Fight Crime At Its Source
by SRSG Michael Steiner
Reprinted from La Libre Belgique, Brussels, 1 June 2002

It was 1851 when Otto von Bismark, later to become the father of a united Germany, remarked that the whole of the Balkans was not worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier. Little over half a century later, Gavrilo Princip’s shot in Sarajevo ignited a war that pulled all of Europe into a vortex from which a democratic Germany has begun to emerge only in my lifetime.

Long before September 11, events in the Balkans had a way of reaching out to disturb the complacency of even the most distant Europeans.

Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt understands that what happens on Europe’s edges in general - and in Kosovo in particular - has a direct impact on Europe’s security. That’s why on his recent visit to Kosovo the Prime Minister urged his fellow Europeans to finish the job in Kosovo.

With crises in Afghanistan and the Middle East, international pressures to redirect resources will inevitably mount. Some will tell themselves the job in Kosovo is already finished. Others may argue that it can never be finished, so why continue throwing good money after bad?

The answer is that our job is not yet over but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and we know how to reach it. Kosovo now has a democratically elected Assembly and Government with nine ministries. The UN mission is in the process of transferring authority to these new institutions. Together, Kosovo’s elected representatives and civil servants already bear significant responsibility for progress in areas necessary for Kosovo to qualify as a good European neighbor: the rule of law, multi-ethnicity and integration, and sustainable economic development on a free market basis.

As donor fatigue inevitably increases three years after the NATO air campaign, we have to bear in mind a fundamental truth: our investment of manpower, money and political energy in Kosovo has been motivated not only by altruism but by enlightened self-interest.

In the shadow of electoral successes by exclusionary politicians across the continent, Europeans must recognize that instability on Europe’s frontiers has a direct impact on domestic politics throughout Europe itself. The irrational xenophobia of the far right gains credibility when more pragmatic concerns about uncontrolled immigration affect mainstream thinking. The social equilibrium of European societies is especially imperiled when immigrants become associated with a perceived rise in crime.

Over the past ten years, a very significant share both of unplanned immigration and immigrant-related crime in Europe has emanated from the human flood that resulted from the collapse of Yugoslavia. The wars in Bosnia and Croatia created hundreds of thousands of refugees, most of whom sought asylum in Europe. Though most later returned, thus achieving the main goal of the intervention, during the NATO air strikes some 800,000 Kosovar Albanians sought refuge outside Kosovo.

Such huge movements of people put a difficult strain on receiving countries. Immigration is less disruptive, on the other hand, when it is gradual and controlled. During talks with Jose Maria Aznar, the President of the European Council, Tony Blair expressed an emerging consensus of European leaders when he said, “We are not advocating a fortress Europe, but… there has got to be some order and some rules brought into the system.” The message is clear: more orderly immigration today will forestall Europe’s transformation into a fortress tomorrow. For the sake of Europe’s demographic stability, we must make Kosovo an exporter of stability.

This is even more urgently important in connection with crime. Over the last few years, Albanian organized criminals – some connected with Kosovo - have displaced other ethnically based syndicates throughout much of Europe. In London, for instance, some 70% of prostitution is controlled by Albanian gangs. Albanian pimps are especially hard to prosecute because they silence women who might testify against them by threatening their families back in the region.

This “advantage” points to the importance of extirpating the weed of organized crime by establishing the rule of law. As long as there are areas of life in some part of Europe that are subject to the rule of the jungle rather than the rule of law, there will be ruthless people who will force the vulnerable to do their bidding.

In mid-May, the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) convened the first ever regional conference on cigarette smuggling. Finance Ministers from Kosovo, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia all signed the Prishtina Declaration, a commitment to make common cause in fighting the smugglers throughout the Balkans who steal millions of Euros in tax revenue from those working to create healthy and prosperous societies.

The fight against crime also requires the creation of legitimate sources of income. The EU pillar within UNMIK is heading the effort to regenerate Kosovo’s economy on a free market basis. Central to this effort is the creation of a sound regulatory environment and the emancipation of state-held resources through privatization. The Kosovo Trust Agency will soon begin the process of privatization revamping utilities. This process does not promise any short-term fix. But in the long run, it is the only way to generate the jobs that will undercut the temptation of illicit activity.

At the same time we need to redouble our efforts to fight crime directly through more sophisticated and intensive policing. New regulations give Kosovo’s police, both international and local, the means to take the fight to the core of Kosovo’s criminal networks. But arrests will only be meaningful if we’re able to prosecute offenders in trials that are both timely and credible. At this point, Kosovo has ten international prosecutors and 14 international judges working alongside 43 Kosovo prosecutors and 297 local judges. In a society that remains divided, the international judges and prosecutors are vital to the implementation of the rule of law in Kosovo. We need more of them. While the UN mission is reducing its overall numbers, the Department of Justice, which remains under UN control, is expanding. We need European support to intensify our fight against crime. In the provincial town of Prizren alone there are some 240 trafficked women working as prostitutes. If Kosovo’s judiciary were to prosecute all their pimps, the caseload would choke our existing courts for the next 3 years.

In the fight against crime emanating from Kosovo we have only two choices. We can either pay now to attack the criminals where they live or we can pay more later to defend against them where we do. Both for Kosovo and for Europe, it is crucial to give us the means to attack these networks at their source. Only then will we have reached the light at the end of the tunnel and its rewa