Month: March 2012

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A Kosovar friend sent me this triumphalist claim of Serbian victory in the recent agreement between Belgrade and Pristina on how Kosovo will be identified at meetings in which Serbia also participates:

Serbia’s success in putting an asterisk connoting the numbers “1244” in front of future Kosovar delegations to European meetings means the terms under which Kosova* participates in “Europe” explicitly recognizes the language in a resolution that preserves a measure of Serbian sovereignty over its former province. This advertisement of such sovereignty – dormant as it may be – marks tacit American acceptance of the defeat of its diplomacy of the past six years. The asterisk means America has relegated its client in Kosova* to something like the status currently enjoyed by Taiwan.

The author is my respected colleague of many years, David Kanin, who happens now also to teach at Johns Hopkins/SAIS, as I do.

But David is dead wrong.  He is trying to make more of an asterisk than the little fellow ever imagined he might be.  And more than he is.  The only thing the asterisk guarantees is the undying hostility of most of Kosovo’s population, which will no doubt begin to add one to Serbia*.

David’s claims are wrong in many ways.

Serbs and their supporters have been telling themselves since 1999 that that 1244 preserves “a measure of Serbian sovereignty over its former province.”  This is wrong, which is immediately apparent from their use of the appellation “its former province.” Even they recognize that something irreversible has happened to Kosovo. The reference to Yugoslav (now Serbian) sovereignty is in the preamble of 1244 and has no legally binding status. It simply reaffirms a commitment made at the time of the resolution:

Reaffirming the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Circumstances change.  The United States and many other countries have decided that commitment no longer holds.  You may not agree with that change of heart, but nothing in 1244 prevents it.

Far more important is that 1244 clearly refers in its operative paragraphs to a political process for deciding Kosovo’s future status. Among other mentions, there is this one that refers to the responsibilities of the “international civilian presence”:

Facilitating a political process designed to determine Kosovo’s future status, taking into account the Rambouillet accords (S/1999/648);

In a final stage, overseeing the transfer of authority from Kosovo’s provisional institutions to institutions established under a political settlement;

That process, conducted under the aegis of Marti Ahtisaari, was completed years ago, with full participation (but not final approval) of Russia and Serbia. What the asterisk signifies to anyone who reads past the preamble (which has no legal standing) to the operative paragraphs of the resolution is that Kosovo has completed the process foreseen there with a clear and now widely but not universally accepted result.

Russia and Serbia are of course perfectly entitled not to recognize that result, but so are others entitled to recognize the new state. The notion that Kosovo, now recognized by 88 other sovereign states, has no more status than Taiwan is risible, though I hasten to add that I will be happy for the day it has Taiwan’s economy and even governance.  The International Court of Justice has advised that its declaration of independence was not in violation of 1244, a claim that Serbia made loudly and repeatedly. To pretend that preambular language with no legal significance outweighs not only the operative paragraphs but also an ICJ advisory opinion is to live in fantasyland.

What the agreement does for Kosovo is to get it a contractual relationship with the EU, including a “feasibility study” for a Stabilization and Association Agreement, thus neutralizing the heretofore effective veto of the five non-recognizing EU member states. While they can continue to not recognize Kosovo, they are now part of an organization that is treating it as a sovereign and independent state capable of undertaking obligations that only such states can undertake. This is no small matter, not outweighed somehow by an asterisk.

Is 1244 still in force?  Yes, since it hasn’t been altered or withdrawn.  But like many Security Council resolutions most of its terms have been fulfilled and it will fade into irrelevance.  The only benefit to Serbia of the asterisk I see is that it will make it harder to forget 1244, which unfortunately for Belgrade provides the legal basis for answering the otherwise difficult question, why is Kosovo entitled to independence and not other provinces?  The answer is 1244 and the political process for determining final status foreseen there.

I’ve challenged David to a duel.  He has accepted.  We won’t do it at dawn. But I hope we’ll meet soon in public at SAIS to cross swords and maybe provide some enlightenment to both sides of this issue.

In case anyone wonders:  my title is intended to convey the vast over-valuation of the asterisk in David’s piece.

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Annan Anon

Today’s news from Syria is bad, really bad for those of us who hope to see a more open and democratic regime there.  The usual sources in Baba Amr, the Homs neighborhood that Bashar al Assad has been shelling for a month, have gone silent, apparently because elite Syrian army units are closing in from all sides.  Electricity has been cut off.  Violent resistance there will be, but sporadic and largely ineffectual.  Expect widespread mistreatment of the civilian population, where the regime is trying to re-install the wall of fear that kept people in line for decades.

In the meanwhile, Kofi Annan, the newly appointed joint envoy of the UN and the Arab League, met in New York with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, in the aftermath of still another UN Security Council meeting that failed to reach agreement on his mandate.  Annan was modest in his goals:

It is a very difficult assignment. It is a tough challenge and the first thing we need to do as the secretary general has said is to do everything we can stop the violence and the killing to facilit[tate] humanitarian access and to ensure the needy are looked after and work with the Syrians in coming up with a peaceful solution which respects their aspirations and eventually stablizes the country.

My Twitterfeed is disappointed in his failure to mention transition (away from the Assad regime), but Annan is doing what a good diplomat should: lowering expectations and trying to ensure himself at least a first meeting with Bashar.  He needs to keep his public remarks in line with the minimalist goals that Russia and China support.  UN envoys don’t last long if one of the Perm 5 members of the UNSC object  to what they are saying and doing, or a key interlocutor refuses to meet with them.

Kofi Annan knows as well as any of us that stabilization of Syria is not going to be possible with Bashar al Assad still in power.  He betrays it with that adverb:  “eventually.”  Getting Bashar to step aside from power will not be easy.  It will require convincing him that he is safer out of power than in it.  Several Arab presidents have already chosen that route (Tunisia’s Ben Ali, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh).  Muammar Qaddafi preferred to fight, with well-known consequences.  But Bashar will not like any of those precedents: exile in Saudi Arabia, a trial in his home country, exile in Ethiopia and murder victim are not attractive propositions.  Maybe Tehran will be?

He will try to sell himself to Annan as a reformer:  like the Bahraini and Moroccan monarchies or Algeria’s President Bouteflika, all of whom are engaged in modest reforms intended to co-opt protesters and maintain their regimes intact.  Bashar will attribute his obvious excess use of force to the need to fight terrorism, a favorite excuse for violating human rights in this country as well as in Syria.  There is just enough evidence of Al Qaeda in Iraq involvement in a few of the bombings in Syria to put some wind in that sail.

We should not expect Annan to get past Bashar’s defenses easily or quickly.  As fallacious as the claims may be, he will have to listen and appear to appreciate them.  Then, he needs to try to internationalize the situation as much as possible, by getting Arab League and UN monitors back into Syria to prevent renewed violence once a ceasefire is in place.  He also needs to maintain his credibility with the Russians, so that he can talk with them about how their interests in port access and arms sales might be better served by a future, democratically-validated regime than by a declining Assad.

Annan will also need to reach out to the protesters in Syria and assure them that their pleas are heard and that their interests will be best served by returning to nonviolence, with international monitors in place to offer what protection they can, which is admittedly not much.  In the meanwhile, the Free Syria Army and other militia groups will be arming, but hopefully not fighting.  If the protesters resort to violence, Annan’s position will quickly become untenable as the regime returns to the battlefield.

Why is this not more like the situation in Libya or Kosovo, where the rebellions armed themselves and fought the regime tooth and nail?  The answer is that the Syrians can be close to certain that no air force is coming to their rescue.  The Americans and Europeans are showing no appetite for it.  The Turks and Arabs seem almost as reluctant.  If any of them were to change their minds and decide to throw their military weight behind the protesters, the situation would be different.  But that is unlikely to happen.

Annan’s chances of success are low.  But we should wish him the best in his efforts, which should begin as soon as possible.  Delay or failure would mean continuation of a war the regime is bound to win.

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