Towards a critical situation in the Balkans
José M. de Areilza
April 16, 2007
Some experts in the region are starting to push the alarm buttons. Their assesment of the future of Kosovo is very bleak and deserves the Union’s attention. Ahtissari’ s Plan for an independent but internationally controlled Kosovo, endorsed by the EU and the US, is in these narratives part of the problem and definitely not the solution. Serbia and Russia do not support the Plan but they do not have enough political capital to stop its implementation.
If Kosovo becomes independent in the next months, the Serbians living in the North of Kosovo are very likely to push for partition of the new State, in order to keep their region as part of Serbia, as it is today. Other Serbians living in different enclaves in Kosovo would probable flee to the North or to Bosnia’s Serbian populated areas. The probability of violence and ethnic wars would become very high, with a terrible Islam vs. Christian dimension to it. The Kosovar minority living in Macedonia can become also part of this scenario of instability.
The Balkans dossier has not been a political priority in Europe in the last years and lately has been managed by civil servants with little political clout. France and the UK, key players in the region in the nineties, are now undergoing moments of weak leadership, because of presidential elections and the end of the Blair era. The US is too busy in Irak and in this issue is unwisely guided by the Wilsonian principle of nationalities. Has the time come for the German Presidency of the EU to step in and suggest alternatives to Ahtissari’ s Plan?
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