the Serbian hosts could refuse to let the songs of Kosova-recognising countries compete. This last option could be disastrous for the Eurovision, as the rejected countries might then decide to set up their own rival Eurovision. Perhaps the partitioning of Serbia might also result in the permanent sundering of the world's greatest song contest.

*Kosovars are people from Kosova, while Kosovan is the adjective for things pertaining to Kosova, right? Or wrong?

Partitioning Serbia: Good; Partitioning Kosova: Bad

In international law and the practice of international politics, partitioning countries is generally seen as a bad thing and something to be avoided almost always. So with Europe's newest independent country, Kosova. Some have suggested that the country should be partitioned by giving to Serbia the northernmost strip of Kosova's territory, where ethnic Serbs are in the majority. This has been rejected by Kosova's leadership, and it is unlikely that the international players who count will take up this idea.

However, partitioning Serbia by taking the province of Kosovo and letting it become an independent state seems to be less problematic, at least to the major Western powers. The idea seems to be that Serbia under Milosevic essentially alienated itself from Kosovo by systematically oppressing its people and launching a campaign of outright ethnic cleansing prior to and during the NATO bombing campaign of 1999. This looks a bit like international law being made on the hoof, and it will be interesting to see whether highly oppressed regions of the world start having their independence from their oppressors recognized. The evolving principle does at least suggest in the Kosovan case that if the new state ultimately fails to protect the civil and personal rights of its ethnic Serbs, then they will have a legal right to have their majority areas secede and reintegrate with Serbia.

The Kosovan leadership are perhaps mindful of the extent to which their state's legitimacy hangs on it managing to be a country for all its citizens. Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and President Fatmir Sejdiu have both pledged to end discrimination against ethnic Serbs; symbolically, their pledge was delivered in both Albanian and Serbo-Croat. But such talk is cheap, and plays well in Western Europe. Anecdotal evidence suggests that in much of Kosova you would be in danger of literally being killed if you were heard speaking Serbo-Croat in public. Kosova's leaders may face an uphill battle to integrate the country's Serbs into Kosovan life.

After Hubris, Nemesis

In politics, it is a good idea to know what capabilities you possess and to understand how powerful you are relative to those you interact with. A skilful player can extract far greater benefits than their initial hand promises. Generally speaking, though, it pays not to make threats to people who can brush you off.

Today, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. Earlier, Serbia's prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, declared that his country would "in advance cancel out the... creation of a fictitious state". Although military action and the cutting off of Kosovo's energy supplies have been ruled out, the Serbian state is reportedly threatening to break off diplomatic relations with countries that recognise Kosovan independence. There are also reports that Kostunica's government might show the West a thing or to by suspending Serbia's EU integration process.