17.12.10
Leonidas GontzesEKEM Visiting Fellow
On 3 June 1999, following an eleven-week United States (U.S.)-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) aerial war-campaign to enforce peace in Kosovo, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic accepted the Alliance’s conditions for an armistice. (Brzezinski, 2007, p. 118) The cease-fire, in turn, allowed NATO to dispatch peacekeepers as part of Kosovo Force or KFOR and the United Nations (UN) to set up the United Nations Mission in Kosovo or UNMIK. Their objectives included peacekeeping operations and nation/state-building projects. (Mccgwire, 2000, p. 11) The war had succeeded in diffusing the intrastate conflict and had transformed Kosovo into an international protectorate. (Roudometof, 2002, p. 154) The purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent peace enforcement affected post-conflict reconstruction projects in Kosovo. Special emphasis will be placed on the notion of security as a prerequisite/precondition to successful nation/state-building efforts therein.
The centuries-old animosity between Serbs and Albanians can be traced back to the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans which commenced in the middle of the fourteenth century A.D. and was complete a hundred and fifty years later. (Dakin, 1971, p. 9) Medieval Serbia’s most famous and glorious battle took place on the Field of the Blackbirds, Kosovo Polje, on 28 June 1389, where Serb Prince Lazar led an army consisting, interestingly and rather ironically, of Serbs and Albanians (as well as Hungarians) against Sultan Murad I’s advancing Ottoman Turks in a battle which the Ottomans won, destroying the Serb state and ushering in a new era of Ottoman rule for the next five centuries. (Fromkin, 1999, p. 92) The Field of Kosovo, symbol of the Serbian Empire’s fall to the Ottoman Empire, and Pec, the old seat of the Serbian Patriarchate, are situated in Kosovo and Metohija respectively, with Kosovo making up the eastern part and Metohija the western part of the Kosovo-Metohija region. Following the Christian army’s defeat, there were more widespread conversions to Islam with Albanians switching allegiances in large numbers. The province’s demographic map further changed when most of the Serb population went north in two great migrations (1690 and 1737), mostly due to an influx of Turks (Palmer & King, 1971, p. 96) in conjunction with increased hostility from the region’s Albanians whose privileged status within the Ottoman Empire ignited conflict and controversies between the two peoples. (Simic, 1998, p. 180) Following the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 the region found itself again under Serbian administration as part of the Kingdom of Serbia (Hercher & Riedlmayer, 2000, p. 110; Wolfgram, 2008, p. 468) and remained an integral part of that state throughout its transformation and evolution into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (Jelavich, 1994, p. 200; p. 296). In March 1989, following decades of Titoist-inspired Albanian autonomy and self-governance, the Serbian government, on Slobodan Milosevic’s orders, invoking years of unrest that threatened the Serb population’s rights, security, and cultural heritage decided to impose direct rule on the province (which since 1974 was known simply as ‘Kosovo’ and which again became known as ‘Kosovo and Metohija’). (Hercher & Riedlmayer, 2000, p. 111) Increasing government repression and the failure of non-violent resistance to bring about change led to the formation of an armed Albanian insurgency, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) (Dobbins et al., 2003, p. 111; Hercher & Riedlmayer, 2000, p. 111; Wolfgram, 2008, p. 469) which made its appearance on 22 April 1996 (Thomas, 1999, p. 399-400), and the outbreak of open conflict between the KLA and Serbian security forces on 28 February 1998. (Thomas, 1999, p. 406) Government forces initiated counterinsurgency operations in early March 1998, directed against the KLA and other Albanian militants. (Hercher & Riedlmayer, 2000, p. 111) With the death toll during 1998 estimated at 2,000 (opinions differ as to both the identity of the victims and the perpetrators) and the number of displaced persons in the hundreds of thousands, ethnic Albanians claimed that Serbian security forces and Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) units forcibly deported Kosovo Albanians and carried out ethnic cleansing and genocide, charges that Belgrade vehemently denied. (Chomsky, 2003, p. 55-56; Parenti, 2000, p. 99-100)...more...
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