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Al-Ahram Weekly 17 - 23 June 1999 Issue No. 434 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 17 - 23 June 1999 Issue No. 434
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Living Travel Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Occupation is just the start
By Gamil Mattar *
The Kosovo crisis has not ended yet. The warring parties signed a military agreement in a restaurant at the border between Serbia and Macedonia, which thereby entered the history of the Balkans. The Serbian regime has withdrawn peacefully from Kosovo and the UN forces have moved in. The UN force, nominally 30 nations strong but which, in reality, is drawn from the five major NATO countries (the US, the UK, Germany, France and Italy), has taken up carefully studied positions. The German and Italian forces have stayed away, or been kept away, from the areas bordering on Serbia, leaving these areas to the British and American forces. Kosovo has entered a new phase.
So why is it that I, along with a few others, do not share the seemingly indisputable belief that the Kosovo crisis is near an end? For some analysts, too many issues remain unresolved. First, in the dead of night, or so it would appear, a Russian regiment that had been in Bosnia crept into Kosovo and occupied the airport. No one is certain which Western nation had actually been chosen to hold that position. Secondly, reports are circulating to the effect that the cost of reconstructing Kosovo alone may run to billions of dollars. The destruction wreaked by the NATO bombardment was far greater than anticipated. Finally, the NATO and Belgrade leaderships are both vaunting the "victory" that they supposedly achieved, which in itself is a preliminary to the internal mobilisation necessary for the next step.
Observers, particularly in the West, will be kept busy for some time seeking the answers to such questions as: did the military campaign achieve all its objectives? What is the net result of all the destruction and population transfers? More importantly, what next?
At the moment, I do not believe that there are any ready, convincing answers to these questions. The reports from Brussels, Washington, Belgrade and Moscow give one the impression that NATO has emerged victorious. Clinton is proclaiming the US's triumph over national and ethnic chauvinism in the Balkans, not just in Yugoslavia. In Yugoslavia, jubilant crowds are dancing in the streets. In Belgrade, we hear, people are hailing their president as a hero who cleverly outwitted the forces of evil, which is to say the West. The Russians are no less adept at hyperbole. Whether one comes out thinking that Yeltsin has beat the military establishment or that the military establishment has beat Yeltsin, one nevertheless gets the impression that the Russian leadership, as it tells its people, saved Yugoslavia from further destruction by NATO and preserved Kosovo.
Even Kofi Annan seems to have emerged victorious. When the parties to the conflict turned to the Security Council for a resolution referring the issue of Kosovo to New York -- that is, removing it from NATO's jurisdiction and transferring it to the aegis of the UN -- he remained silent. Whether wisdom or pressure prompted him to keep mum, he made no move to intervene, although he is the secretary-general of an international organisation whose job is to maintain peace and security in the world. Still, it is significant that, when the conflicting parties decided they needed a respectable formula to resolve the conflict, they turned to the UN. NATO forces cannot stay in Kosovo long unless their occupation is covered by the UN banner and the 50,000 NATO soldiers don blue helmets.
Ultimately, when the smoke cleared, Belgrade retained its sovereignty over Kosovo, confirmed by the UN Security Council. As a result, Milosevic, the man who has wrought such destruction in Yugoslavia during the past decade, can boast to his people that, in spite of the material destruction he caused his country, he is still in possession of Kosovo, the most important or piece of land in all of Yugoslavia. It was there that the Serbs met their defeat 500 years ago, exposing the rest of Europe to the Ottoman forces advancing from Anatolia. In Kosovo, too -- Serbian land, according to Serbian lore -- Ottoman forces were defeated in the 19th century, forcing the Ottoman Empire to withdraw from the Balkans.
In this sense, European and Yugoslav analysts can claim with considerable justification that Yugoslavia was defeated militarily, but not politically. Others will say that the Americans succeeded in delivering a blow to Serbian nationalism, one of the skeletons in Europe's cupboard.
Serbia's is not the only nationalism singled out for punishment, however. By concocting a cause and a war, the West has also struck at Arab nationalism, which, as the West sees it, must be eradicated prior to reformulating the Arab-Israeli conflict. More to the point, the strike on Serbia was a prerequisite for NATO's rearrangement of the Balkans along lines suiting its member nations; the fact that it also allowed for some stepping on Russian toes was a welcome fringe benefit.
Indeed, with regard to the latter point, one cannot help but note concerted attempts in recent European strategic developments to impose a new type of blockade upon Russia -- attempts quite reminiscent of the West's drive to contain the Soviet Union immediately following World War II. As was the case a half a century ago, Russia is manoeuvring to breach the blockade, which, in 1946, began in Greece (i.e. the Balkans) and today finds its linchpin almost in the same place -- especially after Hungary was coopted preparatory to the assault against Belgrade.
As for what lies ahead, I feel that the answer will become increasingly elusive in the coming weeks and months. What is certain is that the cost of returning and rehabilitating the 850,000 Kosovar refugees of Albanian origin will be enormous. It seems that the US has planned for the EU to foot most of the bill and is trying to pressure the Arab oil-exporting nations to put up some cash as well. This, in turn, will put pressure on the Euro at a time when the European economy had just begun to emerge from a difficult phase. It has also been discovered that many of the refugees seeking to return are Kosovars of Serbian origin. Who is going to pay for their resettlement?
It is sometimes hard to understand the difficulty the international peacekeeping forces will face in their task of preventing the Serbians and Albanians from going to war. Bitterness runs deep, and mutual hatred is deeper than ever. Clinton, who pledged to put an end to ethnic discrimination in Kosovo, may not fully grasp the situation in that country and the history of the peoples of the region. Nor should we ignore the significance of the Russian forces' arrival in Kosovo ahead of NATO troops. Is Pristina to become a second Berlin, its people divided by a wall? I cannot imagine that the Russians will be able to withdraw, leaving the Serbs at NATO's mercy and relinquishing Russian influence in an area so vital to European security.
It will also be essential in the coming months to watch the effects of the war on relations between the US and Europe. It is still not clear whether the creation of a European military force will bring Europe greater independence from the US, or whether this force will remain subject to NATO. It is clear, however, that Europe, and the UK in particular, emerged from the war with considerable doubts about the efficacy of the US's military leadership, but also its ability to reformulate Europe on the basis of its poor understanding of history and cultural sensitivities.
* The writer is director of the Arab Centre for Development and Futuristic Research.
