Examination of Witness (Questions 140-159)
26 OCTOBER 2004
MR MISHA
GLENNY
Q140 Mr Maples: If something like what
happened in March flared up again, are you saying that you think
that forces from Serbia and Montenegro would intervene and, if
so, how far would they go?
Mr Glenny: No, it would depend
on how it would develop, but I am extremely concerned that the
international community, both as it is deployed politically and
militarily, will find it very hard to deal with a return match
of March, and that certainly if you had large numbers of Serbs
being killed then in that event there would be tremendous pressure
from Serbia and Montenegro to respond militarily.
Q141 Mr Maples: Might they act militarily
themselves? Do they have the capability to do so, and would that
just involve the northern and Mitrovica part?
Mr Glenny: I think it would just
involve the northern part. One of the things that the Serbs do
not fully understand, have not taken in about Kosovo—and
indeed it needs to be stressed—is that a majority of the
Serbs in Kosovo live south of the Ibar River, ie south of North
Mitrovica, and a majority of those Serbs living south of the Ibar
River live in mixed communities with Albanians. They are actually
relatively well integrated, and this is something that is little
understood; that there are large areas of Kosovo where Serbs and
Albanians are integrating rather successfully. The idea of enclaves
and also the prospect of the military intervention from Serbia
and Montenegro would leave these Serbs, in my opinion, extremely
vulnerable to revenge attacks.
Q142 Chairman: Before I come on to the
recent elections, a question about the Russian motives and the
Russian background. To what extent do you think Russian authorities
are constrained by public opinion in Russia itself and also of
the ramifications of any settlement in Kosovo and Chechnya?
Mr Glenny: The first issue, I
do not think that they are constrained at all by this. Really
my sense in Russia, talking to politicians, diplomats, journalists
and ordinary folk was that Kosovo is a very far away place, of
which they know nothing, and in which they are little interested.
The same, incidentally, would go for Serbia as well. But in terms
of its strategic importance vis-a"-vis Chechnya, I
think you may have a more serious point, that it sets a poor precedent
for Putin. On the other hand, I do not think that Putin always
sees precedents from other parts of the world as necessarily applicable
to the Russian Federation. My strong sense is that Kosovo is a
chip which they may decide to use, they may play with, they may
not, but they are not desperately wedded to it.
Q143 Andrew Mackinlay: Mr Glenny, with
Serbia and Montenegro, it seems to me, it might be more sensible
for us at least not to be in any way trying to bolster what I
deem to be a wholly artificial federation; that Montenegrin independence
not only has some justice but also you could offer advance membership
into the European Union for Montenegro—it could be absorbed,
it is twice the population of the London borough of Wandsworth,
and it also might make it easier to deal with an independent Serbia
and also perhaps even the final status of Kosovo if this rump
of the Yugoslav Federation was broken and you start from scratch.
I really wanted to bounce that off you.
Mr Glenny: It is difficult for
me to reply without looking at the totality of Serbia, Montenegro
and Kosovo, but essentially my assessment has been for a long
time that there are two regional motors of growth and stability
in the entire region, which are Croatia and Serbia, and that the
dispute between Serbia and Croatia in the early 90s was what provoked
the war. In order to reintroduce stability you have to guarantee
the stability of those two territories. For Serbia it is more
complicated because Croatia was only involved with Bosnia and
Herzegovina as another territory. With Serbia there is the relationship
with Montenegro and there is the relationship with Kosovo. I feel
very strongly that the key relationship for the European Union
in this region now is Serbia; that because Montenegro is so small
that absorbing it into the European Union actually would not make
much difference. It would probably be very easy to do it, although
it is still a pretty highly criminalized state, and so on and
so forth, and there are problems in association with it.
Q144 Andrew Mackinlay: Which I accept.
Mr Glenny: Rather than concentrating
on a swift way to get Montenegro into the EU I would be looking
very much at what is the quickest way to get Serbia moving towards
the European Union. So it is looking at a different point of view.
That may well mean jettisoning the relationship with Montenegro
and it might mean jettisoning a relationship with Kosovo—for
Serbia, that is. What Serbia needs in order to do that is a system
of incentives and at the moment there are no incentives.
Q145 Andrew Mackinlay: You said that
the trajectory which we are now on—and I noticed you said
those words—is not going to provide a solution, and you
also said, "I think it could be resolved but I do not see
any players who can resolve it." It tantalisingly invites
me to pick up from where you left off because I think it would
be very useful if you did see the present precipice we are heading
for—which is probably slightly out of line—but also
if you were given a free hand today how you would be steering
things?
Mr Glenny: I will get to the core
of the matter and I will address the Kosovo election issues. First
of all, you have to look at the social reality of Kosovo. With
the exception of Transmistria this is the only territory in Europe
at the moment which registers a negative economic growth. The
difference between Transmistria and Kosovo is that Transmistria's
economic growth is in consequence of the population having halved
over the last 10 years. Kosovo has a growing and very young population
and every year 50,000 young people come on to a non-existent job
market. Another reason why the economic growth is negative is
that there is further pressure from refugees from Western Europe
being sent back to Kosovo because they no longer want to be maintained
by the host country, and that means a reduction in remittances,
which are very, very important in Kosovo's economy. What happened
in March was that finally people had had enough. With youth unemployment
running at 70%, with no movement on the status issue, but also
a government (UNMIK) which, frankly, has been lamentable in its
failure, its economic record is simply unspeakable. I could go
into details but for the moment take that as read. It has alienated
the population. The Serbs were the first targets in March because
they are very identifiable sitting ducks. KFor and UNMIK police
vehicles and personnel were attacked, but also the Albanian political
elite, from the PDK and the LVK, were actually frightened by the
mob because they knew that they were identified with a government
system which had brought the population absolutely nothing. That
is at the heart of what we are facing, combined with a political
issue of the Albanian elite having absolutely no idea of what
is going on in Belgrade—and I can testify to that because
as soon as I visit Prishtina the political leaders I meet, all
they want to know is what is happening in Belgrade? At the same
time in Belgrade there is a complete and utter ignorance of the
social reality of Kosovo. So the only political incentive that
the elites have is to take a maximalist position because they
are frightened. The Foreign Office and Denis MacShane came up
with an idea earlier this year that when Harri Holkeri would be
replaced that there would be a second post inaugurated of an envoy
who is mandated solely to Prishtina and Belgrade so that there
is some form of communication. At the moment there is nothing.
Given the social reality in Kosovo, given that the Serbs do not
feel as though there is an incentive to vote at the moment—although
in local elections you will find it is a very different issue—what
you are going to have is a further deepening of the crisis which
led to an explosion in March. If you want to get a short to mid-term
solution you have to find a way of persuading Serbia to give up
Kosovo. So what are the ways that one might persuade Serbia to
give up Kosovo? Going there now and telling Serbian politicians
that they have to support the idea of a final status which is
likely to result in independence of Kosovo is turkeys voting for
Christmas. It is no good asking Serbian politicians to do that.
And do we want to have another situation where a Prime Minister
or President of Serbia is pushing through, with the encouragement
of Western Europe and the United States, unpopular policies and,
eventually, whoever knows which one it was, is shot as a consequence?
Because there are very few more Zoran Djindics around. Boris Tadic
happens to be one, but Tadic is dealing with a very, very difficult
situation domestically and there is a wide recognition privately
amongst the Serbian political elite that they will have to come
up with some pretty dramatic and radical solutions. What they
need vis-a"-vis Kosovo are the tools to sell this
to their own population, and at the moment we are asking them
to do all sorts of tough things but we are also not giving them
the necessary tools.
Q146 Andrew Mackinlay: The tools being
what?
Mr Glenny: The tools, I would
suggest, being a much clearer vision of how Serbia—and not
Macedonia, not Kosovo, not Albania—moves towards the European
Union. Also, any solution that involves the possibility of independence
for Kosovo when it comes to final status, this has to be like
the Austrian State Treaty of 1955; there is no way under any circumstances
that Kosovo's borders can shift.
Q147 Chairman: But Tadic urged the minority
in Kosovo to vote. Kostunica and the church urged them not to
vote. Surely the result of the vote, this massive boycott, was
a disavowal of Tadic?
Mr Glenny: No, it is not a disavowal
of Tadic, it means that on certain issues, firstly in Northern
Mitrovica—I would refer you to a quote of Reuters
in their news report from two days ago, when a Serb was asked
whether he was going to vote and his response was, "Are you
kidding, they would knee cap me?"—the local Serbs feel
as they do not have any purchase within the political process
or within the Assembly in Prishtina. Tadic spent a lot of capital
asking them to go and vote but essentially they had to make a
decision between Tadic and Kostunica, and for the moment they
went for Kostunica, but that is partly because they are dependent,
remember, economically on Belgrade, Mitrovica in particular. The
entire economy is financed by Belgrade.
Q148 Chairman: I can understand that
argument in respect of Mitrovica and the northern border areas,
but you said to the Committee earlier that the greater part of
the population in the south of that—and indeed you went
further and said that they were a community of Serbs who were
well integrated and indeed integrating rather successfully. How
do you square that with individuals feeling that they would be
kneecapped in this vote?
Mr Glenny: Because they are integrated
into the municipalities and the local structures. They serve on
the municipalities as deputy mayors, and so on and so forth, depending
on where you go. I run a project called GPKT, which brings together
municipalities from eastern Kosovo, southern Serbia and northern
Macedonia, which all have minority issues that have been resolved
through integrating the minorities, whether Albanian, Serb or
Macedonian, into the political process. They will come out every
time and vote for those local councils because they feel they
have a stake, and they feel they have absolutely no stake in the
political process in Prishtina as it is currently structured.
When Western Europe and the United States come in and say, "You
must go out and vote," their response to that is, "Why?
What do we get out of this?" because what their immediate
memory of the political process inside Kosovo is, is March; that
is their immediate memory. They do not see any tangible benefits
at the moment through cooperation.
Q149 Chairman: What would be your advice
to the British government and other EU countries in seeking to
get over this obstacle?
Mr Glenny: My first advice would
be to accelerate the dismantling of UNMIK, to give—
Q150 Chairman: A transfer to the EU or
local—
Mr Glenny: No, transfer to the
Kosovo Assembly but insisting upon a real transfer of powers from
Prishtina to the municipalities and so that there is a primitive
system of accountability in that political process. At the same
time this would have to be tracked with a vigorous attempt by
the international community to establish a proper dialogue and
not, frankly, the excuse for a dialogue that we have at the moment,
identifying those people in the Serbian and the Kosovo elite who
are prepared to talk and deal in terms of compromises and move
towards serious solutions. The other thing for the Serbs is to
get serious about refugee return; there is a lot of pressure inside
southern Serbia to move refugees back. This is one thing that
we are doing in Gilan in eastern Kosovo, supporting the local
Albanian mayor, who is appealing for Serbs from the Nish area
to come back and integrate into Kosovo. The problem we have is
not political in many of these areas where the Serbs are considering
returning, the problem is economic because what happens is they
return to Kosovo and then there are no jobs and they no longer
get the support as IDPs[3]that
they receive in southern Serbia. So one of the things that the
people I am working with, including local mayors, what we are
doing is trying to appeal to the international community to set
up programmes of economic sustainability and refugee return, so
the Serbs can see that something is actually being done to assist
their integration.
Q151 Chairman: But we have the reality
of the election result. How serious a blow, in your judgment,
was that to prospects of progress in a multi-ethnic direction?
Mr Glenny: It is a serious blow
but I cannot see at the moment how the idea of partition or the
idea of creation of enclaves is going to work, and the reason
for this emerges from the population distribution that I mentioned
early on, and to which you referred again, and that is if you
want to do that you have to start this operation by moving up
to 40,000, 45,000 Serbs physically from disparate parts of Kosovo
into these enclaves. It is a population transfer which began in
'23 with the Greek/Turkish Agreement in Geneva, but which I see
as a very poor precedent. We went there in order to support multi-cultural
solutions in Kosovo and south eastern Europe, and we will be presiding
over the transfer of population out of the territory where they
live into another territory. The implications for southern Serbia
and the Albanian population there are severe and the implications
for Macedonia are severe.
Q152 Mr Chidgey: Mr Glenny, I was rather
intrigued by your remarks regarding accelerating Serbia's accession
to the European Union in the context of Kosovo—and you also
mentioned Croatia, I believe. I rather want to know what you perceive
as the outcome of that, why is it such an important issue? Plus,
of course, recognising the fact that the acceleration of any applicant
state to join the EU is something which is a hostage to fortune.
Also bearing in mind that we are already having problems with
some of the new applicant countries because of their continuing
appalling record on many of the basic principles that any applicant
must show to be subscribing to before any application can be properly
considered. So there is the problem of meeting the criteria, and
are we supposed to drop the criteria, reduce them? Are we supposed
to change the process? Is it a situation now in which Serbia and
Kosovo are looking for employment opportunities outside of the
country through accession to the EU as a way of resolving their
economic problems? I do not quite see why it is the panacea.
Mr Glenny: I am not suggesting
that this be done immediately. I would reiterate what you said,
that if you look at the current enlargement of 10 that there is
barely a country there where we have not lowered the standards
of certain criteria. So this is not without precedent, the way
that we do this. In terms of political perceptions inside Serbia
vis-a"-vis the European Union, the Croatian case is
difficult as well because of the Gotovina issues. The fact of
the matter is Gotovina is not in the Hague. Croatia was given
a clean bill of health by Carla del Ponte, but, as I understood
it from the Foreign Office, before the clean bill of health was
given the deal was Gotovina in the Hague. Positions were then
switched—why, I do not know. Serbia, it is basically down
to Mladic and the four generals. But what they do is to look at
Croatia and they look at the Gotovina issue and they say, "Can
we not do a deal on Mladic and on Gotovina, and maybe we can deal
with the Hague?" So you have different messages going through
to Serbia and the key thing about Gotovina is that the resolution
of that situation allowed EU membership. So Serbia is very sensitive
about that. But the real reason is this issue of incentives. At
the moment, basically, Serbia is told, "You have to do this,
you have to do that, you have to go into a state with Montenegro,
despite possessing two economic systems and having real difficulties
on trade issues, vis-a"-vis your relationship with
the EU. You have to hand over the war criminals and you have to
start getting serious about Kosovo and final status. And, by the
way, no, you cannot have better visa access into Schengen."
The issue of labour movement here is very, very important. One
does not have to open the doors of south eastern Europe to the
labour markets of the European Union. However, there are schemes
which would be welcomed in south eastern Europe, whereby individual
workers can go for six to nine months, or something, on a sponsored
workplace system whereby we need the labour in western Europe,
particularly for seasonal work, and you get remittances back there,
you get some level of training—it is a very, very fruitful
area of exploration, in my opinion. But at the moment there is
none of that and already Serbs can no longer travel to Romania
and Bulgaria unrestricted. Macedonians can barely travel anywhere.
They are told all the time that they have to do this for Europe,
that for Europe, and what do they get out of it?—declining
living standards, they cannot go anywhere any more and they are
seen as an habitual boil on the body politic of Europe. With the
best will in the world we have to think of ways of explaining
to them that, yes, they are part of Europe and, yes, we do want
to assist them, and the CARDS[4]programme
and similar, unfortunately, are not things which generally penetrate
the minds of ordinary voters and it is ordinary voters that we
have to think of in terms of persuading the political actors.
Q153 Mr Chidgey: It is not just about
war criminals though, is it, the deal being done? The most important
thing, surely, for EU entrance is that you do not just pass the
laws that give you the rule of law, which give you human rights,
which give you equality and so forth, you actually implement the
laws so that the population does benefit from the same society
that we cherish and protect, if I may say so? My concern is that
you sign on the dotted line, you exchange war criminals but you
do not actually—and you cannot actually—change the
type of society of the applicant country, which in this case is
Serbia, which actually does not take you any further in improving
the lot of people?
Mr Glenny: Except that if you
look at the impact and the accession on the most recent round
of enlargement countries, but also on Romania and Bulgaria—and
also, I would argue, on Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Greece—the
impact has been phenomenal in terms of how people behave. You
have specific problems in Bulgaria and Romania associated with
corruption and organised crime. Because of their key position,
because of the engagement of people like the Crown Agents in Bulgaria
and the MOD in both countries, drug liaison officers and so on
and so forth, real progress is being made there. There are no
similar programmes of that depth going on in the Western Balkans,
where one could argue that they are equally needed. But not only
that, once they are on the accession process you start to see
an increase in investors' confidence, and this is very, very important,
that people feel as though once countries are on the European
accession road they are going to shift their behaviour because
there is an economic incentive to do it, and you have seen a real
change in the behaviour of how Bulgarians and Romanians operate
since accession became a reality. I think that is the case with
NATO accession as well; I do not think one sees NATO accession—well,
the Americans see it as a possibility of getting bases in Romania
and Bulgaria—but NATO accession as far as south eastern
Europe is concerned and the Western Balkans is a way of engaging
with the West and de-politicising their Army; ie it has a real
impact on how the societies are structured and behave. The process
of accession has an enormous impact, but so long as it remains
a vague, unstructured promise then you are going to get situations
like Macedonia.
Q154 Mr Illsley: Turning to Bosnia and
Herzegovina, the High Representative of Bosnia, Lord Ashdown,
came under strong criticism for his strong-handed approach, although
last week in front of this Committee he defended himself reasonably
well against allegations of dismissals of certain civil servants
and his use of the Bonn powers. Do you think that he is tackling
the job appropriately, or do you think the use of those powers
is harming the situation in Bosnia or not?
Mr Glenny: I think that Bosnia
represents a similar but not identical problem to that of Kosovo—except
it has been going on for longer—where a culture of political
dependency emerges. The lack of incentive for Bosnian politicians
to act with any accountability or responsibility remains very
high, in my opinion. Lord Ashdown has said that his aim is to
try to divest himself as soon as he can of the Bonn powers and
get out of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I think that is a very laudable
aim. I think he is to some extent caught in the straitjacket of
the office and the way the office was established and how it has
developed, and that the Ad Hominem attacks I do not think
are valuable in any respect at all. I also think that Lord Ashdown
is under certain pressures from his political seniors, particularly
on the issue of security, which are not always taken into account
in terms of how he is behaving on the economic and political level.
I am concerned when he uses these powers to dismiss either elected
officials or civil servants without any requirement to explain
why, which in certain positions it is argued that he does not
have to explain why he is doing this. I think he should have to
explain why he is doing it, and I would encourage everyone to
try to ensure that local instances take over powers wherever possible,
but at the moment this does not seem to be happening quite fast
enough. In terms of security for Bosnia and Herzegovina, the keys
as to whether there is going to be another war or not lie in Belgrade
and Zagreb. If Belgrade and Zagreb are hands-off Bosnia and Herzegovina
there is not going to be a serious instability in that area in
the eventuality of troops withdrawing. If Belgrade and Zagreb
are not happy then there is a very strong chance of there being
instability when troops withdraw. By "happy" I mean
whether they have indicated their intentions to interfere or not.
Zagreb I think has pulled out and I think one of the reasons why
Zagreb has pulled out and will not do that is absolutely because
of the EU accession process, and it is another reason why I would
argue that Serbia should be seen as slightly different from the
others.
Q155 Mr Illsley: You mentioned incentives
on Bosnia's politicians. Can you expand on that? Would that be
moving towards European Union accession?
Mr Glenny: No, it means so that
they are accountable to their electorates for what they do. I
am talking on that level. At the moment there is a strong element
of Bosnian politics which has most successfully got the ear of
Lord Ashdown. As long as so much power is concentrated in the
centre they are not having to address the concerns of their electorate,
and this is a key problem in Bosnia and a key problem in Kosovo,
because whatever one says about Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, all
the politicians there are actually up for election next time and
are held to account for their actions, which is one of the reasons
why you see changes in government so dramatically, because there
is very little they can do about the economic situation. But it
is their responsibility.
Q156 Mr Illsley: Is there anything more
the international community could do to try and get the Bosnian
entities to hand over people to the War Crimes Tribunal?
Mr Glenny: That is regrettably
very difficult. No. It is very difficult to see how to do that.
Karadzic is very effectively hidden; nobody knows where he is;
they have come close to getting him a few times. I cannot see
any way of trying to incentivise the local population; there are
already large rewards on these people's heads. Serbia and Mladic
is a different business. I do not know if the President or the
Prime Minister in Serbia know where Mladic is, but I am sure military
intelligence knows where he is. I think Mladic is going to be
easier to get, paradoxically, because he is more powerful than
Karadzic.
Q157 Mr Illsley: Does there come a time
when we have to turn to each other and say, is there any point
continuing with this search for these people? Perhaps more Karadzic
than Mladic because of the military involvement. Does there come
a time when the civilian population do not want to give him up,
he has obviously been able to hide, to conceal himself, there
are rewards on his head, yet people do not take advantage of that,
and is it not time to say, "Let us forget it"?
Mr Glenny: I observed from an
article in the Washington Times that I read this morning,
that John Bolton in the United States has made strong indications
that it is time to wind-up the ICTY. Under the Bush administration
it was fairly obvious earlier on that if the Serbs had handed
over Mladic and the Bosnians Karadzic then the Americans would
have withdrawn their support from the ICTY as a whole. And it
now looks as if they are looking into this again with the transfer
of cases to Belgrade and to Zagreb and to the local instances.
I think that the ICTY has a function but I think that it has become
too politicised and I think it has too negative an impact on local
politics. If there is some way of reaching a compromise on this
issue in terms of devolving the court's powers into local capitals
I think it should certainly be explored. There is a long list
of people sitting there waiting to be tried in the Hague. Are
people going to continue funding the Hague? I do not know, those
are issues for the international community to decide in terms
of funding. At the moment there is a huge logjam, there is the
whole minor farce around the Milosevic case and it has had a real
blocking effect on political development inside the former Yugoslavia.
What were to happen if Carla del Ponte finally unveils her choice
of indictees for Kosovo, God only knows.
Q158 Andrew Mackinlay: Some time before
the break I want to ask about policing, but when you literally
stop there you are saying that we have to anticipate this shopping
list of indictees coming up from Kosovo, and you say that is going
to be an aggravant?
Mr Glenny: Yes.
Q159 Andrew Mackinlay: The other thing
I want to ask you about is, Mr Whyte earlier drew attention to
the fact that many of the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina will
be able to claim Croatian citizenship and if they did do so of
course that would diminish from nation building, they would not
feel Bosnian, and then presumably the people who cannot claim
Croatian citizenship would say, "You are not Bosnian."
Presumably this is something which we need to take into account,
both in terms of negotiations in accession of Croatia and, again,
going back to this whole business of mobility around Europe. We
exaggerate this business, points which both Mr Whyte and you have
made, the fact we are not going to let people into Europe, we
are going to return them, and visas and so on. Would you flag
this up fairly high for us to address this, in the sense we address
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office?
Mr Glenny: When I learnt about
Croatian accession I immediately anticipated that when this gets
nearer you will see the first voluntary mass conversion of religion
inside the Balkans for 150 years or so, as a lot of people become
Catholics in a short space of time. I think there will be an element
of that; I think there will be an element of selling Croatian
passports inside Bosnia and Herzegovina as well, but the dual
citizenship for Serbia and for Croatia was laid down in Dayton
and that is not going to stop. Whether the EU can come up with
a new formulation saying that only Croats not living in Bosnia
and Herzegovina can get in, I do not know, but it seems to be
unrealistic. As regards access to labour markets and moving around
Europe, the other thing that I am doing at the moment is working
at a book on trans-national organised crime, and I can tell you
quite categorically that keeping people out of the European Union
and keeping them in distressed economic areas is manna from heaven
for organised crime syndicates. They provide labour, very cheap
labour. The one cultural specificity you can level at the Balkans
is that people are good at smuggling there. I do not think that
they are congenitally genocidal and I do not think that they are
congenitally criminal, but they are good at smuggling because
they have been doing it for a very long time, and every time the
borders of the EU are raised, the walls go higher, and all you
are doing is maximising the profits of organised crime syndicates,
who have penetrated our capitals 10 years ago. The dam burst on
that one a long time ago. So for me, particularly with the issue
of the ageing population in Western Europe, the fact that we often
cannot fill up the employment places that are there, it seems
to me, if I may use the colloquialism, a "no brainer".
We have unemployment that leads to instability in south-eastern
Europe, we have under-employment. These people have been determined
by us as European and candidates for the European Union, and it
seems to me an obvious place from where we could consider drawing
labour.
3 Internally Displaced Persons. Back
4
Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilisation
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