Kosovo - partitioning what from what?

Though partition is far from the best way to resolve the Kosovo question, it is a political option for Kosovo as part of a final status resolution and has been used by one side already.

By Gerard Gallucci

Keywords: Serbia, Kosovo, EULEX, Ahtisaari, partition

Talk about partitioning Kosovo remains taboo. Almost everyone officially rejects the idea - the Albanians, the Serbs (in both Serbia and Kosovo), and the EU and U.S. However, only the Albanians probably really mean it and only if it applies to carving out pieces of “their” Kosovo and not so much as it might apply to the partitioning of Kosovo from Serbia. The Western Europeans and U.S. stand against partition arguing that Kosovo is a unique case and maintaining that Kosovo is and can be a flourishing multi-ethnic democracy. (Some EU members, and perhaps some in EU Brussels, may actually prefer partition as the neatest way to get rid of the lingering Kosovo status issue and get out of the morass into which their EULEX mission has fallen. Perhaps prematurely, EU envoy Wolfgang Ischinger even put partition on the negotiating table in August 2007.) The U.S. supports the official EU position because this keeps it off the Kosovo hook and because it has its own reasons – think Caucasus and Russia – to reject ethnic partition. The Serbs in southern Kosovo might support partition if somehow they could remain attached to Serbia. As this is unlikely, they do not. Kosovo Serbs north of the Ibar would probably welcome partition – remaining in Serbia – but, as it is not yet Serbian state policy, cannot say so. Belgrade may accept partition at some point but cannot say so while still making a case against losing Kosovo. Russia stands ready to pick up the pieces however it goes.

So, partition is the elephant in the room. Everyone pretends it is not there as they try to look busy finding other ways to finish determining Kosovo’s final status. The arguments against partition appear serious. 1) It could lead to renewed pressure for partitioning along ethnic lines including elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia. 2) It would seem to abandon the principle and possibility of truly multi-ethnic democracy, which everyone agrees is better than mono-ethnic mini-states. 3) Kosovo enjoyed autonomy as a province (though not a republic) under Tito until later simply revoked by Milošević. It is worth considering these arguments one by one.

The issue of Kosovo’s partition establishing a precedent or somehow encouraging further such actions elsewhere begs the central question of Kosovo’s very partition from Serbia. Serbia was and remains a sovereign state and member of the United Nations. Dismembering it, arbitrarily changing its state borders through military occupation, sets a huge precedent with implications in many places around the globe. To argue that a state loses the right over some part of its territory or population because of the way a particular government treats its people raises the issue of who decides, when and by what standard. Answers to these questions would be pertinent to many other situations, such as the treatment of native people by Australia, Brazil and the United States as well as the cases of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Congo, Macedonia, Georgia, Iraq, and Spain, to name a few. The plain fact is that with Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence – recognized by leading members of the international community – partition is already a fact.

One cannot argue credibly that Kosovo’s partition from Serbia is not along ethnic lines. To do so, one would have to make the case that Kosovo is in fact a flourishing multi-ethnic society or can become one. But Kosovo is essentially a mono-ethnic Albanian state. According to the CIA Factbook, 88 percent of its 1.8 million people are Albanians. Seven percent are Serbs and five percent others. Take out the 40-60,000 Serbs living in the north and the Albanian majority is over 90 percent. The Pristina institutions are Albanian institutions and non-Albanians’ role will be – if they are lucky – to have some say in how they are governed in their own communities and to play the occasional window-dressing role. Keeping Kosovo whole to support the case for multi-ethnic democracy is hypocrisy masquerading as high policy.

Kosovo’s history can support almost any conclusion one wishes to draw. One hundred years ago Kosovo was part of the Ottoman Empire so perhaps it should now be part of Turkey? Tito practiced ethnic gerrymandering – manipulating boundaries and legalities – on a grand scale to keep the truly multi-ethnic Yugoslavia balanced and more or less stable. The only thing perhaps we can learn from him is that in the end, ethnic loyalties prevail. Western Europe lost the opportunity to preserve multi-ethnicity in the Balkans when it rushed into the recognition of Yugoslavia’s break-up rather than finding a way to help it to a soft landing. In any case, Kosovo cannot now argue the sanctity of its borders based upon precedent from Yugoslavia having itself thrown over the boundaries of the successor state, Serbia.

None of this is to argue that partition is the best way to resolve the Kosovo question. But it may at some point have to be part of the final package. The Ahtisaari Plan remains the best option for southern Kosovo, where non-Albanians remain with little choice but to accept the reality that surrounds them. But the north? Why should people there born in one country be forced to accept now living in another? Some will say, what about the Albanians living in Serbia or Macedonia. Indeed. Irredentism is a danger. But it should not be allowed to become the basis of geopolitical blackmail.

In the end, partition is a political option for Kosovo as part of a final status resolution and has been used by one side already.

Gerard M. Gallucci is a retired US diplomat. He served as UN Regional Representative in Mitrovica, Kosovo from July 2005 until October 2008. The views expressed in this piece are his own and do not represent the position of any organization.