Examination of Witness (Questions 136-139)
26 OCTOBER 2004
MR MISHA
GLENNY
Q136 Chairman: Mr Glenny, we welcome
you back as a young, old friend of the Committee! We have read
your many commentaries with great interest and we now look forward
to hearing from you with your perspective on the Western Balkans,
the subject of our inquiry. Perhaps we can begin, as we began
our last session, if you could give some indication of the strategic
importance which you think the area has? We will then turn to
Mr Maples.
Mr Glenny: I have always considered
it to have considerable strategic importance, firstly for the
reason that Nicholas Whyte mentioned—its geography and its
position. It is the main overland transit route between Western
Europe and the Middle East. I would say that it has another strategic
importance, and that is in terms of the European Union's identity
and the European Union's capacity to deal with a region that is
distressed and traumatised but is, as Dr Anastasakis said, soon
to be surrounded by the EU. It is not, in terms of population,
a very large region. To my mind it would actually be quite simple
to sort things out in the Western Balkans, but it requires an
imagination which I have not yet identified on the part, regrettably,
of the European Union and some of the local actors.
Q137 Mr Maples: Inevitably I will cover
some of the same ground that we have covered already, but we are
interested to know your views on some of these things too. In
that context, the role of Russia in the West Balkans; what is
your view there? Do you think they are troublesome and irresponsible?
Mr Glenny: I do not think that
Russia has political ambitions in south-eastern Europe. It has
considerable economic ambitions in the region. Just as a pointer,
Bulgaria's single most important contributor to its revenue earning
annually in terms of taxes is Lukoil, and you will find Lukoil
and Gascom with a very significant presence all over the region.
But in political terms Russia's only interest in the Balkans that
I can identify is Kosovo, and that pretty much as a bargaining
chip which it uses in a similar but less intense fashion as it
does the regime in Transmistria; and it will continue to hold
those chips, particularly if it feels aggrieved about the United
States' influence in Georgia and places like that, until it feels
it has a political incentive to do something about it. I have
just spent some time in Russia discussing these issues, amongst
others, and there is no popular sentiment of any particular significance
in support of Serbia, and inside Serbia itself there is a realism
that Russia is not somehow going to come to its rescue under any
circumstances; but also the Serbs do understand that in terms
of Kosovo Russia will not give it away for nothing, if push comes
to shove, on the issue of independence.
Q138 Mr Maples: You and our previous
witnesses mentioned in the context of, is this region of strategic
importance to us and the United States—and let us talk about
Europe in this context because your view is probably similar on
the United States, but it is to a degree removed from them—you
all mentioned this question of this line of main road surface
transport links from Europe to the Middle East. I can see that
is important, but does it really matter to Western Europe if these
problems go on? Are they likely to spill over to us in an uncontainable
way?
Mr Glenny: My answer is very clearly
yes. What we are looking at at the moment is a problem in Kosovo,
which is extremely severe. If the problem in Kosovo were to get
out of control it would impact on the stability of Macedonia,
Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and possibly the Republic
of Albania as well. We have seen in March the capacity for very
serious civil unrest in Kosovo. We have also seen in March the
incapacity of KFor to deal with very serious civil unrest in Kosovo.
If—and as far as I can see that is the trajectory we are
heading at the moment, but I may elaborate on that later—there
were a social explosion, the like of which we saw in March, again
in Kosovo, it would be much harder to contain on this occasion,
and at the moment I am not sure if Western Europe and/or the American
states has the military capacity to deal with something like this.
Q139 Chairman: You do not think that
the military authorities in Kosovo have learnt the lessons in
terms of smaller, more deployable, more flexible units, so that
if a March situation were to recur that they would be better prepared?
Mr Glenny: The proof of the pudding
will be in the eating, regrettably, but I accompanied Denis MacShane
to Kosovo just after the March events and we both saw the video
of the Irish Battalion making a very good job of trying to contain
an extremely large and unruly crowd. The Irish battalion, who
we spoke to, said very clearly, "We do not have the equipment,
we do not have the capacity for crowd control and riot control
and this is what we are dealing with. We have effectively been
deployed here in order to prevent the army of Serbia and Montenegro
from invading; we have not been deployed to deal with these types
of social situations." They did a very good job. There were
other battalions of KFor who did a lamentable job in March, and
who were actually caught on film running away from the mob. As
far as I understand, we have not had a major reorganisation of
the capacity and the nature of deployment and the equipping of
KFor in the meanwhile.
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