A really bad deal

Kosovo caretaker Prime Minister Kurti in a Zoom press conference this morning confirmed a lot of suspicions:

• The United States, in particular Special Envoy and Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, has played an important role in unseating Kurti, who has been defeated in a confidence vote the US welcomed.
• Grenell has opposed Kurti’s efforts to get reciprocity for Kosovo and instead insists on unilateral and complete abolition of the tariffs Kurti’s predecessor imposed on Serbian goods, without any quid pro quo from Serbia.
• The dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade should be held under the auspices of both the EU and the US, not one or the other but both acting together.
• Kurti said he was not invited to such a dialogue but only to an opportunity to sign up for the land (and people) swap Presidents Vucic and Thaci have been discussing.
• It would send three majority-Serb municipalities (but not North Mitrovica) to Serbia and provide for both extraterritoriality for Serbian sites south of the Ibar river as well as a Serb Association of Municipalities, with only part of the majority-Albanian Serbian municipality of Presevo in return.
• Kosovo would not even get Serbian recognition, but rather a kind of acceptance of the status quo, like West and East Germany.
• NATO would still protect Kosovo’s main water supply, Gazivoda.
• Kurti believes Thaci is doing this to protect himself from indictment by the Special Tribunal in The Hague but does not see how such a deal could be approved in Kosovo’s parliament, much less by the electorate.

Albin is proving strikingly popular in recent polling, not least due to his insistence on reciprocity with Serbia and his opposition to his President’s land/people swap plans. He made it clear in his remarks that he anticipates instability if he is removed from office (and implied he wouldn’t do anything to discourage it). What he wants is early elections, which he anticipates winning, perhaps even with an absolute majority in parliament.

This is all happening in the midst of the corona virus epidemic, which remains a big challenge for a poor country that has a weak health care system and has lost many medical personnel to emigration. For now, a new election is out of the question. More likely is that President Thaci will find an alternative majority in parliament that will name a new prime minister and grant him the emergency powers he has sought. They will be used not only to fight Covid-19 but also to try to proceed with the land swap deal, under pressure from the Americans to give President Trump something he can boast about during the US election campaign.

This is an ugly situation, with much wider implications in the Balkans and beyond. The land swap would validate an ethno-territorial concept Moscow has pursued not only in the Balkans, in particular Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. Russian President Putin would enjoy the consequences no end, a result the ethno-nationalist Trump Administration would welcome.

Ironically, President Vucic may right now be the biggest obstacle to a quick deal. He has made it clear he will not proceed until after the Serbian elections, which have been postponed from April due to Covid-19. That said, the kind of deal Kurti outlined today should be more than satisfactory to Belgrade, which is required to do little but give up part of a municipality whose population it finds troublesome. By the same token, it is hard to fathom how anyone in Pristina would even consider it.