Article

March 2004 riots in Kosovo: a failure of the international community.

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In June 1999, the international community, represented by KFOR and UNMIK entered Kosovo, and started one of the most costly peace-building operations ever. In March 2004 a part of the Albanian majority in Kosovo carried out riots that primarily targeted the Serb minority. The riots reversed much of the perceived progress five years of hard work by KFOR and UNMIK after the war in 1999. KFOR and UNMIK failed to use the levers of hard power—the principled and decisive application of force—or of soft power—education, the media and the symbolic environment—to convince the vast majority of Kosovars to robustly support Kosovo’s new legal and political order. UNMIK and KFOR were never able to change a situation where a sizable segment of the population pursued crime and militancy. The rule of UNMIK and KFOR created an atmosphere of impunity which directly contributed to the expectations and attitudes that led to the riots of March 2004. Key lessons identified are the need to define an end-state, to eliminate national caveats, and to base realistic expectations on thorough study of history.

FUTURE ROLES AND MISSIONS OF THE KOSOVO SECURITY FORCE

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Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War. By Susan L. Woodward. (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1995. Pp. 536. $42.95 hard, $18.95 paper.)

Article

Aug 1996

Alex N. Dragnich

Article

Homeland Calling: Exile Patriotism and the Balkan Wars

July 2004 · Mediterranean Quarterly

Sol Schindler

Mediterranean Quarterly 15.3 (2004) 152-155 Immigrants to the United States often form community organizations to maintain their ethnic culture and to keep ties to the home country alive, and they do so without in any way impairing their new American patriotism. The large immigrant streams from Eastern and Southern Europe during the early part of the twentieth century, consisting for the most ... [Show full abstract] part of the laboring classes coming for economic rather than political reasons, conformed to this pattern. The émigrés forced out of Europe because of World War II and its aftermaths were of a different cast. They were better educated and more politically minded than their predecessors. The organizations they formed had a purpose far beyond that of folk dancing and ethnic home cooking. Paul Hockenos, an American journalist now living in Europe, attempts in his latest book, Homeland Calling, to show how those groups coming from Yugoslavia interacted with previous immigrants and how they influenced events in their home countries. His book is divided into four parts, the largest being devoted to Croatia, others focusing on Serbia and Kosovo, and a brief conclusion. The omission of chapters concerning the three other republics that emerged from the collapse of Yugoslavia—Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia—can be explained by the fact that their new governments had no organizational ties to immigrant groups abroad. Those immigrants in the United States who had been born in Bosnia were for the most part Serbs in language, religion, and national sentiment. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the first American ambassador to Bosnia was a Bosnian-born Muslim, and that the Bosnian government had sufficient insight into American affairs to hire early on a competent public affairs agency. In the chapter concerning Croatia, the author details the relationship of Franjo Tudjman with the immigrant Croatian societies in the United States. Tudjman had been a leading partisan figure during World War II but had gradually drifted into a Croatian nationalism fixation during the years of Tito, so much so that at one time he had even been arrested by the central government. Nevertheless, he remained a prominent and influential figure in Croatian circles and was allowed by the federal government to visit Canada and the United States during the 1980s. As was to be expected during his visits he spoke to many Croatian immigrant groups. What was surprising, however, was that he sought out extremists to speak to. These were often former members of the Ustashe, the fascist organization that the Italians and Nazis had installed in Croatia, and which was at least as if not more bloodthirsty than its sponsors. The author writes of more than three hundred thousand Serbs, thirty thousand Jews, and the entire Gypsy population falling victim to Ustashe executioners. It was therefore shocking to hear this former partisan commander, who had killed Ustashe and whose troops had been killed by them, talk of burying past differences through the embrace of nationalism. He was extraordinarily successful; the leaders of all the extremist parties became passionate followers and funneled as much money as they could raise into his coffers. When Tudjman became president of the newly independent Croatia, he invited many of them into his government. Gojko Suslak, a former pizza house owner, for example, became minister of defense despite a lack of military knowledge other than gun running. According to the author, Warren Zimmermann, the last American ambassador to Yugoslavia, was clearly put off by Suslak and described him as "a Darth Vader doppelganger with his long lined face, hooded eyes, and permanent scowl." Nevertheless, Suslak made the most of his new position. With his idiomatic English and love for things American, he got along well with visiting American military, and when the Clinton administration decided that Croatia was the key to peace in the area and agreed to help reconstitute the Croatian army, Suslak presided with American advisers over the transformation of a ragtag, uncoordinated army into a smoothly functioning strike force. It destroyed the Srbska Krajina Republic, an independent...

Article

Kosovo: The Balkan Time Bomb?

June 1998

The conflict between ethnic Albanians and Orthodox Christian Serbs in the Serbian region of Kosovo provides the foundation for a Fourth Balkan War. Kosovo was at the origin of the most recent Balkan conflict and may unravel peace efforts in the future. Serbia revoked Kosovo's autonomous status in 1989 and has instituted a campaign of repression that is currently unrivaled in Europe. The ethnic ... [Show full abstract] Albanian majority in Kosovo comprises over ninety percent of the population and seeks recognition as the independent Republic of Kosovo. Initially, ethnic Albanians responded peacefully to Serb antagonism, but impatience with the lack of progress has led to the use of terrorism to achieve political aims. The recent emergence of the Liberation Army of Kosovo (UCK) as the vehicle for the armed opposition has provoked a series of violent Serb crackdowns. Ethnic Albanian leaders of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo understand the need for external support and are working to court the international community. Although outside intervention is a sine qua non of a solution to the Kosovo problem, the international community did not address the issue in the 1995 Dayton Accords. Thesis (Master's).

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The rise of balkan organized crime

January 2014

J. Arsovska

After the end of the Cold War, organized crime became a subject of grave concern for the European Union (EU). No longer was it perceived as an American or Italian phenomenon only. In 2000, Javier Solana, the Secretary General of the Council of the EU stated: “It is an enemy we must defeat, or it will defeat us.” In particular, organized crime groups from Southeast Europe (SEE) – frequently ... [Show full abstract] referred to as Balkan organized crime groups – attracted enormous international attention during the 1990s. One reason for their dramatic rise was the way the postcommunist transition was initiated in SEE, compared to Central Europe or the Baltic states. In SEE, the reform process was neither smooth nor peaceful; it was marked by the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia. Moreover, the emerging accommodations between corrupt SEE authorities and organized crime groups during the creation of new states fostered the development of crime-permeated societies. Balkan organized crime groups often enjoyed political support and profited from the 90s’ lawlessness. They were labeled “highly dangerous,” posing a serious threat to Western societies (European Council, 2003; UNODC, 2008). For the purpose of this chapter, the term “Balkan organized crime” refers to organized crime groups whose members originate mainly from Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia. This chapter discusses the nature, structure(s), and activities of these groups.

Book

La géopolitique du peuplement des Balkans

January 2018

Gérard-François Dumont

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Full-text available

France With Macron: The Destabilizing Factor In The Balkans

December 2022

Teoman Ertuğrul Tulun

In many of our previous articles, we had drawn attention to the historic and geographic integrity of the Balkans. When one refers to the Balkans, it has historically conjured a region encompassing Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, the successor states of former Yugoslavia (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia), and Albania. Despite this historic ... [Show full abstract] definition of the region, in the context of European Union (EU) expansion, the term “Western Balkans” has been fabricated since early 1990s. According to the EU; Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece, since they are members of the EU, are not part of the Balkans anymore. On the other hand, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania, and Macedonia comprise the so-called "Western Balkans" sub-region. Turkey, by its lonesome self, makes up the other, unmentioned part of the Balkans which supposedly forms the "Eastern Balkans”. It should be reiterated on this occasion that this fabricated terminology of “Western Balkans”, in a harmful and imperceptible fashion, excludes Turkey from the Balkans, hence from Europe. In this respect, we continue to believe that this terminology is biased against Turkey.

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The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s

December 2017

Gagnon, V.P., Jr

"The wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in neighboring Croatia and Kosovo grabbed the attention of the western world not only because of their ferocity and their geographic location, but also because of their timing. This violence erupted at the exact moment when the cold war confrontation was drawing to a close, when westerners were claiming their liberal values as triumphant, in a country that had ... [Show full abstract] only a few years earlier been seen as very well placed to join the west. In trying to account for this outburst, most western journalists, academics, and policymakers have resorted to the language of the premodern: tribalism, ethnic hatreds, cultural inadequacy, irrationality; in short, the Balkans as the antithesis of the modern west. Yet one of the most striking aspects of the wars in Yugoslavia is the extent to which the images purveyed in the western press and in much of the academic literature are so at odds with evidence from on the ground."-from The Myth of Ethnic War V. P. Gagnon Jr. believes that the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s were reactionary moves designed to thwart populations that were threatening the existing structures of political and economic power. He begins with facts at odds with the essentialist view of ethnic identity, such as high intermarriage rates and the very high percentage of draft-resisters. These statistics do not comport comfortably with the notion that these wars were the result of ancient blood hatreds or of nationalist leaders using ethnicity to mobilize people into conflict. Yugoslavia in the late 1980s was, in Gagnon's view, on the verge of large-scale sociopolitical and economic change. He shows that political and economic elites in Belgrade and Zagreb first created and then manipulated violent conflict along ethnic lines as a way to short-circuit the dynamics of political change. This strategy of violence was thus a means for these threatened elites to demobilize the population. Gagnon's noteworthy and rather controversial argument provides us with a substantially new way of understanding the politics of ethnicity.

Article

Greece and Turkey After the End of the Cold War

March 2003 · Mediterranean Quarterly

Constantine Pagedas

Mediterranean Quarterly 14.1 (2003) 92-95 Few modern observers would deny that Greece and Turkey have had a long and particularly prickly relationship. Like other notable historical rivalries between neighboring countries, such as France and Germany, Spain and Portugal, Russia and China, or even India and Pakistan, the relationship between Greece and Turkey is unique. Not only is the baggage of ... [Show full abstract] history particularly heavy between these nominal North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies, but both countries form an important geostrategic nexus in the eastern Mediterranean. There, the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa join together; the Islamic East meets the Christian West; precious oil and gas reserves from the Caspian Sea region are transported to Europe; and critical forward bases exist from which the United States and its Western allies have launched military strikes against Iraq and deterred any aggressive nation, such as Iran, that might wish to upset the balance of power in the Middle East. Indeed, academics such as Samuel Huntington have pointed to the region as a primary battleground for the so-called clash of civilizations. In light of the post-11 September world and the current war on terrorism, the geopolitical importance of the eastern Mediterranean, and particularly that of Turkey, the world's only Muslim democracy with a Western orientation, is critical to the United States and its Western allies. Given what is at stake in the region, Western observers must keep a watchful eye on any new developments in the relationship between Greece and Turkey. During the Cold War, these two countries could barely contain their competitive relationship, which nearly boiled over into open warfare in July and August 1974 when Turkey invaded the small, though strategically important, island of Cyprus. While the superpower competition between the United States and the Soviet Union dampened the possibility of an open Greek-Turkish confrontation, relations between Athens and Ankara have grown increasingly complex after the end of the Cold War. Cyprus, today a front-running candidate for membership in the European Union, remains a divided island. The crises in the Balkans and the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s again put Greece and Turkey on opposite sides of the political divide. While Turkey was sending aid to fellow Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, and Kosovo during some of the bloodiest fighting seen on the European continent since the Second World War, Greece was lending political, economic, and moral support to fellow Orthodox Christian Serbia and the regime of Slobodan Milosovic. Greece is also at odds with Turkey as it defends its sovereignty over the tiny islet of Imia in the International Court of Justice in The Hague and builds a strong case that Turkish airplanes have all too frequently violated Greek airspace. These issues, and many other facets of the complicated Greek-Turkish relationship today, form the basis for the ambitious and important volume coedited by Christodoulos Yiallourides and Panayotis Tsakonas. This book is divided thematically into four broad sections: political culture and foreign affairs, strategy and foreign policy, specific issues, and systemic factors. All of the contributions are by ethnically Greek academics, save the foreword by Ian O. Lesser of the RAND Corporation and a chapter on the U.S. perspective of "Greece and Turkey in the Post-Cold War Era" by former United States ambassador to Greece Monteagle Stearns. A Turkish, and in some cases a Russian, or even Israeli, perspective would have been helpful. Nevertheless, most of the contributors to this weighty volume have a decent grasp on the many issues that run through the bilateral Greek-Turkish relationship. One of the strongest chapters in this book is by Gerassimos Karabelias, who presents an excellent introduction to the important, and all too often decisive, role of the military in Turkish politics. Given that many foreign observers do not fully appreciate the influential role of Turkey's armed forces in daily political life, Karabelias' chapter is long overdue—certainly with Turkey's EU application now a...

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Future of the balkans and U.S. Policy concerns

January 2010

S. Woehrel

The United States, its allies, and local leaders have achieved substantial successes in the Balkans since the mid-1990s. The wars in the region have ended, and all of the countries are undertaking political and economic reforms at home and orienting their foreign policies toward Euro-Atlantic institutions. However, difficult challenges remain, including dealing with the impact of Kosovo’s ... [Show full abstract] independence; fighting organized crime, corruption, and enforcing the rule of law; bringing war criminals to justice; and reforming the economies of the region. The goal of the United States and the international community is to stabilize the Balkans in a way that is self-sustaining and does not require direct intervention by NATO-led forces and international civilian officials. The United States has reduced the costs of its commitments to the region, in part due to competing U.S. and international priorities, such as the war on terrorism, and efforts to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan, which have placed strains on U.S. resources. SFOR and KFOR, the NATO-led peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Kosovo, were reduced in size. In December 2004, SFOR’s mission was concluded, and European Union troops took over peacekeeping duties in Bosnia. No U.S. combat troops remain in Bosnia. About 15,500 troops remain in Kosovo as part of KFOR, including 1,500 U.S. soldiers. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, the war on terrorism has been the United States’ main foreign policy priority, including in the Balkans. Before September 11, Al Qaeda supporters operated from Bosnia and Albania. However, the Bush Administration said that these countries and others in the region “actively supported” the war on terrorism, shutting down terrorist front organizations and seizing their assets. Although their efforts are hampered by the weakness of local government institutions, U.S. antiterrorism efforts in the Balkans are aided by U.S. military and intelligence assets in the region, as well as a reservoir of good will among local Muslims of all ethnic groups. Congress has played an important role in shaping U.S. Balkans policy. Some Members supported Clinton Administration efforts to intervene to stop the fighting in the region in the mid and late 1 990s, while others were opposed. Members were leery of an open-ended commitment to the region and sought to contain these costs through adoption of benchmarks and limiting U.S. aid and troop levels to the region. The end of the wars in the Balkans and the shift in U.S. priorities in the wake of the September 11 attacks has moved the Balkans to the periphery of congressional concerns, at least when compared to the situation in the 1 990s. However, Congress has continued to have an impact on such issues as Kosovo’s status, conditioning some U.S. aid to Serbia on cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and supporting NATO membership for the countries of the region. On May 12, 2009, the House passed H.R. 171, which calls on Bosnia to make constitutional reforms and on the Administration to appoint a special envoy to the Balkans. In late May 2009, Vice President Joe Biden will reportedly visit Kosovo, Bosnia, and Serbia to discuss the situation in the region.

Article

The Western Balkans and the international community

Anton Bebler

1. The general characteristic of the region Recent political tensions in and related to Kosovo, Serbia, Macedonia and Bosnia & Herzegovina have again attracted attention to the Western Balkans in several important international bodies (UN, OSCE, EU, NATO). The region has during the last two centuries well merited the distinction as the most volatile and troublesome part of the European continent. ... [Show full abstract] Throughout the last century local warfare and coalition wars with continental implications, uprisings, revolutions, coups d'etat, guerrilla warfare, genocide, mass expulsion of population, terrorism and other forms of violence have at almost regular intervals punctured the periods of regional peace. After a period of relative calm which lasted about four decades the latest bouts of bloody violence and wars in the region took place again in 1990 – 1995 and in 1998-1999. This first upsurge followed and was largely triggered by otherwise positive developments – by the end of the "Cold War", the breakdown of a score of communist regimes and by the ensuing transition to more democratic political systems and to market economies. The Western Balkans has proved to be an unstable region, very sensitive to the shifts in relations between major powers. In these respects the Balkans differs substantively from the northern half of former Eastern Europe and is similar in its make-up to the geopolitical fault line stretching from Eastern Turkey all the way to China. Not incidentally this fault line was called by Z. Brzezinski the "Asian Balkans". This characteristic of the Balkans has had deep historical roots. During more than a millennium numerous incursions and migrations of various ethnicities created in the Balkans a unique and most heterogonous mixture of peoples and ethnic groups speaking different languages and professing different religions. Having been for many centuries divided between several empires, with their centers of power outside its bounds the Balkans have never become a viable and coherent region in cultural, economic or political sense. Today it obviously lacks its own natural center of gravity. In addition the disintegration of ex – Yugoslavia in 1991-1992 has greatly increased the political fragmentation in the Western Balkans. The proclamation of Kosovo´s independence on February 17, 2008 was the latest shift in this direction. However the potential for further political fragmentation in the region has not been fully exhausted in spite of the generally negative attitudes towards 'Balkanization' displayed by major powers and by the most important international organizations. It was not by accident that the political fragmentation in the Balkans largely followed ethnic – national lines. Smaller states which resulted from the breakdown of the multinational federation SFRY are today much less heterogeneous from the ethnic, religious and cultural view-points than had been the Yugoslav federation and have become also culturally more homogeneous within their own boundaries.

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Integrating Serbia into the EU

January 2010

Milica Uvalic

The transition in Serbia has also been slowed down by the exceptionally unfavourable international conditions that have prevailed during most of the last 20 years. Some of the problems are specific to Serbia, while others are common to all countries in the region of SEE. The process of Serbia’s economic and political integration with the EU therefore needs to be analysed within the broader ... [Show full abstract] context of EU policies towards the whole SEE region. In EU terminology, the SEE region is usually referred to as the ‘Western Balkans’, which until 2006 comprised five states: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYR Macedonia), and FR Yugoslavia (Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo), although its wider definition also includes Bulgaria and Romania.

Article

Ethnic Conflict Is Threatening in Yet Another Region of Yugoslavia: Kosovo

Stephen Kinzer

When diplomats and politicians in the Balkans try to imagine where the next regional conflict might break out, their attention quickly turns to the restive Yugoslav region of Kosovo, where ethnic conflicts run deep and prospects for peaceful compromise seem bleak. More than 90 percent of Kosovo's citizens are ethnic Albanians, most of them Muslim. They feel a close kinship with neighboring ... [Show full abstract] Albania, as well as with Albanians in adjoining parts of Montenegro and Macedonia. For the Serbs who rule them, they feel only resentment and hostility. "There is a danger that the Serbs will try to provoke violence in Kosovo as a way of stirring up nationalist sentiment," a diplomat in Belgrade said. "That would be very serious, because a conflict in Kosovo would probably not be confined within the borders of the former Yugoslavia. Albania would become involved, pressure on Turkey to become involved would be intense, and Greece might also be dragged in. It's a nightmare scenario." Most people in Kosovo strongly favor separation from Serbia. Their leaders say they would accept a loose union with Yugoslavia, but only until they could gain full independence. Their ultimate goal is union with Albania. Unless the Serbian authorities here impose a new crackdown or arrange some form of provocation, however, no explosion appears imminent. The savagery of the war that has enveloped nearby Bosnia and Herzegovina has sobered many Kosovans, who realize that they have no hope of resisting the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav Army. Hope for 'Some Peaceful Way' "We now see that it is impossible to fight the Serbs," said Blerim Shala, a leading Kosovo journalist who was jailed for three weeks last year after publishing a map headlined "The Albania of Albanians' Dreams." It showed an imaginary state including Albania, Kosovo and nearby regions where ethnic Albanians are in the majority.

Article

The Limits of Non-Military International Intervention: A Case Study of the Kosovo Conflict

April 2003

Stefan Wolff

The conflict in Kosovo is an ethnic conflict with strong territorial and cross-border/international dimensions. Its implications reach beyond Kosovo into Serbia, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), and the neighbouring states Albania and Macedonia. The conflict also had (and still has) an impact on the stability of the entire Balkans. Driven by concerns about the human rights situation in ... [Show full abstract] Kosovo and the implications of a further escalation of the latent conflict there, a number of international governmental organizations began to adopt various strategies of intervention since 1990, starting with the European Parliament's first resolution on Kosovo. 1 The intervention strategies adopted prior to NATO's air campaign reached from declarations of concern and the funding of NGO initiatives, to CSCE/OSCE monitoring missions in Kosovo, and to concrete proposals how to address the Kosovo crisis. The organizations involved were on the global level the United Nations and the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia and its successor organizations, on the transatlantic level NATO, the CSCE/OSCE, and the Contact Group on Bosnia-Herzegovina, and on the European level the EU, the WEU, the European Parliament, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Apart from this, there have been a number of bilateral and regional initiatives, such as the Kinkel-Védrine Initiative of November 1997 2 and the Turkey-inspired initiative to create a Copyright (c) Stefan Wolff. All rights reserved. No reprint without permission.