Fixing Kosovo

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Memory fades quickly. Just shy of 10 years ago, the images of the Balkans filled the front pages and television screens with the horrors of ethnic cleansing. Then those images became dimmer in the public consciousness, until the conflict became frozen in place. No resolution of unresolved problems has been in sight during the intervening 10 years, and, as a result we may be headed for yet another crisis in the next weeks and months. Indeed, the conflict may be about to be unfrozen and back in the news again.

To recap briefly (if this is possible in the context of the tangled history of the Balkans) in the late 1990s, Serbia attempted to drive out the ethnic Albanians from the Kosovo province of Serbia by the hundreds of thousands in the hope of preventing the province from declaring independence. Albanians, who are Muslims, make up 90 percent of Kosovo's population of 2 million. This followed a decade of conflict, during which Serbia, the successor state to the former Yugoslavia had fought against the independence of former Yugoslav republics Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Slovenia.

A bombing campaign in 1999 by the United States and its NATO allies finally intervened against the mass expulsions and murders committed by Serbian forces in Kosovo. The bombing campaign had its hits and misses — we hit an empty train and the Chinese embassy, among other things — but it did put a stop to the atrocities on the ground. The Serbian leader who had presided over the wars against Serbia's neighbors, Slobodan Milosevic, was toppled and placed on war crimes trial in The Hague, where he subsequently died in prison of a heart attack.

On the ground in Kosovo, nothing much has happened for the past 10 years. The hostility between the majority Albanian and minority Serbian populations remains intense. American and European troops are in Kosovo to keep the uneasy peace between them so far with no end in sight for their deployment.

The Albanian threat has been in the air for some time that if the international community cannot negotiate a final-status agreement for Kosovo, it will declare independence unilaterally. The province has a very young population (50 percent are under 18), which is growing restive. Sky-high unemployment ensures that there is very little productively to keep their minds off the seething anger over the past. Chances are that later this month, the Kosovo leadership will take the fateful step of declaring secession from Serbia. The trigger will be presidential elections in Serbia on Jan. 20 and Feb. 3, which may move in a more nationalistic direction.

This will present major headaches for the international community, understandable and justifiable though it is. And it is equally hard to see how independence will actually improve the lives of the Kosovars, who occupy one of the most economically depressed parts of Europe, beyond offering psychological satisfaction. Will it rebuild Kosovo's still bombed-out ruined towns? Will it produce economic engagement and foreign investment? Will it create jobs or build schools? Will it root out rampant corruption at official levels? All of these are desperately needed before Kosovo can be said to have a future as a functioning state.

The international community remains stumped. Serbia, which adamantly opposes Kosovo independence, has few supporters, mainly Greece and Russia, both of which belong to the Orthodox Church like Serbia. Within the European Union, Greece has been the odd man out against accepting Kosovo independence.

Russia, meanwhile, has been the holdout in the U.N. Security Council, where it threatens to oppose recognition of Kosovo, which is favored by the United States. Russia for its part has seized the opportunity to muddy the waters by threatening to tie the issue to the ethnic conflicts in the former Soviet Union, such as Transdnester in Moldova, South Ossettia and Abkhazia in Georgia and Nagorno Karabakh in Azerbaijan.

The Russian argument is that if Kosovo deserves self-determination, so do these other minority areas. Funnily enough, Russia has failed to mention any impact a Kosovo precedent would have on Chechnya, which tried to secede from Russia, only to endure a brutal military Russian campaign (designed by President Putin none other) to beat any such idea out of the Chechens.

Is there a solution? The most logical is for the entire Balkan area eventually to become part of NATO and the European Union, which will offer hope of economic development and integration into its structures. How we get to there from here, however, is a difficult road to envision.