(David
Balham)
UNMIK’s fortunes have changed too. At first hailed by the
Albanian majority as liberators, the UN presence has been the target of
increasing frustration from all communities, who complain that progress is too
little, too slow.
Dissent among the Kosovo Albanians peaked earlier this year
with the arrest of prominent Albanians on war crimes charges. It was then that
the mission first acquired the unflattering nickname of “Unmikistan” in local
media. Since then UNMIK has often been blamed for all of Kosovo’s woes, from
electricity shortages to unemployment.
So four years on how is UNMIK really doing? To check the
score card we spoke to Dusan Janjic, from the Belgrade Forum for Ethnic
Relations, and Muhamedin Kullashi, a
professor of Philosophy at Paris University.
Professor Kullashi believes UNMIK has done well in improving
security, but has failed on the economic front.
Muhamedin Kullashi: The main objection would be that, unfortunately, in
four years the international community did very little to help the economic
development of kosovo – there are no investments. They didn’t try and solve the
problem of unemployment and this makes solving political problems even harder.
Those political problems, he says, include
the biggest one of all: Kosovo’s future status. Politics, economics and unemployment are caught up in a vicious circle.
Muhamedin Kullashi: Because the final status of Kosovo is unsolved they
(the internationals) are not doing anything to solve the Kosovar economic
problem. And this ends up in a closed circle since. How can Kosovo fulfill
those standards that it is supposed to fulfill if there are no attempts to
employ the large number of youth who are unemployed in Kosovo.
Meanwhile in Belgrade Dusan Janjic divides UNMIK’s work
over the last four years into three separate phases. The first is the period of
the first SRSG Bernard Kouchner, who put great efforts into humanitarian issues like the return of
Albanian refugees. In that time UNMIK established elementary conditions for
peace building.
The most important and most successful period, says
Janjic, is that of SRSG Hans Haekkerup. International institutions and
procedures and a judiciary system were established in that time, and the
Constitutional Framework setting out how Kosovo is governed was introduced.
Janjic is less complimentary about the third phase,
under current SRSG Michael Steiner. This period should have focused on economic
issues, he says, but in fact became a time of politics, sometimes with bad
results. And it’s in the area of politics that he believes UNMIK is weakest.
Dusan Janjic: Whoever becomes SRSG will not be
in a position to do a lot of things, because the mandate of UN hasn’t been clearly defined and
Resolution 1244 is not enough for the UN mission to do basic things and that is
the need of International Community to “flow” between two demands: Belgrade’s
demand that UNMIK should work in Kosovo instead of Belgrade and afterwards take
over Kosovo, and the Albanian demand
that UNMIK is something temporary and that it should hand over power to local
authorities and just be there to provide finances. The problem is the fact that
the whole UNMIK is set on bad political base – on a bureaucratic idea of
international politics, which makes it hard to fight Balkan frauds.
However much UNMIK may have been hamstrung by its
mandate, and by the refusal so far of the Serbs and Albanians to talk to each
other, there has been notable progress in forming institutions such as the
provisional government. Susan Manuel was the spokesperson for the first three
and a half years of the mission, and now works in New York. She believes
forming the institutions was a crucial step for Kosovo, giving it the basis for
European standards of democracy and human rights.
Susan Manuel: I don’t think
this was time wasted, I think that the structures in place will be fiddled with
by whoever inherits the administration, but they will be enduring, and a lot of
people did dedicate their years and their work to the people of Kosovo.
Still, it seems that dedication is not always recognized.
There have been many calls of late for UNMIK to leave, fuelled recently by
comments from Parliamentary Speaker Nexhat Daci that international staff are in
Kosovo only for high salaries, good restaurants, and beautiful women. So should
UNMIK pack its bags? No, says Professor Kullashi.
Muhamedin Kullashi: It is illusionary to ask,
like some people do, for UNMIK to leave, that is being politically
short-sighted. Since we should know that UNMIK’s presence is a great help for
Kosovo, it is a very important stability factor in the Balkans. What can be
asked for is more efficiency in solving the big Kosovar problems.
UN-bashing hasn’t been restricted to Kosovo. During the
build-up to the Iraqi war there was much criticism of the UN’s recent
performance. UNMIK was even used as a reason for not giving the UN control over
Iraq. But those criticisms faded away quickly when civil problems began in Iraq
in the wake of military action. Now, says Susan Manuel, there is general
recognition that the UN is doing a good job in Kosovo, which is proven by the
number of ex-UNMIK officials being chosen to work in Iraq.
Susan Manuel: I think within
the UN they think things are going pretty well and also in Washington they
think things are going pretty well, and there’s no real cause for despair or
alarm. And really the testimony to that is the fact that so many UN people are
now being tapped for leading positions in Iraq.
Former spokeswoman Susan Manuel ending today’s program, as
UNMIK celebrates its fourth birthday. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for
more.