The border question
Some in the region think the unthinkable: redrawing borders
From The Economist print edition
IN THE past few weeks American and European officials have been strident: Kosovo should not be partitioned. Who
A hostage in Presevo
said it should be? No senior Serbian or Kosovo-Albanian official has suggested redrawing the borders. Privately, however, it is a different matter. And that is why diplomats are nervous.
Kosovo declared independence in 2008. Some 69 countries have now recognised it. Numbers count, but some countries count more than others. Russia, China, India and five European Union members still refuse to recognise Kosovo.
In October 2008 Serbia managed to get the legality of Kosovo’s declaration referred to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The court will give an advisory opinion later this year that is expected to be ambiguous. At that point Serbian officials will ask the United Nations General Assembly to pass a resolution demanding new talks on Kosovo’s status.
This outrages American and European diplomats, who privately tell Serbia’s leaders that by fighting so tenaciously over Kosovo, they are jeopardising Serbia’s EU accession prospects. Nobody, they say, wants to import a “new Cyprus” into the EU.
Vuk Jeremic, Serbia’s foreign minister, says his country will choose Kosovo over the EU. Yet 90% of Kosovo’s 2m population are ethnic Albanians, who are ferociously hostile to Serbia. Nobody in Belgrade seriously believes they could be incorporated back into Serbia’s body politic.
Boris Begovic, an economist, argues that Serbia needs a plan B. He suggests that it might forget about EU accession and follow the path of Norway and Switzerland, which harmonise most of their laws and policies with Brussels, but are not EU members. Another idea is the so-called German option, which harks back to the cold-war days when the two German states neither recognised each other nor actively hindered each other on the international stage.
But then there is the option that sets so many on edge. Kosovo has some 130,000 Serbs. Most live in small southern
and central enclaves, but almost half live in a sliver of land north of the River Ibar (see map). This region is part of Kosovo, but the government’s writ does not run there. On May 30th local elections were held under Serbian auspices.
Many Kosovars would be happy to be shot of their indigestible north. They talk of trading it for Albanian-inhabited parts of south Serbia, such as the Presevo valley, where two-thirds of the 90,000 people are Albanian. An exchange of territories with Serbia, says Ragmi Mustafa, the Albanian mayor of Presevo, would “would bring stability to the region and stop war forever.” For their part, many Serbs believe that their country could give up its claim on Kosovo south of the Ibar.
Western diplomats fear that even discussing border changes could stir the Balkans’ ghosts, leading to trouble in Bosnia and Macedonia. No adjustments are likely in the short or medium term. But without some movement, the Albanian south of Serbia and the Serbian north of Kosovo will remain poor and neglected. Belgzim Kamberi, a human-rights activist in Presevo, laments that “we are hostages of relations between Belgrade and Pristina”. They could yet be part of the solution, not the problem.
Source: The Economist (UK)
