Translated material
Model war
Today Kosovo is a “black hole” in every way. The region's budget is 90% provided by funds from foreign sources. Today's Kosovo is in a permanent energy crisis. According to international organizations, almost half of the population lives on the verge of poverty, and 12% live in complete poverty. According to various estimates, the unemployment rate ranges from 60 to 70% of the working population. By this indicator, Kosovo ranks among the poorest countries in the world. The region's production capacity is used at a maximum of 30%. In fact, the only more or less functioning industry remains the construction industry. Local Albanians are actively developing lands abandoned by the Serbs or rebuilding their houses. By the way, about 40 thousand houses were built in Kosovo for Albanians and only 40 houses for Serbs.
An analysis of the reasons for this situation must begin with the end of the military campaign against Milosevic, when Kosovo was taken under UN control. At that time, the development model of the region was primarily to attract financial investment. And an army of traveling salesmen actually poured into the region, offering various business plans for the development of the war-torn Kosovo economy. However, all these projects turned out to be untenable - a rapid decline in interest began just one and a half to two years after the adoption of resolution 1244 (the UN Security Council resolution on Kosovo was adopted on June 10, 1999 - Ed. ). The main reason is the inappropriate and, in fact, criminal use of allocated funds. According to the International Crisis Group, approximately half of the funds Kosovo receives from the EU, World Bank and other institutions goes into criminal circulation.
Over time, two other models appeared: European and American. The European model was vividly represented by Michael Steiner, the former head of the regional UN mission. His position was that the issue of the status of the Kosovo region, which, according to the UN resolution, is an integral part of Serbia, must be resolved according to the “standards - then status” scheme. That is, we first need to introduce in the region the standards of a multinational society with functioning democratic institutions, representative bodies of power, freedom of the press, etc. And after these standards are implemented, as a result, we can talk about the status of the region.
Another model is presented by the American Center for Strategic and International Studies. According to its experts, the current state of Kosovo will continue until the issue of the final status of the region is fully resolved. That is, if Steiner proposed - first standards, then a conversation about status, then the Americans are ready to leave this issue to local government. In essence, the American model raises the question of the need to revise the UN resolution.
However, given the current state of affairs, the very conversation about status should be considered absurd. If you ask the question: “Who benefits from the latest events in Kosovo?” - then the answer is obvious. In this regard, the speech of the leader of the Kosovo Albanians Rugova, made by him hot on the heels of bloody clashes in the region, is characteristic. Rugova said that this chaos and anarchy can only end when the issue of status is resolved. But then the question arises - about the status of what? A region with such appalling economic indicators, with mass unemployment, a region where the drug trade is thriving, ensuring their traffic to Europe, where they sell counterfeit tobacco (perhaps the most thriving criminal business in Kosovo)?.. But only the Lord God could create a world out of nothing .
Rugova is probably right about one thing: five years after the NATO operation, the international community is in complete chaos in all dimensions of life in Kosovo. Is it the same further? To date, none of the proposed models for normalizing life in Kosovo is working. And this happened not least because they came into mutual contradiction. The second, and perhaps the main, reason is that both representatives of the UN administration in this region and the peacekeeping forces found themselves in a very difficult situation. Its paradox is manifested in the fact that no matter who you talk to in Pristina, be it an official or a military man, almost everyone will say that it is unrealistic to consider Kosovo as part of Serbia, as provided for in UN Security Council Resolution 1244. That is, the people who have the mandate to implement this resolution do not believe in it and cannot implement it, and do not want to, because they do not see the point in it. It turns out that those people who officially carry out the UN mission do not internally agree with its postulates. In such a situation, could a different result be expected?
In addition, I will give another episode that amazed me during my visit to the Kosovo region: on the streets of Pristina, books and memoirs of field commanders of the banned Kosovo Liberation Army are openly lying on book trays everywhere. Their covers depict people with machine guns, nationalist slogans that contain unveiled calls to destroy the Serbs, images of maps of Greater Albania - and KFOR patrols sedately pass by all this chauvinist boulevard. There is practically no ban on the use of “hate language” in the region. It is fitting that the recent outbreak of violence in Kosovo, in the words of a senior police official, was “an explosion against everything Serbian.”
It is not so easy to find a way out of the current situation, but the international community cannot allow everything in the region to return to normal with zero or even negative results. Therefore, some model must be implemented, and most likely the European model will prevail - first standards, then a decision on the future of the region. Otherwise, agreeing with the demands of representatives of nationalist circles in Albania means admitting the failure of the international community's peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. It is impossible to imagine that the explosive mixture of mutual hostility, unemployment, crime and illegal trade that has accumulated over the years will resolve by itself thanks to the proclamation of a new status. Apart from the futility of approving such a decision at the UN, this would be nothing more than a belief in the political magic of words, which has already played its cruel joke on Kosovo. Is it worth repeating?