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The Balkans in 2008

20 December 2007 Grim warnings about Kosovo’s future after its expected independence may have overstated the troubles ahead, but they have also blinded many to a host of other problems Serbia and the rest of the region will have to face. By Tim Judah in London
The Kosovo deadline of December 10th at the United Nations came and went. At the same time large numbers of foreign journalists descended on the region. Their predictions were dire. The region faced a new war concluded many.

But I would argue that while they have ignored the region since 1999, it has changed, although that is not such a sexy story is it? Here are my predictions for 2008.

Barring the unexpected, we know that the key event for the region in the next few months will be Kosovo’s declaration of independence and its recognition as an independent state by the vast majority of EU countries, the US, most Muslim states and many more.

The key questions for the rest of the region concern the fallout from this and how it is managed.

The first group of issues relate to the situation on the ground. In the north of Kosovo we will see a new frozen conflict as this Serbian-dominated region continues to live as a de facto part of Serbia. Several questions will follow. Who will control the border points from the north to Serbia? Will the vital water pipeline from Gazivoda to the rest of Kosovo, which serves the vital, albeit aging power plant at Obilic, be turned off?

The second group of issues concern the Serbian enclaves. Will they continue to operate as Serbian islands surrounded by an Albanian sea? Security is an oft-cited issue but I suspect it will be less so, than is often imagined.

Less talked about is the question of money. Many people in the enclaves (but numbers are uncertain,) survive thanks to double salaries paid from Serbia to civil servants, many of them in basically fictitious jobs. In other words they are paid to stay in Kosovo.

If these people are safe and continue to receive these salaries they will stay, for now. If not they will have to leave sooner rather than later.

Serbia has implied it will place an economic blockade on Kosovo, or rather its Albanian parts. This will probably not be sustainable. Serbia exports €150-200m a year to Kosovo but Kosovo exports nothing to Serbia. Sanctions busting will boom via Montenegro and Macedonia and all the local mafias will do well from this. The Serbian enclaves will suffer especially, as prices will soar. Albanians will be able to source many imports, e.g., construction materials, from elsewhere.

A blockade will give a major impetus to Albania to accelerate the ongoing construction of the highway from Kosovo to the port of Durres.

Independence for the Albanian parts of Kosovo will soon provoke soul searching amongst Albanians as living standards fail to improve simply because the country is independent. However a blockade from Serbia will give politicians an excuse to blame Serbia for this and they will rely heavily on help and direction from the incoming EU mission in Kosovo and the so-called International Civilian Office.

Serbia’s future for the next decade depends on how it will react to the formalisation of its loss of most of Kosovo. Dusan Pavlovic of the Belgrade Faculty of Political Science could not have put the issue more succinctly than he did in a piece for the daily Politika on December 19: “The most important political issue in 2008 will be whether the country should be moving towards the European Union or keep up its struggle for Kosovo as an inalienable part of Serbia, even at the price of suspending European integration.”

Key questions here are the following. If EU states decide to shelve their demand that General Ratko Mladic, wanted for genocide by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague be arrested – which seems possible – then Serbia will be invited to sign a Stabilisation and Association Agreement, SAA, next month. An SAA is widely regarded as the first formal step on the road to eventual EU accession.

Serbia might decide however, as Vojislav Kostunica, its prime minister has hinted, that it will not to sign, regarding this as an insulting attempt to compensate Serbia for Kosovo.

At its simplest, and whatever they say in public, leaders of President Boris Tadic’s pro-Western Democratic Party believe that Serbia has no choice but to pursue European integration. Kostunica’s conservative party, with whom they are in coalition, is by contrast officially aligned with Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party.

The third player in this Serbian ménage à trois is the Radical Party, whose founder Vojislav Seselj is currently on trial for war crimes in The Hague. Tomislav Nikolic, the party’s acting leader in Serbia, stands a fair chance of winning the presidential elections in January with a run-off in February.

The key related question is whether, under the strain of the Kosovo issue, the current government collapses and Kostunica enters a coalition with the Radicals.

The effects of a Radical as president and/or the Radicals in government would not necessarily be seen immediately. On December 18 Mladjan Dinkic, Serbia’s Minister of Economy, said he expected $6 billion worth of foreign direct investment in 2008. This would undoubtedly suffer as potential investors would most likely lose interest in a country whose EU accession process would now slow considerably, if not grind to a halt.

Ironically, if Serbia took the position that continuing to fight for Kosovo was more important than European integration, this could have beneficial fallout for Serbia’s neighbours. The EU would more than likely step up help to Bosnia, Montenegro and Macedonia to accelerate their accessions and thus to try and inoculate them from potential instability emanating from Serbia.

The same would be the case with NATO, and in these circumstances it would be hard for Greece to justify its threatened veto for a Macedonian invitation to join at its Bucharest summit in April, where Albania and Croatia are also expected to receive invitations.

The recent political breakthrough in Bosnia also heralds an important signal. That is to say while the leadership of the Republika Srpska, RS, the Serb part of Bosnia, is happy to use the Kosovo issue and Serbian backing to defend its rights under the Dayton peace accords of 1995, it is also keen to look after its own interests, and these may increasingly diverge from those of Serbia.

The interests of the RS leadership are simply to remain in full control of their largely-autonomous republic. Clearly they want to prevent power draining to Bosnia’s central authorities in Sarajevo. But while happy when there is a coincidence of interests with Belgrade that does not mean that they want to be told what to do by Serbia either.

If Serbia turns away from the path of EU integration then we can expect its influence in the RS to wane.

Bulgaria took 14 years to join the EU from signing an initial agreement. If Serbia and Bosnia proceed at the same speed, if the clock starts in 2008, then they would only accede in 2022. Both could proceed faster, if the political will is there. If not, isolation beckons.

Finally, with regard to the even longer term futures of the former Yugoslav states, and in this regard Kosovo is an exception, action needs to be taken over the looming demographic and pensions crisis.

Just take Serbia alone. Despite the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees since 1991 it is losing 25,000 to 30,000 people a year or 0.3% of the population. According to Bozidar Djelic, Serbia’s deputy premier, “it is the fourth oldest nation in the world, with an average age of 40.2.” Although since the fall of Milosevic in 2000, he says the birth-rate has risen slightly, Serbia; “is still at the bottom of the list of European countries with less than one child per marriage,” far less than the 2.1 required to keep the population at its current level.

The next year will tell whether Kosovo remains the key issue for the region for the next few years or whether politicians such as Djelic can advance work on their political portfolios, in his case European integration, and begin to deal with other issues, such as declining and aging populations.

Tim Judah, a leading Balkan commentator, is the author of The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia; and Kosovo: War and Revenge. Balkan Insight is BIRN's online publication.