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Kosovo President Thaci has made it clear he
intends to discuss changing Kosovo’s borders with Serbian President
Vucic. He denies this means ethnic partition of Kosovo and calls it
a correction of the border, a euphemism intended to mean an exchange
of territory:
If the Kosovo-Serbia border correction and the
final agreement on mutual recognition are achieved, if such an
agreement is of bilateral and balanced, meaning a win-win for both
parties, then no one would be against it.
Presumably he is open to trading some or all of
Kosovo’s Serb-majority northern municipalities for Albanian-majority
territory in southern Serbia. The deal would of course have to
include, prior to the land swap, mutual diplomatic recognition. Only
sovereign states can exchange territory.
This idea has been widely circulated in recent
weeks, but Thaci’s remarks are the first clear confirmation from the
Albanian side of the equation. It would not be happening without US
and European concurrence. Brussels and Washington have apparently
decided that integrating the northern Serb municipalities with the
rest of Kosovo is just too difficult, so they have dropped their
previous firm opposition.
The border correction, or whatever you call it, is
a bad idea, for many reasons:
The majority of the Serbs in Kosovo as well as
the more important Serb monasteries and other religious sites are
not in the north. Those south of the Ibar River will be at risk,
both short term and long term, if territory is exchanged.
The exchange would increase support for those
Albanians in Kosovo who favor union with Albanian and for those in
Macedonia who would like to join such a Greater Albania, potentially
destabilizing Macedonia as well.
Republika Srpska, the Serb-controlled 49% of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, will want to follow suit, declaring
independence and seeking to join Serbia. That will precipitate a
comparable Croat move to have the Croat-majority cantons of Bosnia
join Croatia.
The Russians will point to this correction of
borders as precedent for what they would like to do with South
Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia, Transnistria in Moldova, and Donbas
as well as Crimea in Ukraine.
They may even like the idea enough to allow
Kosovo into the United Nations, which would be a Pyrrhic victory if
it then joins Greater Albania, or if China decides still to veto
Kosovo membership.
I am still hoping agreement on this bad idea will
prove difficult to achieve. Serbia has good security reasons not to
give up territory in southern Serbia that lies adjacent to its main
outlet to the sea. The Serb Orthodox Church stands to a big loser if
this “correction” proceeds. Kosovo has good reason not to
precipitate a series of claims to international border corrections
that are unlikely to be peaceful. Nor will Pristina’s current
politicians thrive in an environment in which Kosovo’s population is
anticipating the end of the country’s statehood by merger into
Albania. Vetevendosje, a movement that has advocated the option to
join Albania, will be the big winner.
A democratic Kosovo and a democratic Serbia should
be able to come to terms on protection of their respective minority
populations without this perilous exchange of territory and
populations. Of course that is precisely the problem: neither is a
consolidated democracy and both are run by ethnic nationalists who
still lack adequate respect for minorities. It shouldn’t be a big
surprise that an ethnic nationalist administration in the US and an
EU in which ethnic nationalism has gained lots of ground weaken in
their commitment to democracy and the rule of law, but it is not a
welcome development. This is a bad idea whose time should not come.
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