One of the things I will try to do regularly is give full texts and English original texts of media things I have done that have appeared in other languages. Below are the answers I wrote in response to Arbnore Zhushi’s questions for Bota Sot (World news), a daily paper from Kosovo. The article is available here. (The editors basically kept my answers in full but rearranged the order of some of the questions)
- How did you see the opposition of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to sign the Ohrid "agreement" on paper, do you think that this will be a stable and applicable agreement for both parties?
The signature performance is a bit of spectacle, oriented toward suggesting to public opinion in Serbia that he is maintaining an intransigent position, and toward inviting the EU to offer him greater benefits for eventually signing. In a way Vučić's gesture is consistent with the spirit of the agreement, which is designed to allow both Kosovo and Serbia to claim that they have received something, while at the same time allowing them to claim that they have not given anything in exchange for what they received. The story makes for some nice copy for tabloid papers about whether Vučić's hand hurts and similar themes, but none of the people involved in the negotiation will have any difficulty in recognising it as a game.
As for the agreement itself, it is not designed to be stable and sustainable, but rather to represent a compromise resolution that allows for negotiation on a substantive settlement to continue. In principle it should allow Kosovo to claim that it received de facto recognition while also allowing Serbia to say that it has not provided recognition. This is fine for a time in the sense that it allows citizens of both states to get work done that has been prevented by the ongoing dispute. But the force of the agreement will always be vulnerable to the perception in Kosovo that recognition has still not been achieved, and in Serbia that the claim to territorial control has been given up. This is a problem involving public opinion in Kosovo in Serbia to a certain extent, but fundamentally the source of instability is the absence of good will and trust among the politicians doing the negotiations.
- The parties agreed on one of the most important points – the immediate launch of the creation of a self-management mechanism for the Serbian community in Kosovo. How will this mechanism be implemented, since Serbia wants an Association with executive powers, while for Kosovo this constitutes a constitutional violation?
The agreement as it stands specifies that provision will be made for local self-government but says nothing about the form or character of this self-government. The disagreement between the parties involves mainly the degree of autonomy that local governments covered by the agreement would have from the state government of Kosovo.
No further agreement will be reached and the provision will not be implemented. This is because the core of the demand from Serbia is something that no government in Kosovo can grant, since it would involve the creation of ethnically defined territories within the state that state governments would not control. Some compromise on this point is conceivable, but compromise will never be reached. This is because it suits Vučić better to have an ongoing disagreement than to have an agreement. The one thing that he cannot tolerate in Kosovo is exactly what successful implementation would create: legitimately elected representatives of the ethnic Serb population who are not controlled by his networks. Vučić does not want a settlement of the dispute and he will do nothing to achieve a settlement.
- How do you evaluate the whole role of Prime Minister Albin Kurti, in this agreement, what should Kurti have (not) done that he has not done, in your opinion?
Kurti is probably more aware than anybody else of the ways in which he has become a prisoner of his own success. He was elected on the basis of widely shared public outrage, both at the preceding governments and at the crass manipulation of the parliament by the representative of the US under Tr*mp. A big part of this outrage derived from the perception that earlier governments were unresponsive and corrupt, but a part of it also derived from the perception that Kosovo was not defending its interests strongly enough in international negotiations. He derived a good deal of popularity from the promise to demand recognition unambiguously, and not to back down or compromise on this demand. It is not difficult to understand why this promise resonates in public opinion, but it creates a problem in negotiation. It means that any step away from a demand for recognition risks being seen by the public as breaking his promise. On a practical level this helps Vučić in his overall strategy to delay an agreement and avoid resolution.
- How do you think it will affect the integration processes and visa liberalization for Kosovo, if the latter does not implement the point related to the self-management of the Serbian community in Kosovo?
The failure of the negotiations in Ohrid would have appeared to create a short term advantage for Serbia, in the sense that Kosovo is now perceived by some actors in the EU and US as the party preventing an agreement. This might mean that Serbia receives some concessions and that Kosovo does not receive some concessions that it was promised. But there are two factors that make this situation temporary: one is that Vučić's crass propaganda, like his silly game about signatures and hands, will remind the EU that he is an unreliable partner. The other is that in the long term there is no real condition for settlement of the dispute aside from recognition of Kosovo by Serbia.
- Although European diplomats confirmed that the parties are obliged to fully implement every article of the Agreement, Vucic warned that he will not implement the part of the agreement related to Kosovo's membership in the UN. Do you believe that there will be sanctions against Serbia for the "red lines", or will the "caress" from the EU continue?
Here I am being asked to predict the future, but of course any prediction that I make has an equal likelihood of being wrong as right. I do not have any special talent for seeing into the future. If we want to use the past as a basis for making predictions, then it is probably correct to observe that the EU has been exceptionally indulgent with Vučić's strategy of dragging out the process of negotiation into infinity, so it would not be entirely unreasonable to expect that this indulgence could continue. On the other hand, it is probably also the case that the war in Ukraine has contributed to a greater focus in Europe on security and on the need for unity, and that it has brought forward the urgency of settling bilateral disputes in Europe. This might contribute to some more concentrated energy in moving processes forward on Europe’s part, but we need to be aware of the limitations on the EU’s ability to achieve consensus and to act quickly.
- How do you see the request for officializing the status of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo from Article 7 of the European plan? Do you think this represents a danger for Kosovo?
There is no reason to be naïve about the role of religion in conflicts in the region. Overall the influence of religious institutions has not been positive in the past decades. The dominant parts of most of them have allied themselves with advocates of violence, promoted chauvinism, and at a very minimum tolerated criminal behaviour. The Orthodox Church has been, at the very least, as bad as the other established religions, particularly when we take into account the behaviour of the most senior part of its leadership.
At the same time, though, there is also no reason to be cynical about the role of religion. It is not unreasonable to assume that most of the people working in religious institutions are motivated by sincere belief and the hope that they will be able to do the right thing, and they try to represent the best interests of their communities as they understand them (although there might be some disagreement as to what the best interests of the communities are). A case could also be made that if we compare the Orthodox Church in Kosovo to, for example, the Orthodox Church in Bosnia and Hercegovina, there are more sincere people in the Church institutions honestly working to achieve reconciliation in Kosovo than in some other places.
So there is potential for a very important positive contribution to be made here, even if it is a relatively small potential. One of the great shortcomings of all of the projects to communicate the truth, to promote dialogue, and to encourage understanding in the post-conflict environments of the region is that they have mostly operated through law and the state. They have left communities out, and they have especially excluded the institutions that people trust most and the ones to which people look for guidance on living their lives in ways that are consistent with what they believe – these institutions are art, education, and religion. If we let them into the dialogue they will do some good things and some bad things, but they will probably not make people more isolated or less well informed. On balance, there is not any good reason to be afraid to respect other people’s faith.
- Although it does not include mutual recognition, the Franco-German plan was described as very beneficial for both sides, especially for Kosovo. In your opinion, is this plan expected to lead to mutual recognition and when?
There are no alternatives to recognition other than a return to violence, and neither Serbia nor Kosovo has the will or the capacity to return to violence. So it is probably safe to predict that eventually there will be mutual recognition. The question is when this will happen, and of course it is impossible to answer that question with any certainty. But it is possible to talk about conditions that would make recognition more likely.
One of these conditions relates to the internal situation in Kosovo, and that is that members of all communities feel secure and represented in the state. This depends in some measure on what the government in Kosovo does, but it also depends on developments within the Serb community in Kosovo. In this regard it would be very helpful if institutions of political representations could develop among Serbs in Kosovo that are independent from control by Belgrade, but Belgrade will do everything possible to prevent this happening.
A second condition relates to the posture of outside actors. It is helpful that, at least in the short term, the influence of Russia appears to be declining in the world (although the influence of China is expanding, and we do not yet know how this will be projected into the region). It is also supremely unhelpful that the United States has been inactive, with president Biden declining to clean up the mess left in the region by his execrable predecessor. The greatest help of all would come if the five holdouts in the EU were to align themselves with the rest of the union and recognise Kosovo, so that the EU approaches the issue with a unified position.
Finally, the greatest barriers to be overcome are in Serbia. Here I think that the perception of a massive resistance to recognition is overstated, and is largely a product of propaganda. As strong as any sentimental attachment might be, people are also aware of the facts and hungry for peace. They need a bit more encouragement to say this publicly from media and state institutions, and they need some assurance that people, as well as cultural and religious sites, will be safe.
Sometimes the conflicts we are dealing with seem intractable, but I am always optimistic about the Balkans, for the simple reason that people in the region basically like each other and are basically cool, with some deviation.