Environment protection / issues, humanitarian aid

By 1998, the failed structures of power in Kosovo became a European problem of peace and security. The blatant violations of the rights of minorities[1] by the Milosevic government could no longer be ignored. For the first time after Bosnia, NATO expanded its mandate beyond

the Euro-Atlantic area (The Alliance’s Strategic Concept, par. 10 in Caplan 2000: 36) to prevent any threats to international peace. Yet by co-opting hard-liners at the negotiation table, international peace negotiators failed to address the national interests of the locals.

During the 1999 war, the U.S. government monitored the negotiations for cease-fire conducted between the KLA and Milosevic. Since neither of the two extremist factions reflected the views of their ethnic constituents, the negotiations could not lead to a satisfactory solution for the population. Throughout the discussions, Kosovar Albanians received a preferential treatment from an early stage of the crisis. A process almost entirely ignored by the international community, this discriminatory approach only reversed, but did not obliterate Belgrade’s logic of domination.

The 1995 Dayton Agreement disappointed the Albanians by not granting Bosnia the right to secession. This implied that Kosovo could only become a federal state within Yugoslavia, and not an independent province (Guzina in Bieber and Daskalovski 2003: 43). The following April, the European Union recognized the independence of two former Yugoslav states, Serbia and Montenegro (Rogel 2003: 175). The political emancipation of these neighbour states prompted some Albanians in Kosovo to resent the slow unfolding of their liberation from Serbian hegemony. For them, acutely perceived feelings of deprivation suppressed all possibilities of moderate solutions. Maybe it is in this light that the 1998 negotiations of the international community with the KLA should be understood. The radical organization became a major NATO partner during the entire process of conflict resolution. During the bombing campaign, the U.S. targeted “Serb soldiers and allowed the Albanian Muslim rebels free rein in the province. Indeed, the U.S. initially allowed them to raid over the border in Macedonia” (Mann 2003: 175). With international support, the Albanian insurgents came under the impression that they won the 1999 war backed by NATO (O’Neill 2002: 47).

Hashim Thaci, Head of the KLA, Bernard Kouchner, Head of UNMIK, General Michael Jackson, Commander of KFOR,General Agim Ceku, Military Commander of the KPC, and General Wesley Clark, NATO Supreme Commander join hands.

NATO also failed to understand that despite continuing hostilities, both parties to the conflict relied on a similar ideology (King and Mason 2006: 243-4). While Serbs treasured the region as part of their cultural heritage and had territorial sovereignty over Kosovo, Albanians considered they had the majority right to incorporate the province into a ‘greater Albania’ (MccGwire 2000: 3). Therefore, during negotiations, most Albanians advocated the complete withdrawal of Serbian army from Kosovo (Caplan 1998: 746). Skeptical of Serb politicians, the Albanians “only accepted bilateral meetings in the presence of international mediation lest their assembly would be interpreted as an acceptance of the Serbian hegemony” (Kofos and Veremis 1998: 135). In the end, all common objects of desire denoted conflict, and not resolution.

Choosing Milosevic and the KLA as representatives of their people had been a mistake. In actuality, the KLA did not reflect the attitudes of the entire Albanian population of Kosovo (Blumi in Bieber and Daskalovski 2003: 231). Neither did Milosevic—unjustly used as a negotiation partner[2] (Clark 2001: 128)—himself reflect the views of the Serbs. Moreover, the exclusive focus on Milosevic “diverted attention from the intractable nature of the Kosovo problem and Serbia’s legitimate interests as the sovereign power” (MccGwire 2000: 5). Two moderate Albanian politicians highly respected within their community, Behlul Beqai and Adem Demaci, suggested that Belgrade had shown willingness to cooperate in establishing an effective human rights framework for Kosovars within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia prior to the 1999 war (Ramet 1996: 367).

NATO Secretary General Javier Solana, the Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, General Wesley Clark, and the Chairman of the Military Committee, General Klaus Naumann, meet Milosevic in autumn 1998 during the negociation for a political settlement in Kosovo.

Even during the war, most Albanian civilians were not hard-liners (Judah 2000: 300). The words of a young woman from Pristina (quoted in di Lellio and Schwandner-Sievers 2006: 521-2) probably best encapsulate the negation of militancy as typical of the entire Albanian population:

If you asked me, I would tell you that Adem Jashari was crazy. Nobody has the right to get his children and wife killed. But I would not give my opinion in front of anyone, and if you did it for me, I would deny I ever said it.

[2] This view is expressed by the former U.S. commander of NATO in Kosovo, General Wesley Clark (2001: 128).

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