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Anyone anywhere anytime

There is a tone of desperation creeping into Belgrade’s remarks on the failure of the dialogue with Pristina.  Serbia will meet anyone anywhere anytime under any chairmanship.

The trouble is that the EU isn’t going to want to continue to meet without real results.  Catherine Ashton, who will be traveling in the Balkans this week, has invested a lot in the Pristina/Belgrade dialogue.  She has more important things on her plate, including a difficult nuclear negotiation with Iran.  We are approaching the drop-dead date for her report to the EU on April 22.  Missing that opportunity will result in a delay in giving Serbia a date to start its EU accession talks at least until after the German elections (September 22) and likely much longer.  Belgrade needs to do something to get Ashton to modify her itinerary and stop off in Serbia (and I’d hope Kosovo as well).

For all the dazzling complexity of the issues in northern Kosovo, the vital question for Belgrade should come down to this:  will Serbs be better off accepting reintegration of the north with the rest of Kosovo, or will they not?

My answer to this question is unequivocal:  the Serbs south of the Ibar river are clearly better off having more or less accepted that they live in an independent Kosovo where they can govern themselves at the municipal level while enjoying a good deal of positive discrimination at the national level.  They unquestionably have complaints.  Rada Trajkovic famously complained that she wasn’t allowed to park her car with Serbian license plates in the Kosovo government parking lot.  There are also far more serious complaints of discrimination, intimidation and violence.  But the bottom line is clear:  the Serbs south of the Ibar are staying and participating in Pristina’s institutions even while flying Serbian flags and painting big signs that say “Kosovo is Serbia.”

I believe the Serbs north of the Ibar would also be better off accepting the reality of Kosovo’s independence and exploiting their rights and privileges under the Ahtisaari agreement, which is more than generous in providing for local self-governance while allowing them to maintain their Serbian (as well as Kosovo) citizenship and to receive education and health services provided by Serbia.  But doing that requires that Serbia abandon its efforts to maintain sovereignty over the north, even if it continues to have a lot of sway there.

To put no gloss on it:  the police and courts in the north cannot be Serbia’s police and courts.  They must be Kosovo’s, acceptable to northerners but under Pristina’s authority.  Less than this endangers Kosovo’s claim to sovereignty.

This is what Belgrade is still resisting.  Continuing to do so will make the EU wonder whether it can ever establish a clear border between Serbia and Kosovo.  It will not make northern Kosovo Serbs any better off than they are now.  Tax-free smuggling, their major enterprise, may make a few of them well off, but economic development in the north has basically stood still since 1999.  Nor will continuation of the present situation help the Serbs who live south of the Ibar, where Serb domination of the north has fed growing Albanian nationalism, especially among those who have been prevented from returning to the north for more than a decade.

For both Serbia and Kosovo, solving the problem of the north is vital to getting on with much more important business:  creating jobs, improving economic performance, fighting corruption and organized crime, governing well, preparing for EU accession.  Neither government would be wise to continue the current situation.  Both would be wise to reach an accommodation.  If there is a serious agreement, six months from now no one will remember what the row was about.  If there is none, they’ll be stuck in this rut for years.

Failure has its consequences

With Belgrade taking on the responsibility of blocking a positive outcome to the dialogue with Pristina, Kosovo Prime Minister Thaci is now enjoying the best of all possible worlds:  he doesn’t have to implement an agreement that surely included some things he did not like, and blame for failure is falling on Serbia.  He is even signaling willingness to return to Brussels for new talks, ensuring that he cannot be blamed for a breakdown of the dialogue.  Not a bad show of statecraft for a newcomer.

That said, he still faces some difficult issues.  Serbia may yet come to its senses and accept what is on offer, or some modified version.  A definitive written text has not yet surfaced to my knowledge, making it easier to jiggle.  We are not quite at the very last moment, as Catherine Ashton does not have to publish her report on progress in the dialogue, which is what determines whether Serbia gets a date to begin EU accession negotiations, until April 16.  She does not present it to foreign ministers until April 22.  Serbia could still decide to cave, claiming to have gotten satisfactory adjustments.

If that does not happen, Pristina still faces the reality of its northwestern 11%, which will remain in Serbia’s less than complete control.  I hope everyone in Pristina will remain calm, cool and collected, realizing that time and financial shortages will erode Serb resistance in the north and enable gradual reintegration. Any violence or disorder could deprive Kosovo of the advantages its statecraft has brought it.

There are two problems with that approach.  The smuggling and other criminal activities with roots in the north (but tentacles south of the Ibar river) really should be stopped, if only to regain lost revenue and reduce the staying power of the northern resistance to integration with the rest of Kosovo.  The northern Serbs will portray any crackdown as an ethnic attack.  To prevent this, Pristina really needs to begin with a crackdown south of the Ibar, where the northern traffickers sell many of their wares, leaving the northerners to the EU rule of law mission and Serbia’s own need to demonstrate to the EU that it can control its own border.

The other problem lies in domestic Kosovo politics.  While Thaci has wisely broadened his base of support by inviting one of the opposition political parties to participate in the dialogue process, failure of the talks on reintegrating northern Kosovo will redound to the benefit of those Kosovars who see the future of their state not in “good neighborly relations” with Serbia but in becoming a province of Albania.  This unlikely and anti-constitutional proposition (union with a neighboring state or part of one is prohibited in the Kosovo constitution) has some support, especially among younger voters.

The EU can counter the Albanian nationalist reaction by moving expeditiously on the visa waiver for Kosovo and opening negotiations on a Stability and Association Agreement, which were the carrots on offer in the dialogue process.  It is clear enough that Pristina has not caused its failure.  While Kosovo should have to meet the technical requirements, the political door to these goodies should now swing wide open.

What about Belgrade?  It already has the visa waiver and a Stabilization and Association Agreement.  It is also a candidate for EU accession.   All it lacks is that date to begin negotiations, which brings with it a bundle of money.  It has been clearly understood from the first that a successful conclusion of the dialogue on northern Kosovo was a precondition for getting the date.  In fact, the precondition was broader:  normalization of relations, which might not include diplomatic recognition but should certainly include an end to Serbia’s campaign against recognition and UN General Assembly membership for Kosovo.  Failure has its consequences.