The Albanian-majority Presevo Valley in southern Serbia is one of the few
conflict resolution success stories in the former Yugoslavia. Yet tensions
linger, and a series of violent incidents in August and September 2003
demonstrated that the peace can still unravel. Serbia's stalled reform process
is preventing the political and economic changes that are needed to move forward
on many critical issues in the area, and there is a general sense among local
Albanians that peace has not delivered what it promised: an end to tensions with
Serb security forces and prosperity.
In 2001 the international community - NATO, the U.S. and the OSCE in particular
- working in close cooperation with Belgrade authorities, successfully
negotiated an end to an armed Albanian uprising in the valley. Sporadic
incidents still occurred there until March 2003. Then in August 2003 eight
separate attacks, many against the army and moderate Albanians, broke five
months of relative calm. The following month, Albanian guerrillas a short
distance away in neighbouring northern Macedonia - some of whom may have crossed
from Presevo - fought two separate actions against Macedonian security forces,
while yet another attack was launched against the army inside southern Serbia.
Cross-border flows of refugees and possibly also fighters, combined with claims
from the shadowy Albanian National Army (AKSH) of responsibility for two of the
attacks in Serbia and both incidents in Macedonia, refocused attention on the
valley.
The attacks appear to have been carried out by very few people, not all
necessarily Albanians. Southern Serbia's Albanian population as a whole does not
seem to support either the AKSH or renewed violence. Several factors have been
at work. First was the announcement of initial official talks between Belgrade
and the Provisional Institutions of Self Government (PISG) in Kosovo, which got
off to a halting start on 14 October 2003. In spite of the fact that official
contacts have begun, extremists on both sides are already staking out maximum
demands: Serbs for a partition of Kosovo, and Albanians for territorial
expansion or "compensation" in the Presevo Valley, called "eastern Kosovo". A
second factor was the Belgrade parliament's August declaration proclaiming
Kosovo an integral part of Serbia. Thirdly, Albanians of the area are deeply
unhappy at extremely high levels of unemployment and lack of economic prospects.
Finally, certain Albanian political factions within the valley appear interested
in weakening the hold Presevo Mayor Riza Halimi has on government and the
ensuing patronage.
The attacks gave impetus to the demand of Presevo's politicians to be included
in the Pristina-Belgrade dialogue. They emphasised the region's continuing
problems, as well as failures in implementing specific portions of the
understandings that apparently ended the troubles in 2001 (the Konculj Agreement
and the Covic Plan). They sent a clear message that both Belgrade and the
international community will have to keep paying attention to the valley in
order to maintain peace and reduce tensions. Local politics have become more
nationalistic, with less room for political manoeuvre and cooperation or
compromise with Belgrade available to moderate Albanian politicians such as
Halimi.
Significant progress has been achieved in the past two years, including the
formation of new multiethnic local governments according to fairer rules, joint
Albanian-Serb police patrols, and improvements in the Albanian language media.
At the same time, promised education reform and the integration of Albanians
into the judiciary and other public organs remain disappointing. The recent
violence suggests that former Albanian rebel commanders, some elements in
Belgrade's army and ministry of interior, organised crime figures, and others
may retain interests in keeping southern Serbia a crisis zone.
The incomplete peace in southern Serbia is further weakened by the continuing
uncertainty over Kosovo's final status. The international community will need to
remain engaged, pressing both Belgrade and Albanian politicians to fulfil all
aspects of the Konculj Agreement, while focusing more attention on economic
development. The UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), the NATO troops there (KFOR) -
particularly the U.S. contingent - and the Serbian government all need to
reassess their performance.
RECOMMENDATIONS
To the Serbian Government:
1. Reconstruct the Coordination Body for Southern Serbia according to the OSCE's
proposal to include permanent members representing all relevant ministries,
members of the community, mayors of the three Presevo Valley municipalities and
a president appointed by the Serbian government.
2. Rein in extremist elements in the security forces.
3. Tighten customs controls along the Administrative Boundary with Kosovo, and
crack down on MUP employees at border crossings who are assisting organised
crime.
4. Crack down on organised crime in the Vranje region.
5. Transfer more security responsibilities from the Gendarmerie (paramilitary
police) to the uniformed police.
6. Stop making exaggerated statements about Albanian guerrillas that needlessly
frighten the Serbs and alienate the Albanians in southern Serbia.
7. Proceed with economic reform, in particular by removing tax and other
unreasonable burdens on small and medium-sized businesses, and make credits
available to such businesses.
To UNMIK and KFOR:
8. Station KFOR troops and Kosovo Customs and Border Service officers at all
crossing points between Kosovo and southern Serbia.
9. Step up its patrols along the Administrative Boundary Line (ABL) with
southern Serbia and emphasise controlling the cross-border illegal commercial
traffic.
To the U.S., EU, Russia and Other Members of the International Community:
10. Explicitly tell Belgrade, Pristina, and all others, including nationalist
politicians like Jonuz Musliu in Bujanovac, that changing boundaries by violence
is unacceptable under any circumstances, including any suggestion of partition
of Kosovo or southern Serbia.
11. Maintain an international donor presence in southern Serbia and ensure that
the OSCE office stays in the Presevo Valley.
12. Re-examine assistance efforts in the Presevo Valley with the aim of giving a
new emphasis to economic development.
13. Institute guest-worker programs, especially in the EU and Russia, to relieve
the pent-up political pressures caused by large numbers of unemployed young men
in the Balkans, particularly southern Serbia.
To the Albanian Leadership in Southern Serbia:
14. Publicly disavow and discourage separatism, including by dropping (and
persuading Albanian language electronic media in Serbia to drop) references to
"eastern Kosovo", and distance ethnic Albanians from the AKSH.
15. Make the tendering processes associated with disbursal of public funds more
transparent and hold annual public reviews of expenditures of public funds in
the municipal councils.
To the Kosovo Albanian Leadership:
16. Condemn the AKSH, including its fundraising and extortion, and deter members
of the KPC from maintaining links with it.
17. Encourage Presevo Valley Albanians to participate in Serbian institutions
and elections and publicly disavow all territorial aspirations in southern
Serbia.
Belgrade/Brussels, 9 December 2003
ICG reports and briefing papers are available on our website:
www.crisisweb.org
Serbia and Montenegro: Transition with
Organized Crime by Vladimir Gligorov
wiiw Current Analyses and Country Profiles, No. 19, July 2003, 44 pages
including 4 Tables and 7 Figures
hardcopy: EUR 70.00, PDF: EUR 65.00 For Abstract see
www.wiiw.at > Publications
Combating Corruption in Serbia The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) is pleased to
announce the on-line availability of two recent publications by the Center for
Liberal Democratic Studies (CLDS) in Belgrade, Serbia. These publications were
produced under a CIPE grant funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.
CLDSâ?Ts most recent report, Corruption at the Customs, was well-received and
gives valuable insights into the causes of corruption in the Serbian Customs
Administration, offering a number of antidotes. It is available on CIPEâ?Ts
Central and Eastern Europe regional page at
www.cipe.org. CLDSâ?Ts other recent publication, Corruption in Serbia, gives
a general overview of corruption in Serbia, its history, causes, and effects,
and was awarded First Prize at the 13th Annual Sir Antony Fisher International
Memorial Awards. This publication, along with other materials on the state of
constitutional reform, economic reform, and business competition in Serbia can
be accessed through CLDSâ?Ts website at
www.clds.org.yu.
CLDS is an independent think tank based on the cooperation of numerous leading
experts in social sciences in Serbia (economics, political science, law and
social philosophy). The Center was founded to promote democracy, individual
liberty, economic development, and the rule of law in Yugoslavia. CLDS
activities include reform of the political system, economic transition issues,
building civil society, protection of human and minority rights, and education
the citizenry in and beyond Yugoslavia.
CIPE is a non-profit affiliate of the U.S Chamber of Commerce and one of the
four core institutes of the National Endowment for Democracy. CIPE has supported
more than 700 local initiatives in over 80 developing countries, involving the
private sector in policy advocacy, institutional reform, improving governance,
and building understanding of market-based democratic systems. CIPE programs are
also supported through the United States Agency for International Development.
A Marriage of Inconvenience: Montenegro 2003
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
It is time for new policies and new approaches on Montenegro. International
engagement with that republic in recent years has brought significant positive
results. It bolstered the pro-Western government of Djukanovic when it faced the
threat from Milosevic. It has helped promote reforms that have set Montenegro on
the way to becoming a modern democracy, with a market economy and an
independent, effective criminal justice system. However, efforts to promote
regional stability have been hampered by an unnecessary obsession with keeping
Montenegro and Serbia in a single state. The international community's
overriding interest in the region should be to find stable, long-term solutions.
Cobbling together interim solutions that lack legitimacy for those who must
implement them and that are unlikely, therefore, to be functional in practice,
is not the way to build stability.
The formation of a new state union of Serbia and Montenegro, following the March
2002 Belgrade Agreement, has failed to resolve the future relationship of the
two republics. The tortuous negotiations that eventually produced the new
union's Constitutional Charter demonstrated the lack of common purpose or
consensus. Throughout the negotiations, from November 2001 until December 2002,
only heavy engagement and pressure from the European Union (EU) kept the process
on track.
The agreement on a new union takes no account of the status of Kosovo,
notionally still an autonomous province of Serbia, but in practice a UN
protectorate. As long as Kosovo's future remains unresolved, the territory and
the constitutional make-up of Serbia, and of the joint state of Serbia and
Montenegro, remain undefined. The agreement between Serbia and Montenegro only
partially addresses the future of the defunct Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and
does not represent a stable solution for the territories of the former state.
The EU's determination to press Montenegro into retaining the joint state was
largely driven by its fear that early Montenegrin independence would force an
unready international community to address Kosovo's status prematurely.
Consequently the EU and the wider international community have opted for
interim, inherently unstable solutions for Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo alike,
rather than tackling the causes of instability.
The international community should no longer oppose Montenegrin independence but
should instead be ready to support whatever solution Montenegro and Serbia can
agree upon for their future relationship. It, and the EU in particular, should
be ready to assist those two republics to work out a satisfactory arrangement,
while adopting a neutral stance on what the form of that relationship is to be.
A major focus of international policy should be to promote needed reforms.
Already, considerable resources have been devoted to this end, and they have
brought good results. However, the negative attitude of much of the
international community towards Montenegro, as an alleged haven of organised
crime, has led to a distorted approach in which the prevalence of organised
crime is sometimes linked to the status issue.
Organised crime and corruption are indeed problems in Montenegro, as elsewhere
in the region. Some steps have been taken, although concerns remain about the
degree of commitment Montenegrin authorities demonstrate when the allegations
that need to be investigated relate to senior officials. The focus should be on
helping, and when necessary pressing Montenegro, as well as other entities in
the region, to show greater zeal in carrying out reforms and in tackling
organised crime and corruption.
Particular stress should be placed on reform of the criminal justice system,
especially to end political interference. Assessments of progress should be
based above all on concrete results. In particular, any suspicion that some
figures are above the law, due to their high connections, and that sensitive
cases are covered up should be dispelled.
Strict conditionality should be applied on assistance to Montenegro, based on
performance. Assessments of reform programs need to go beyond ticking off
legislation adopted and focus on implementation. In particular, the
international community should insist upon effective measures to tackle
corruption. Where there is not adequate evidence of action, assistance programs
should be shut down. Credit should be given where it is due, and pressure should
be applied where progress is lacking, but no assessment should be influenced by
a desire to influence Montenegro on the status issue.
Given its budgetary problems, the Montenegrin government depends on
international assistance. Until now the leverage that fact of political life
implies has largely been used in the ill-conceived effort to keep the republic
in a union with Serbia. Instead, it should be used to force real change in the
way that Montenegro is governed.
RECOMMENDATIONS
To the international community, in particular the European Union:
1. The EU should discontinue its policy of pressuring Montenegro to remain in a
single-state union with Serbia and accept whatever solutions Serbia and
Montenegro can agree upon for their future relationship, including the
possibility of eventual separation.
2. The EU should be ready to provide impartial technical assistance to Serbia
and Montenegro on the practical issues that need to be resolved whatever the
form of their ultimate relationship.
3. The EU should not sign a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with
Serbia and Montenegro before the status of the third entity of the now defunct
FRY, Kosovo, has been resolved.
4. The international community should continue to provide assistance to
Montenegro's reform efforts, strictly conditioned on the government's
performance in carrying out reforms, and should be prepared to suspend or
withdraw assistance if progress is not satisfactory.
5. The international community's assessment of reform progress should be based
on concrete evidence of changes in practice, including clear indications that
investigations of corruption and organised crime activities are thoroughly
pursued, no matter where the investigations lead or whom they involve.
To Serbia and Montenegro:
6. Concentrate on resolving the concrete issues involved in the future
relationship, and in particular work constructively to integrate and harmonise
economies, in line with the 14 March 2002 Belgrade Agreement and the
Constitutional Charter.
To Montenegro:
7. Accelerate reforms in order to regain momentum lost in 2002, in particular
by:
(a) increasing the pace of reform of the finance ministry, and especially of
public finances;
(b) reinvigorating efforts to combat the grey economy;
(c) continuing reforms of the judiciary and police, including ending
politicisation of the criminal justice system;
(d) pursuing all cases involving serious criminal allegations thoroughly,
without political interference, wherever they lead and whomever they implicate;
and
(e) raising the salaries of senior officials to more realistic levels while at
the same time ending the system of offering perks, such as free housing, to
certain officials.
Podgorica/Brussels, 16 April 2003
Serbia After Djindjic (ICG Report) CRISISWEB NEWS
Tuesday, 18 March 2003
SERBIA
Premier Zoran Djindjic was Serbia's most skilful and realistic politician. The
great question is whether his murder on 12 March provides a catalyst that
energises the governing coalition. Belgrade must restart the long-stalled reform
process and clean out the interlocking nexus, believed to be behind the killing,
of organised crime, war criminals, and police and army officers hiding behind
"nationalist-patriotic" slogans and organisations. ICG warns against rewarding
Djindjic's assassins with any softening of the international community's terms
of conditionality on economic assistance to Serbia or its admission to
international institutions. At this crucial time Serbia needs continued and
increased international help.
For the full report, please see CrisisWeb -
http://www.crisisweb.org
