Examination of Witnesses (Questions 29-39)
12 OCTOBER 2005
DR DAVID
CHANDLER AND
PROFESSOR JAMES
PETTIFER
Q29 Chairman: Gentlemen, may I welcome
you to the Committee. We have before us Dr David Chandler of the
Centre for the Study of Democracy in the University of Westminster,
expert on the international administration in Bosnia and Professor
James Pettifer of the Conflict Studies Research Centre at the
UK Defence Academy, expert in the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK)
and on the formal and informal Albanian military. I should like
to begin with the status of Kosovo. You know the report which
Ambassador Kai Eide produced at the behest of the UN Secretary-General
and the formula which Ambassador Eide put forward for the future
of Kosovo, which is broadly: no partition of Kosovo, no ethnic
divisions, no institutional links with Belgrade, greater EU involvement
and government seen to be from Pristina—not necessarily
by Pristina. First, your general comments, if you would, on the
report itself. Do you believe that it marks the appropriate way
forward?
Professor Pettifer: It is a very
welcome initiative. I would endorse the comments made by the speakers
in the previous session.
Q30 Chairman: You were present.
Professor Pettifer: Yes, for part
of it: in particular I endorse Dr Eyal's comments that Kosovo
has not had the attention it probably should have had in the previous
two years, otherwise we might not have had the difficulties we
had in March this year. Any initiative of this kind is very welcome,
but at the same time the content of it is substantially the same
as we have had before, particularly the emphasis on the standards
and the rejection of partition. From the point of view of analysts,
the important thing was the emphasis on the partition issue, which
has not normally been raised by international figures in the same
way before. This is a sign that partition is in the air as a subject
of discussion in the way that it probably was not 12 months ago.
Q31 Chairman: But it marks an acceleration
of the process, a refocusing in terms of the standards, not on
the voluminous document, but on certain key areas. It does mark
a fresh and you say welcome initiative.
Professor Pettifer: Yes. As I
said in my memorandum, which I hope you have seen, it seems to
me that the standards issue is in some ways difficult because
very few ex-colonies or new countries which have come into existence
since 1945 could have met them, or maybe even half of them. As
someone said in the recent debate in the House of Representatives,
we would not have the United States if the standards document
had had to be observed. That is not in any way suggesting that
they are not very important, but, being realistic, it is not very
likely that some of them will be attained in any foreseeable future.
Dr Chandler: There is a problem
of looking at it on far too formal a level. How realistic is the
focus on standards before status? There is a danger of creating
a regime on paper which never actually has any substance and reality
to it. We see that more broadly when we look at the whole issue
of state building. There seems to be a certain drive to magic
things up in committee rooms outside of the region. While it may
look good on paper "Yes, let us have returns, break with
Belgrade, no partition", that is not necessarily a political
compromise solution. Without a settlement which has some consensus
in the region, you are never going to get away from people saying
"It is a very good settlement but the EU is going to have
to police it". It would probably be a bit like Bosnia where
there is the same status and standards situation, where external
actors are regulating it, then you have such high so-called standards
and there is always a focus on the problems that it seems to me
it is suspending the situation of status rather than resolving
it. I am not saying there is an easy alternative solution, but
it is often the case, when you intervene in a situation without
an idea of the consequences, that you are in a bit of a pickle.
Q32 Chairman: Given the history, the
international community has a very special responsibility for
the future of Kosovo. If there were to be a state which did not
respect its ethnic minorities, it would be a standing affront
to what the war was about.
Professor Pettifer: That is certainly
the case; everybody would endorse that. The problem is that these
liberal agendas—if I may use the term without being pejorative—are
not shared by large numbers of the population on the ground of
all ethnic groups whose mindset is still pervaded by ideological
nationalism.
Q33 Chairman: If they reject a liberal
and democratic agenda, do they deserve the degree of help from
outside?
Professor Pettifer: Obviously
liberal with a small "l".
Q34 Chairman: Surely they would not deserve
the financial and other help from the international community,
nor would they deserve to move further along the road to join
the international institutions, the EU and NATO.
Professor Pettifer: I entirely
agree with the second of those points, but the question of sovereignty
may be different. One can point to many countries in the world
which have achieved independence and in the region Croatia and
Bosnia are two paramount examples where no more than 30 to 40%
of the Kosovo standards were in existence and they are still not
in existence in many instances.
Q35 Chairman: Croatia has enjoyed a democratic
election with a democratic change of government. That is surely
light years away from the situation in Kosovo.
Professor Pettifer: On the contrary,
Chairman. I think all Kosovo elections have been widely praised
for their conduct by the International Community, particularly
by people like Lord Robertson.
Dr Chandler: Definitely. I also
beg to disagree with the honourable Chairman. I think there is
a fundamental difference between a liberal agenda and a democratic
agenda. A liberal agenda is the focus on outcomes and the standards,
the end product: a democratic agenda at least implicitly implies
some autonomy, some responsibility and some consensus from the
people living in the region. Kosovo is a classic case in point.
Every election, from the first election onwards, has been seen
as a democratic election, but there is no democracy there. That
is the fundamental problem, that there is a process there, but
an artificial pseudo state is being created. You may argue that
there is an international responsibility to bring a liberal agenda
and with it democracy, but it is very difficult, if you start
out from some paper aspirations rather than from the society which
exists. It is the contrast between the two which creates an unsolvable
problem because there is no way of getting from one to the other.
That is what is problematic about the status and standards discussion:
it is a discussion around sequencing and the technicalities of
what to do first without really understanding that you cannot
construct a state without a process of engagement and autonomy.
If you are saying that you should have a perfect political system,
a perfect civil service, a perfect legislation before there is
democracy and accountability, then that is a limited and problematic
approach and you can see the way that in consequence recommendations
of policy have changed. First of all it was "Let's have elections"
and now the sequencing discussion has moved on to "Let's
have the rule of law first". I think it is the same discussion:
you cannot have the rule of law if it is just sent from Brussels
and Washington. The rule of law has to have a relationship with
society. Both of these things have to be seen as intimately connected.
Q36 Chairman: Of course, but if you accelerate
the status without adequate protection for minorities and so on,
are you not abandoning the carrot you have to ensure that the
state is, yes, within the perspective of the Balkans, but a reasonably
tolerable state?
Dr Chandler: I would not idealise
the current situation. There is no protection for minorities now
under the regulation of UNMIK. There is not even a valid promise
of return as an aspiration. We should actually look at the problems
which exist in Kosovo now, rather than seeing the situation as
good and asking how we create more autonomy. As an academic I
would argue that I would not start from here and that the whole
focus is problematic, but as a policymaker I would say that it
is now time to admit that it is an impossible situation. The assumption
behind the question starts from our responsibilities and us trying
to give things to people and to solve things, which, with the
best will in the world, is not necessarily the starting point.
Quite often, the agenda becomes one driven by forces outside the
region. Bosnia shows that even more clearly than Iraq and Afghanistan
which are very similar. There is no real connection between the
policy-making side and any rational understanding of what the
problems are in these countries. That is why there is such an
inflated focus on corruption and crime, to which I am sure we
will come later.
Q37 Mr Chidgey: I actually found what
you said very illuminating if not alarming, but probably very
accurate. It would appear from what you have just said in the
last five minutes firstly that the involvement of the West in
the civil war which broke out in the Balkans ten years ago now
has made no difference in terms of resolving the ethnic tensions
which existed in that region for many hundreds of years and had
only previously been contained by a larger more powerful external
force, which of course was Russia through most of the twentieth
century. That is the first point I draw from your conclusions.
Maybe I have got it wrong, but you can explain. The second thing
is that you have made the point very strongly and very clearly
that democracy does not necessarily mean that the standards which
we in the West aspire to for our nation states are shared, let
alone met. That must beg the question that the concept, say of
Croatia being an applicant country to the EU is somewhat premature.
Professor Pettifer: The point
is that people look for progress. This is frequently said and
I think it was said by Ambassador Eide too that he was looking
for progress, not always for final achievement. It is always possible,
given the application of enough money and enough outside commitment,
to produce a political elite in a small country which will, to
a large extent, do what you want. What I was referring to about
residual nationalism and bigotry and so on is in the bottom 50%
of the population and, after all, even in Britain we cannot say
there are no people like that here.
Q38 Mr Chidgey: It is one thing to pass
the laws to meet the Copenhagen criteria: it is quite another
to implement those laws.
Professor Pettifer: The problem
we have at the moment is that the Kosovo Albanian leadership are
encouraged by the present setup in UNMIK towards instinctive irresponsibility
because there are very few rewards for doing what UNMIK wants.
UNMIK are continually berating people for not achieving numerous
things. Again I would echo what Dr Eyal said: after you have filled
in one list another list is handed to you. In my view the political
leadership in Pristina, particularly the ex-KLA[6]political
leadership, is under considerable radical pressure. I would have
said in public, although he is a person I have some discourse
with, that it might not be easy now for Mr Hasim Thaqi to be elected
leader of his party automatically. Three years ago that would
have been an idiotic statement. Very radical forces are emerging,
some of which we saw on the street in March and this is another
reason why I personally agree that the political status issue
should be looked at pretty quickly. One of the very negative factors
in the state absence which David Chandler describes is that the
leaders whom we regard as the leaders actually have very few levers
to pull to influence public behaviour.
Q39 Chairman: And the carrots would presumably
involve a greater movement of power to the local institutions
along the lines of the idea of what . . . ?
Professor Pettifer: I have said
in my memorandum that is happening anyway and one of the ironies
of this summer has been, despite the very bad publicity the Albanians
had, very understandably and justifiably after March, that the
process of handing over competencies has actually speeded up.
That can be demonstrated by a list.
Dr Chandler: Again I would like
to question the assumptions implicit in the question—the
idea that the West's involvement did not resolve anything—as
though there is an innate dynamic towards conflicts within the
Western Balkans which is in their blood. It is difficult to understand
the Balkan conflicts, not just recently but even historically
without understanding the important role of international intervention
and as Professor Pettifer alludes to, with the radicalisation
of the KLA, what side lined moderate forces behind Ibrahim Rugova
was the idea that there was going to be external support, American
support. You cannot really understand the Bosnian war without
equally understanding the promise or threat of external intervention.
That then casts a light on how we understand the post-conflict
political situation as well. It is very nice for western analysts
to blame this on ethnic insanity or say the people of the region
do not understand modernity. I would argue that there is democracy,
the people are quite capable of voting for whom they want in Croatia
or in Bosnia or Kosovo, but the problem is not really with them.
Kosovo is a classic example. Why is the international community
there? Because they have no political solution. The only thing
they can do then is to say that Kosovo people are not civilised
enough, that their desire for autonomy is now problematic, despite
the fact that this is what the war was about. In Bosnia equally,
every election is like an exercise in the condemnation of the
people and those whom they vote for, rather than understood as
a reflection of a divided society without any legitimate central
authority. This is not a problem with the people of Bosnia—basically
their votes rationally reflect their reality. Democracy is not
the problem. However, the way that this Committee has used the
idea of democracy is problematic, so examples which have been
focused on are ones like the support for the ICTY and then issues
of crime and corruption. To condemn people in Serbia or Croatia
or Bosnia for not supporting the ICTY—which even international
academics and lawyers would argue is problematic and has more
to do with politics than law—is a slightly unfair way of
judging people. We saw the political nature of the use of war
crimes in the previous session, where it was raised, the discussion
was about how to do a deal, how to encourage Balkan governments
to speak the right speech and in this way the international community
could avoid the problems caused by the issue for disrupting relations
between the EU and Balkan regimes. It is like a millstone around
people's necks in the same way that the Milosevic tribunal is:
it was useful when it was declared, but now America wants to close
it down as soon as possible. So the focus on the ICTY is fairly
irrational, although historically you are stuck with it. Then
the focus on crime and corruption is a similar artificial problem
created by Western policy, every foreign policy and think tank
document focuses on the issue, and there are reams of them, for
example the recent launch of a new Transparency International
report on Bosnia, supported by the British Ambassador and funded
by DFID, the whole thing is pretty spurious from the theoretical
assumptions to the dearth of empirical evidence and reliance on
recycled rumours. The idea that these political parties are nationalist
and criminal gangs and are actually running Bosnia rather than
Paddy Ashdown and the EU and all the other international agencies,
puts the world the opposite way round. It is very much a strategy
of avoiding political responsibility by continuing to invent new
hoops and by "problematising" micro issues which are
in fact, in the real world, probably not the major issues to focus
on. However, they are easier because you are targeting Bosnian
politicians or Kosovo voters for blame, these issues are partly
about legitimising continued external interference and partly
about deflecting responsibility for the existing situation on
to others.
Chairman: Dr Chandler, you have drawn
the parallel between Kosovo and Bosnia Herzegovina. Sir John,
you have been recently in the area. Would you start on Bosnia?
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