Frederik Haber
Within the last twelve months, conflicts between Serbia and Kosovo sharpened several times after many years during which the situation seemed to have calmed down. These tensions arose mainly over three issues. The media and politicians in the West rarely go into the details but prefer to retail the same narrative: the Serbs just want to make trouble, they still cannot accept that Kosovo is lost to them, the outcome of the wars of the 1990s, the Nato intervention, and the unilateral declaration of independence of 2008. The media message is that behind all the trouble are the Russians, who are always prepared to stir up a war. A closer look shows that things are far from simple and the conflicting rights and interests of Kosovars and the Serbian minorities are difficult to resolve. Moreover, the aims and actions of the EU and US are in no way designed to bring peace and progress to the Balkans.
November and December 2022: Roadblocks, licence plates and municipal elections
Last year, militant activists from Serbia started to block three border crossings, among them Merdare, a major transit hub. They obviously had the support from the Government in Belgrade, as the Serbian police did not interfere in any way. The government in Pristina then closed borders in response.
The issue behind that is the fact that people living in the towns and villages with Serb majorities still use the old Serbian licence-plates. Kosovo had tolerated this thus far. On the other hand, Serbia had tolerated the Kosovo licence-plates if they were covered by an additional temporary card-board license for the price of 2€.
On December 22, the prime minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, declared that the Serbian licence-plates would no longer be accepted. Serbia immediately responded by no longer accepting vehicles with Kosovo plates crossing the border. Besides the mutual roadblocks, the armies were put on alert and the EU and US sent their diplomats there.
The EU forced Kurti to back down
In the municipal elections in districts with Serbian majorities, which took place on December 18, 2022, the nationalist Serbian Party called for a boycott, which was largely followed by Serbian voters. This led to Albanians being elected in towns and villages where they constitute a small minority. Also all public officials such as judges and police chiefs resigned from their posts. The government in Pristina reacted by replacing them with people loyal to the state and of Albanian ethnicity. One former policeman was arrested for attacking the election commission.
Again there were some clashes in the Spring, but the heaviest clash came in September 2023, when around 30 heavily armed fighters coming from Serbia occupied a monastery near Mitrovica. Kosovo police and Serbian troops got involved and 4 people were killed.
All these tensions have developed whilst negotiations between the two countries under the control of the EU continued.
Ohrid Agreement
Already, in January 2023, in the famous spar resort of Ohrid in southern North Macedonia, the EU leaders obliged Kurti and Vucic to accept an agreement, which their diplomats had already drawn up.
The “Agreement on the path to normalisation between Kosovo and Serbia” known for short as the Ohrid Agreement was, according to the EU, (and Wikipedia)“mediated” by the European Union. Mediation by definition is a process in which one or more “mediators” try to solve a conflict by letting both sides of a conflict find out what is the most important for them, so making them ready to accept in part their opponents’ objectives. The mediator of course should be neutral and have no interests of their own involved.
In Ohrid, neither were the EU leaders neutral, nor did Kurti and Vucic want that agreement. Even though they both promised to accept it verbally on Feb 27, 2023, the agreement has not been signed until today.
Behind that, lies manoeuvring by both sides. Vucic agreed verbally but never signed any paper. Kurti said, and says, he would sign, to show good will towards EU and USA, but relied on Vucic’s refusal to do so.
The agreement does not explicitly require Serbia to recognise Kosovo as an independent state, but it does prevent Serbia from opposing Kosovo’s access to international organisations such as the Council of Europe, European Union or NATO. It also requires Serbia to recognise Kosovo national symbols, passports, diplomas, and vehicle registration plates.
Kosovo has to ensure a certain level of self-government for its ethnic Serbian inhabitants. Such a Community or Association was expected to be officially established within Kosovo’s legal framework in 2015, but its formation was postponed over conflicts about the extent of their powers. As part of a European Union mediated normalisation agreement accepted by the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia in March 2023, Kosovo should immediately engage in dialogue with the EU to ensure a level of self-government for its ethnic Serb community.
As the negotiations and struggles continued, it was the EU leaders themselves who presented a draft statute for the formation of an Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities in Kosovo on 26 October 2023, and the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia expressed their readiness to implement their commitments. But once again it failed. Nothing is signed yet. The formulations of the text are still not published by any side.
Fundamental conflicts
Vucic’s position is clear: According to international law, the unilateral separation of a state’s territory is illegal and Kosovo ultimately is part of Serbia. In this, Serbia is supported by Spain and other countries who fear that regions could break away and declare themselves independent, like Catalonia or Euskadi (the Basque Country) in the case of Spain.
Serbia is also supported by countries like Russia for geo-strategic reasons. In fact, in the issue of the right to self-determination, Russia argues completely the opposite in the case of Crimea, which declared a referendum in 2014 to break away from Ukraine, or the Donbas Republics. No need to say that the US, Germany and most other western imperialists deny the right to self-determination in the case of Crimea or Donbas on principle, not only on grounds of whether the referenda were democratic or not.
The second question is what does such a Community of Serb majority municipalities mean? Kosovo fears it means continued Serbian interference in national politics by using the Serb minorities as its tools. Examples for that don’t lie far away. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Croatian and Serbian parts of the population are led by nationalist parties, which are under direct control of Croatia and Serbia. But the division of Bosnia into ethnic entities and federation by EU und USA, in the Dayton Agreement, also enables these imperialist powers to permanently control the country as almost a colony. Generally, the tactic of instrumentalising minorities has been used in many countries on many occasions.
A look at the map for the proposed association in Kosovo shows that it consists of the country’s north, where Serbs are in a strong majority and some disconnected regions in the south, where there is no clear majority. The map was drawn on the base of a census in 2011, which was widely boycotted, plus the assumptions of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe(OSCE). The only semi-democratic vote/referendum was a vote by the Gorani minority, a Slav speaking Muslim, people in November 2013, that expressed the will to join the proposed Community of Serb municipalities. But this was the sole exception from the rule.
The other open question concerning this structure is its purpose. Is it for cultural exchange or should it be an official state structure? There is not much information available, but the EU plans to have this Association responsible for education, culture and health. But, as the smallest of these regions has a population of less than 2000, the viability of such a construction creates doubts about the true purpose. It still could become a pathway for the division of Kosovo.
The project of the EU which is also supported by the US and the NATO, is more or less unacceptable to nationalists on both sides: For Serbian nationalists it would mean giving up the illusion of Kosovo as a “province of Serbia”. For Kosovo it would mean having some enclaves in their country that are outside of legislation and the rule of the state’s executive and could be used for provocations any time.
Vucic and Kurti have now kept saying yes to the EU-masters but hoping that the other one will say no. Vucic is under high pressure in his country, he cannot afford to lose the support of the nationalist right. Belgrade has seen many protests during the last months and he consciously uses the nationalist agenda to save his post.
So Vucic called for new elections, which took place on December 17. Vucic’s party won these elections, defeating the liberal opposition. There are claims about irregularities, but the vote is quite clear. Vucic’s position is stronger now.
Kurti has failed to deliver most of the social benefits he promised, the economic situation is worsening because of the global crises. Of course, he is also a fierce nationalist, but as part of his “left Bonapartism”, the “independence” he advocates is not only from Serbia, but he also pretends to be independent from imperialist domination by the US and EU, his show of reluctance to submit to dictates of the EU, has raised his support in Kosovo.
Imperialist interests
The whole process also makes clear where the interests of the US and the EU lie. The US wants an agreement which allows Kosovo to join NATO. The US already runs a large military base in Kosovo near the town of Ferizaj. The base is a “Forward operating site” of a type installed right across the US National Intelligence Agency’s designated “arc of instability” and can hold up to 7000 troops for direct intervention in the region.
The EU wants no war in the region, but no stable peace either. The centuries old concept of the imperialist powers to keep the peoples of the Balkans in permanent conflict, pitting one against the other, still works for them today. In the given situation the EU-leaders focus totally on Ukraine, Moldova and the war against Russia. They simply don’t want to care about the Balkans and they will surely take the results of the Serbian election as an excuse for that.
A minor interest is to get rid of both politicians. The US always hated Kurti as he was not so easy to handle as his predecessors and have already organised a parliamentary coup to get rid of him or to at least tame him. The EU would very much like to dispose of Vucic. So both powers involved are happy to humiliate them in front of their people.
Democracy and Socialism
An oppressed nation or national minority has the right of self-determination. This is the only guarantee against discrimination and oppression. This is true for the Albanians in Kosovo who had the right to secede from Serbia, just as it would be for Crimea, Donbas, Catalonia or Chechnya. The question whether the oppressing country (or its constitution) recognises this is irrelevant. On the contrary, not granting the right of self-determination is already a form of oppression. This basic democratic right has to be defended especially by the working-class and the Marxist left. They can free themselves from the interests of the national bourgeoisie in every country or nationality, which in the end always seeks to establish some degree of control and exploitation. All the republics created after the fall of Yugoslavia provide proof of that, including the formation of Kosovo itself and the evolution of the UCK-leaders from “freedom-fighters” to mafia-bosses at the service of USA and EU.
This shows that the purely democratic demand of self-determination and the right to secede is no ultimate solution, as long as exploitation and oppression continue, and this will be the case as long as capitalism and imperialism rule the world. In the given situation, we defend the right of the Mitrovica-Region to decide to secede from Kosovo, given the discrimination Serbs and other minorities face nowadays in Kosovo. But neither for the economy, nor any other aspect of society is such a process of fragmentation, on its own, a lasting, longer term perspective. Under a bourgeois national leadership in Serbia, national oppression would most likely rise again against the Albanian minority.
Therefore socialists need to combine the struggle against national oppression with a programme for the future of the whole Balkans, which is ultimately linked to the overthrow of capitalism and exploitation. For more than hundred years this has been expressed in the slogan of a “Federation of Socialist States of the Balkans”.
For today, Socialists in Kosovo, Serbia and the rest of the world have to defend the right of the Kosovars to set up their own state, independent from Serbia, but should at the same time fight against all discrimination against Serbs, Roma and any other minorities within it. Likewise, they should oppose discrimination against Albanians, Bosnians and so on in Serbia. It is especially necessary to win the working class for these goals, because in the end all oppression, discrimination and national conflicts serve the ruling class in its exploitation and political manoeuvres .
Federation of the Socialist States of the Balkans
Even the most democratic demands cannot bring any positive social and economic perspective, given the dire situation in all countries of the Balkans and their total economic dependence on foreign, mainly EU, capital.
It is necessary for socialists from all Balkan countries to overcome the nationalist views that dominated the last decades and develop a programme for the region and all its peoples that combines political and economic perspectives.
Key elements of such a programme must be
- Right to self-determination. Equal rights for all peoples, recognition of full democratic rights of all minorities (like use of their mother tongue in schools or in public institutions).
- Free and top quality health-service and education for all, nationalisation of all the institutions concerned.
- Pensions that allow a decent living, for a programme of public works to bring jobs to all at a rate set by the labour movement, indexed against inflation.
- To raise the productivity of agriculture in a sustainable way, farmers’ cooperatives, supported by state resources, are necessary
- No to all imperialist interference and plunder; cancel the debts of the countries
- Expropriation of all big capital, whether foreign or domestic, in order to develop infrastructure and plan production. Re-nationalisation of all privatised services under workers‘ control, not in the hands of state-bureaucrats.
- For workers‘ governments, based on councils of the toiling masses and an armed militia. For a Socialist Federation of the Balkans.
- For revolutionary working class parties and an International, which fights for such a programme of permanent revolution.
The on-going conflict between Kosovo and Serbia and the inability of the national governments, and the foreign imperialists, to advance any satisfactory solution, could be a good opportunity for socialists to win a hearing for their proposals, on such an internationalist basis.