The Kosovo Commission Report won't fly

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On http://www.transnational.org from November 23, 2000

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T F F   P r e s s I n f o     # 1 0 5
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I N T E L L E C T U A L L Y   T H E   K O S O V O  

C O M M I S S I O N   R E P O R T   I S 

A   T U R K E Y   A N D   I T   W O N ' T   F L Y . . .
 


By Jan Oberg, TFF director




November 23, 2000

We expect soldiers we send to the front to have some military education and
training. As patients we hope the doctor has studied medicine. And who
would write a constitution for a new state if not professionally educated
lawyers? But not so when it comes to conflict-analysis, mediation or
peace-making. In this field it seems that neither specific education,
practical experience nor knowledge about the conflicting parties and their
cultures is of any importance. The important thing is that you want to do
good.


THE BACKGROUND - THE COMMISSION'S AND TFF's
*****************************************

Last year, Prime Minister Göran Persson of Sweden took the initiative to
establish an independent international commission tasked with analysing the
equally enigmatic and tragic Kosovo conflict and NATO's bombing as well as
outline the lessons to be learnt. He appointed Richard Goldstone, the
well-respected South African judge and former chief prosecutor of the Hague
Tribunal to chair it together with former Swedish education minister, Carl
Tham, as his deputy.

The Swedish government allocated about 1 million dollar for the one-year
work of the commission, which also obtained support from the Carnegie
Corporation, George Soros, Ford Foundation and the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Among its members are Mary Kaldor, Michael Ignatieff, Richard Falk (TFF
associate) who represent themselves and not their countries - of which
anyhow six are NATO members.

No doubt, it was a noble initiative, with all wishing to do good - although
even Sweden never expressed a critical word about the West's handling of
the crisis or of what, at the time, I called NATO's Balkan bombing blunder.
To identify what we must learn from this conflict and the international
attempts to handle it is, beyond doubt, one of the most important
intellectual, political and moral tasks - for Sweden itself, for the EU,
for NATO and for the United States. The problems that caused the violence
in the Balkans are far from solved - if at all addressed - and the place
with most rapid and positive change today is Serbia whose people took
matters in their own hand and put an end to the Milosevic era. Around the
world, conflicts similar to that in Kosovo are queuing up, waiting to be
diagnosed and treated well or turn into tragedies.


 My TFF colleagues and I have, since 1991, worked in Kosovo and Belgrade,
with the political leaders on all sides and with civil society
organisations. After some 40 missions and 3000+ interviews, we know a bit
about the place, the personalities and the problems as well as about the
rest of former Yugoslavia with which the Kosovo issue was and remains
fundamentally intertwined. During a number of years I personally functioned
as unpaid, goodwill adviser to Dr. Ibrahim Rugova. Under his wise
leadership the Kosovo-Albanians was the only people in ex-Yugoslavia who
had decided - in contrast to everybody else - to try to achieve their dream
about an independent state by means of a) a non-violent struggle, b) the
building of a parallel society and c) intensive international diplomatic
and media activity. It was a dream, of course, as nationalistic or and
exclusionist as any other and was greatly assisted by the bullish arrogance
of Milosevic and the repressive forces in the region.

But a simple conflict is about the only thing it was not. So the Commission
has ploughed through hundreds of human rights documents and other types of
materials and consulted hundreds of experts, politicians and military
people involved in the matter - although, however, surprisingly few among
those who were close to issue, on the ground. Goldstone and Tham want to do
good, for sure, but none of them are conflict analysts or Balkan experts.
That could, with a different mandate and more creativity, actually have
brought in new aspects or have lead to the creation of more innovative
proposals. But it doesn't. This turkey won't fly.


SOME POSITIVE POINTS
*******************

One the positive side, it does emphasise that the international "community"
(my quotation marks, as this phenomenon doesn't exist in the real world)
did far too little much too late in preventing the worst case scenario. It
points out, without naming actors that much was done helter-skelter and
dictated by narrow national interests, not by the needs of the conflicting
parties. They are right. When I presented TFF's report "Preventing War in
Kosovo" at the UN in New York in 1992 - one of the first early warnings
filled also with principles and ideas for non-violent ways to prevent
violence and move towards solutions with the parties - I was told that it
was a very useful report but that the world could hardly be expected to
react before reports about violence had surfaced at the front page of the
New York Times for at least two weeks. That was the time when Kofi Annan
headed the Peacekeeping Department and he understood both the issues and
the institutional inertia.

The commission also spells out clearly that there is far too little will to
make the necessary investments before and after war to secure
violence-prevention and post-war peace building. In diplomatic terms it
points out the truth that the present UN/NATO/OSCE mission in Kosovo
already is a remarkable fiasco beyond the point of no return. Its clear
critique - less of the bombings as such as of the way they were conducted -
is, one must assume, as far as one can get in a report that will,
invariably, be referred to the Swedish government.

The chairmen who alone take responsibility for the text also highlight the
fact that the moderate Albanians ought to have been supported much earlier
and that so much went wrong in the Rambouillet "negotiations."  So, by a
friendly interpretation the report is not without some diplomatic civil
courage. But it is interesting to see how the failures of the EU, NATO and
Sweden for that matter is always only deplored, never analysed. The West
wanted only to do good too, so no criticism is needed.


BUT THEN THE NEGATIVE ASPECTS - NO CONFLICT ANALYSIS OF THE CONFLICT
***************************************************************

But then comes the negative aspects, and they are devastating for the final
assessment. Paradoxically, the commission never bothers - or is unable to -
carry out a conflict analysis. It follow the fundamentally flawed
assumption that Kosovo and similar conflicts can be seen as a behavioural
problem, as a matter of some people wanting to do evil and violating
somebody else's human rights - thanks to a newly awakened nationalism and
an actualised history which, in passing, is left virtually untouched.

Unbelievable as it may sound, the authors never ask themselves why some
people violate other people's rights or what kind of unresolved problems
and underlying conflicts create the basis for human rights violations. They
are not the slightest curious about theories of violence, of fear or other
deeply human dimensions of conflicts. They hardly mention the
intellectually and existentially fundamental question: what in general
makes people commit crimes as these and what, in particular, in the case of
Kosovo?

In short, it takes the human rights approach in isolation. Given the level
of repression that's an easy position and one that allows for a
considerable amount of moralising and "shoulds." About the underlying
conflict, not to speak of the conflict formations: Yugoslavia, the Balkans,
and world order - the report says nothing.

Had the Commission conducted a professional conflict analysis it would have
addressed the classical ABC of conflict: the Attitudes, the Behaviour and
the Conflict issue(s) or Contradiction(s), the incompatibilities in time
and space. They would have asked the parties how they see it and asked
others outside how they see it, perhaps also in a comparative perspective
with other conflicts. We get nothing of that.

They would have dialogued with the parties to understand many layers -
economic, psychological, constitutional, structural, and historical to
penetrate the mechanisms that lead the parties to violence and gross human
rights violations and atrocities. They would have determined who all the
parties are and how each party contain conflicts among themselves. They
would have avoided the implicit, banal assumption, which take for granted
that there are the wrongdoers down there and there is "us" who are trying
to do only good and help the parties. They conduct no analysis of the
international "community's" historical (mis)use of the Balkans in its own
power politics. They do the impossible - namely, to treat Kosovo as if it
can be isolated from an all-Yugoslav framework, a Balkan regional
perspective and a world order restructuring and globalisation. There is not
a word about the role of Western intelligence services, arms trade and
double standards.

And, as much as it ascribes motives to Serbs (bad) and Albanians (good), it
never touch the issue of motives behind Western policies - not to speak of
questioning the official ones offered at the time.

It is true that the Yugoslav government refused to co-operate with the
Commission. So did the U.S. government (because the Commission wanted to
investigate other things than the human rights violations on the Serb
side!). But that, however, is no excuse for the fact that the Commission
has not met with people on the Serbian side and chooses to ignore all
argument form from that side. It could have met with numerous
non-governmental representatives, if necessary outside Serbia; it has met
with dozens in the United States in spite of the fact that that government
declined to co-operate. It has received funding from US organisations.

From the point of view of conflict-resolution, this is an intellectual - if
not moral - disaster. (It has also chosen not to consult critical expertise
like TFF experts, but knocked doors everywhere, it seems, in political
elite circles in the EU and NATO and various ministries of foreign affairs
as well as main stream think tanks which have not worked there in the
field.)


A FEW THINGS WE COULD LEARN AND WHAT THE COMMISSION COULD HAVE DONE
******************************************************************

From various conflict-management mistakes since 1989 we ought to have
learnt that solutions which are not developed in co-operation with the
parties and which are not combined with reconciliation and a systematic
attention to the human dimensions of conflict will lead nowhere, except to
a protectorate-like, cold, militarily upheld "peace." In a few weeks, the
Dayton Bosnia process turns 5. It's an utter failure, it's a forced,
top-down peace that no citizen of Bosnia-Hercegovina was ever consulted
about, signed by three president none of whom were legitimate
representatives of the little more than 4 million people who live there. Oh
yes, you can have "free" election and other make-believe. Or can you? It
borders on an insult to the very institution called democracy that you
offer people no choice or one between "our plan or continued war among
yourselves and/or our bombs."

The Kosovo Commission would have done wiser had it approached the whole
affair with a bit of modesty and respect for the people on all sides.
People do not do to each other for fun what they have done in the Balkans.
A simple hypothesis is that they do it because they have some very
difficult problems and do not know how to solve them. It is simply too easy
to say that these people are primitive or evil and that we know what would
be best for them. That attitude, in fact, is one of the things we would
have changed had we learnt anything from these past years. The Commission
has not had the courage to attempt an honest and complex analysis; instead
it comes - quite frequently - close to the tabloid-journalist description
of the conflict. It even frees the West of having used propaganda as part
of the bombing campaign - well and if it did it was, we are told, much less
than the bad guys in Belgrade.  And the bombing is termed "illegal but
legitimate" - the kind of slippery slope you end up in when the politically
correct conclusions seem to have been written before the analysis.

Even the most popular books about conflict that you can buy in any airport
tell you that it is important to attack the problems and not the people.
One would wish that some of the Commission members had bought such a book.
Also, to explain a problem is not the same as to defend those who had the
problem. But without explanations, without curiosity and devoid of new
perspectives and political criticism of certain actors in the conflict, it
is indeed difficult to see what we are supposed to learn from Kosovo,
indeed from reading this report.

In short, it is an advantage to have a driving licence before one embarks
on a longer trip, not the least on dangerous Balkan roads.
(A later TFF PressInfo will deal with the main proposals of the report). 


Read this analysis on http://www.transnational.org


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© TFF 2000


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Dr. JAN OBERG
Director

TFF
Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research
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