Partition as “More Humane Solution”
The Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian and Eastern European Studies at Columbia University in New York City has recently joined the efforts to find a solution that would bring the advantages to all the parties, by inviting a scholar from Indiana University at Bloomington School of Law, Professor Timothy William Waters.
In the interview for OneWorld SEE Professor Waters said that there is no win-win solution for Kosovo, but that pragmatists from all the sides may find that the partition is a suitable model for all. OneWorld: In the recent lecture at the Harriman Institute of Columbia University you mentioned that partition of Kosovo is “more humane solution” for the current situation in the region. Can you please explain what you meant? Waters: Partition would reduce the need for an elaborate, fragile, and ultimately unwelcome structure of overlapping and decentralized governance in Kosovo, and it would make a diplomatic deal more possible. First, the governance structures and international supervision the Ahtisaari plan contemplates are almost entirely designed to reassure and protect Serbs, so that they will remain in an independent Kosovo. But the price is high: radical decentralization, anti-majoritarian procedures, and a quasi-protectorate all risk making the state dysfunctional – really, what Ahtisaari proposes is the Bosnianization of Kosovo – and understandably Kosovar Albanians don’t relish the prospect of ceding disproportionate power to a tiny minority and suffering limits on their sovereign ability to govern solely to reassure that minority. But if that minority were significantly smaller, the need for complex governance would be less compelling: fewer reserved seats, less call for bilingual services and so forth. I am convinced there are many pragmatic Albanians who would say, ‘Look, we have our differences with Serbs, but so long as they do not threaten our security and do not make disproportionate claims, we are prepared to get along with them.’ But the area north of the Ibar is a poison pill for the new state. It is the large Serb minority in Mitrovica and the north – concentrated on Serbia’s border, bitterly unreconciled to an independent Kosovo, and rationally aware that it has a fighting chance to resist Pristina’s rule – that makes such elaborate accommodation necessary and threatens Albanian interests. Something between a third and a half of all Kosovo’s Serbs live in the north; removing that area from Kosovo – leaving it in Serbia, to be precise – would reduce the Serb minority of Kosovo dramatically, with all the relaxing effects on the internal political equation I’ve suggested. OneWorld: You also said that the partition would make a diplomatic deal more possible? Waters: Right now Serbia feels it is getting nothing – at least nothing the international community wasn’t prepared to give to protect Kosovo’s Serbs even without Serbia’s cooperation. So why should it make a deal? I happen to think Serbia has played its hand very badly, but then it hasn’t had much of a hand either. Some people think partition has been Serbia’s secret agenda all along, but even if that were true, is that a reason to oppose it? What that ‘secret agenda’ tells me is the terms for a deal from the Serb side. There are plenty of people in Serbia pragmatic enough to recognize that they have definitively lost Kosovo, and who would be willing to acknowledge that reality if only they could salvage something from doing so. A partition that kept the north in Serbia – that broke the conceptual border of Kosovo, if you will – could allow Serbs to say, ‘Well, we managed to keep something out of that.’ If Serbia were more willing, Russia’s resistance – which is notionally premised on finding a negotiated solution – would be harder to maintain. OneWorld: You are relying on pragmatists from the Kosovo Albanian side, and from the side of Republic of Serbia. What about Serbs from Kosovo? Waters: Although it seems like an afterthought, given the whole course of international diplomacy on Kosovo since 1999, it’s worth remembering that partition would directly benefit the Serbs in the north. They do not want to live under Priština, and they do not want to leave their homes; partition would protect them on both scores. That is surely worth something. That is something we should not cavalierly sacrifice for the sake of some principle of territorial integrity – in the middle of performing our own partition, by the way – unless there is a compelling rationale. And what is it exactly? And one more thing: The most ardent opponents of partition in the international community point out (accurately, I think) that many rural Serbs in the south have stayed on since 1999 through very hard times. If full independence with partition gave those Serbs basic protections, why wouldn’t they stay in an independent Kosovo? Do we really believe that they’ll stay if Mitrovica stays in Kosovo, but leave if it doesn’t? OneWorld: Where do you envision the possible partition line? Waters: I would base the decision on where to draw the line on a utilitarian calculation according to the following principles: assign sovereignty based on local majority, maintain territorial contiguity, avoid undue harm to the interests of Kosovo’s Albanians in having a secure state, and apply the protective principle – that is, a norm that says our intervention is designed to protect those who were harmed or are at risk, and not to do more than that. In effect, this is what I call the ‘first house’ rule: We are proposing to partition Serbia to protect a population at risk. So begin at Serbia’s border with Kosovo, and see who lives in the first house you come to. Go the next house, and keep going until you come to the first house belonging to someone who suffered from Belgrade’s ethnic cleansing in 1999 and its oppressive rule. And keep going until you determine that the number of persons needing protection are significant enough to justify intervening to sever that territory from Serbia. Applied to Kosovo, these principles would ensure that Albanian areas would be independent, while areas in which Serbs were a clear majority and which bordered Serbia would remain part of Serbia, so long as that did not compromise Kosovo’s security, because the populations of those areas do not need or want independence in order to protect them from Belgrade. Concretely, I would expect that the northern municipalities would remain in Serbia, perhaps with small border corrections near Kamenica. Pockets like Gracanica would definitely go into the new independent state. Naturally international approval of the new frontier would be predicated on both states’ sustained commitment to human rights guarantees and a right of return for displaced individuals. OneWorld: A counter-argument may be that Kosovo partition will destabilize some recently created states. Bosnia and especially the Republic of Srpska are among the first that come to mind. How would you respond to that? Waters: I think the risk of destabilization is greatly overstated, especially now that we have had the better part of a decade to entrench incentives against renewed violence elsewhere. Macedonia is a far more stable place than it was; in Bosnia, dysfunctional as the state remains, no one seriously contemplates a return to violence, and so on. Surely our real interest is in a peaceful and prosperous Balkans, not in any particular configuration of the borders. If opening up a particular border question risks violence, that’s a reason not to do it. But if not opening up a border question risks violence, well, then we should question that border. After all, that is exactly what we are proposing to do in Serbia and Kosovo, isn’t? In general, I find that fear of regional destabilization sits very uncomfortably with the liberal, cosmopolitan values that underpin our commitment to multi-ethnic states. It is as if we believe in the possibility of multi-ethnic coexistence, and insist upon it in Kosovo and Bosnia, but also think that at the first hint that we might consider new borders, everyone in the Balkans will succumb to an atavistic bloodlust and be unable to resist carving up the neighbors. I personally don’t think people in the former Yugoslavia are primordial creatures of ethnicity; I do think there are particular configurations of territory and population that make co-existence harder or easier, and I don’t know why we would insist on the harder way unless there were some compelling justification. Serbia’ ethnic cleansing campaign in 1999 justifies independence for its victims – but why is Kosovo’s provincial frontier the unquestioned frame for that? Why should Pristina rule the Serbs in Zubin Potok? |
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