Independence for Kosovo

Charles A. Kupchan

From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2005

Summary:  Given the atrocities they have suffered in the past and the autonomy they are enjoying now, Kosovo's Albanians will never accept continued Serbian sovereignty. The time has come to give them what they want -- independence.

CHARLES A. KUPCHAN is Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His most recent book is "The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century."

YIELDING TO BALKAN REALITY

Amid the unraveling of Yugoslavia that began in the early 1990s, the United States and its European allies have staunchly defended multiethnic society in the Balkans. The military interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, the ongoing peacekeeping missions there, the hundreds of millions of dollars given annually in economic aid -- these sacrifices have been made to preserve the individual states that once constituted a federal Yugoslavia and to prevent bloodshed among the numerous ethnic groups that populate them. Now, however, the time has come to let pragmatism triumph over principle -- and move decisively toward independence for Kosovo.

The most important piece of unfinished business in the Balkans is the final status of Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia, which has been under international trusteeship since NATO's intervention in 1999. Anxious to scale back its obligations in the region and confronted with growing impatience among Kosovo's population, the international community is finally gearing up for negotiations over Kosovo's political future, as provided for under UN Security Council Resolution 1244.

Serbs, for whom Kosovo is an ancestral homeland and the site of many important Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries, insist that the area remain under Serbian sovereignty. Broader opposition to separating Kosovo from Serbia stems from concern about the potential precedent that would be set by redrawing boundaries along ethnic lines and the likely impact this move would have on the integrity of the borders of Macedonia, Montenegro, and Bosnia.

Nevertheless, harsh realities on the ground make independence for Kosovo the only viable option. In the current state of limbo, relations between the Albanian majority, which is mostly Muslim, and the Serbian minority, which is mostly Orthodox Christian, have reached the boiling point. The Albanian leadership in Pristina, which governs Kosovo in an uneasy partnership with UN authorities, wants nothing to do with Belgrade. Kosovo has already left Serbia's orbit. And throughout the area, walls of hostility divide ordinary Albanians and Serbs. In spirit as well as fact, multiethnic society is nowhere to be found.

Pretending otherwise and denying or delaying independence risks a return to disorder and bloodshed -- and is therefore the greater of two evils. The formal separation of Kosovo from Serbia instead offers the best hope for rebuilding moderation and tolerance among ethnic Albanians, making it far more likely that they will eventually live in peace with Serbs, Roma, and the other minority groups among them.

A HOUSE DIVIDED

Driving from central Serbia into Kosovo already feels like crossing a national boundary, and a militarized one at that: Serbian border guards, then a no man's land, then a border control staffed by Kosovo police as well as UN and NATO personnel. In the no man's land, drivers change their license plates; cars with Serbian tags will sometimes be attacked in Kosovo, and those with Kosovar plates are equally at risk in Serbia.

In Kosovo, signs abound that the area has been poisoned by intercommunal violence. NATO troops, armed UN guards, and members of the Kosovo Police Service are ubiquitous, keeping the palpable ethnic tensions in check. Serbs live in fortified enclaves, their access roads often guarded by NATO patrols. Before the war, two of Kosovo's largest cities, Pristina and Prizren, were home to tens of thousands of Serbs. They are now virtually Serb-free. A few smaller towns, such as Orahovac, have maintained their multiethnic character, but the Serbs there live in isolated ghettos, set off from Albanian neighborhoods by a block or two of burned-out homes. Serbs rarely venture into the Albanian section of town, fearful of abuse or worse.