Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Minutes of Evidence


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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