The advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice of the United Nations which states that the unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo in 2008 is not at odds with international law has caused a lot of bitterness in Serbia. After everything that was said in The Hague, demonstrating national unity the Serbian Parliament had immediately voted in a declaration that (it is expected) Serbian diplomats will submit to the General Assembly of the United Nations for a vote. On the day, and actually in the exact moment, that the advisory opinion was made public, from all orthodox Christian temples in the country bells could be heard ringing and the clergy and monks had called on all the faithful to a prayer for Serbian justice.
Following the decision the Serbian press represented this as being a cold shower, and rightfully so, because right before the International Court’s opinion was made public both politicians and experts were equally overly optimistic. After everything the President of the Republic, Boris Tadic, gave an official statement in which he said that in history unjust decisions take place, but that in spite of this Serbia will continue its decisive fight for Kosovo. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Vuk Jeremic, warned that the Court had opened up a Pandora’s Box and now a new menace will circle the globe: the menace of secessionism. The government held an emergency session and unanimously voted in a resolution which will be brought before the United Nations General Assembly.
A majority of the Serbian professional public voiced their criticism regarding the International Court’s opinion. According to the opinion of Predrag Simic, professor of international law at the Belgrade Faculty of Political Sciences, this was not a victory of justice but a victory for Washington and Brussels. Tibor Varadi, a international law expert, stated for the Belgrade daily Politika that the Court had not answered the question given to it and that it resorted to manipulation. Much like Jeremic, he also stressed that this decision will encourage secessionist movements. Following this context Politika’s foreign correspondent from Romania reported in harsh tones about “Romania’s Kosovo”, i.e. Erdelj, and said that the Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs gave a statement in which he talked about the “Hungarian threat”. The correspondent also directly called Laslo Takesh, a Hungarian politician from Erdelj, a secessionist. Constitutional law experts now have the opportunity to analyze the weak arguments of this opinion, or those that are more or less legally founded, and try to foresee its repercussions. However, one thing is certain: now the second stage of the Kosovo issue is over.
For the coalition which is lead by the Democratic Party the Court’s decision is certainly a fiasco, since it deals a serious blow to their pre-election assurance that the tasks of joining the EU and keeping Kosovo within the boundaries of Serbia are equally important – and that they do not mutually annul each other. Now it seems that these two principles may also be in conflict. Serbia will have to make a decision. A major question is to what extent is it possible to postpone this decision, does it make any sense to do that and, furthermore, what kinds of hidden compromises could still take place. And these options were, however cautiously, implied not only by diplomats of very influential European countries but also by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vuk Jeremic, when during his visit to Budapest he said: if the price for accession to the European Union is acknowledging Kosovo’s independence, in that case Serbia will reject the European Union.
The International Court’s decision has brought out into the light the political dilemma that has until now been repressed in the subconscious: either Kosovo or the European Union? The truth is that the Kosovo issue only somewhat influences the lessening of faith in the European option. Because the European Union has prolonged the process of admission for new members it has damaged the credibility of pro-European forces. The European Union is far removed into the distant future, while Kosovo is so near. And precisely this has contributed to the rise of Euroscepticism in Serbia, and in the whole region for that matter. There is an ever-growing conviction that Serbia must build stronger ties with Russia. This conviction is reinforced by theories, which are becoming ever more popular, on the crises of Western style capitalism. On the back of this political tendency certain decisions have been made recently in the area of (political) economy, and due to these decisions the complete Serbian oil industry has found its way into Russian hands – which was wholeheartedly supported by all major political parties. The sirens song of Putinesque capitalism, which is very nationalistic in character, is becoming increasingly loud and more appealing in Serbia, as in other countries in the region. When it comes to assessing the probabilities of Serbian accession to the European Union, it should be taken into consideration that a pro-Russian orientation has very deep roots in Serbian national history. It should however also be taken into consideration that Russia has nothing against Serbia joining the European Union, furthermore, this is even in its interest in a certain way, but it is strongly opposed to Serbia joining NATO. It is a major question whether Serbia can join the European Union without being a member of the NATO pact.
Therefore, the questions are multiplying. Is there maybe still some small secret opening left for compromise? Before the opinion of the Hague court was made public, many had hoped for some sort of ambiguous decision which would open the door to new negotiations and which would result in a historic compromise between the Serbs and the Albanians.
While we waited for the decision of the Court, Serbian politicians repeatedly rejected the idea of Kosovo’s division while the Serbian press wrote precisely on that subject.
As a rule these articles contained reminders that writer Dobrica Cosic, the father of the Serbian national movement, had suggested this solution in 1992. Cosic had participated in the fight against the fascist alongside Tito’s partisans, and later became the favorite writer of the Party, he was Chief of Agitprop and, up to 1968, a member of the Central Committee where he – to his own misfortune – brought forth the issue of Serbian victim-hood in Kosovo. The Central Committee distanced itself from his observations, and he subsequently decided to leave the League of Communists of Yugoslavia.
It was from this moment actually that Dobrica Cosic became a key figure of Serbian spiritual life.
At the Hague Tribunal for War Crimes, Slobodan Milosevic called him the greatest living Serbian writer. Vojislav Kostunica had a high opinion of him as well. And in a telegram for the writer’s 80th birthday, Zoran Djindjic referred to him a Serbian Thomas Man. Cosic was also a role model for the current president Boris Tadic in his youth, and as he confessed, when important issues are at hand, he is still willing to listen to the literary bard’s advice.
The Kosovo issue was taboo in Tito’s time and after 1968 it became the central base idea of the opposition in Serbia, and two decades later on it affected the disintegration of Yugoslavia and determined the direction as well as the content of the Serbian political system.
It would be wrong however to fall into the trap of many “Balkanologists” and claim that full responsibility for the Kosovo conflict is on Milosevic – mostly because this conflict far precedes him. The Serb-Albanian cold was has been lasting for a hundred years. There are some historians, not few of them, who believe that Serbia lost Kosovo when her troops reclaimed the “cradle of Serbia” from the Turks in 1912. The Serbian political elite experienced a multi-cultural shock at this time since, due to the Albanians, it discovered a completely foreign world which was very different then the one they had remembered. The stress of this occurrence had shocked the Serbian elite to such an extent that the Serbian Parliament had voted in a law which stated that Kosovo Albanians could not enjoy their constitutional rights (which they were generally entitled to under the Constitution) because those Albanians had allegedly not reached an adequate civilization level. Hence, the relations between the two nations have always been very tense, while only the tension level varied – and not even Tito’s magic wand could discipline it. In Serbian society there is a deeply rooted idea that Kosovo Albanians subject Kosovo Serbs to genocide. While Tito was alive people did not speak publicly about this idea, and after his death the opposition – at first through those who were a soft opposition and then later on through those intellectuals who had positioned themselves in cultural and educational institutions - had began to vocally demand that “energetic measures” be taken. In January of 1986, when Milosevic had not yet taken full authority, 211 respected Serbian politicians had submitted a petition to both the Serbian and the Federal Parliament. Among the signatories there were not only intellectuals who had previously been labeled as nationalists by the Party, but also numerous academics, university professors – intellectuals who played a significant role in the 80’s public life. Alongside them the signatories were democrats of conviction, advocates of the European value system, like Dragoljub Micunovic, first president of the opposition Democratic Party, who after the fall of Milosevic had become President of the Parliament of (reduced) Yugoslavia; or university professor Zagorka Golubovic; sociologist Nebojsa Popov, the main editor of opposition magazine Republika – all of whom were profoundly critical of Milosevic’s politics. Of course, Vojislav Kostunica – Milosevic’s successor to the state presidency – also signed the petition which was formulated by Dobrica Cosic and which spoke of Kosovo Serbs being victims of genocide. Serbia had capitulated in Kosovo without officially signing a capitulation. If, however, influential intellectuals of various political orientations were unanimous in thinking that genocide was committed against Serbs already in the 80’s, then it is clear that regarding the Kosovo issue Milosevic was more of a catalyst – which does not lessen his responsibility any but places the dimensions of the Kosovo issue today in a realistic framework.
Twenty years later on Serbian politics had made official the ideas of Dobrica Cosic and numerous opposition intellectuals. Official politics and the opposition interweaved. Cosic had welcomed Slobodan Milosevic, whom he compared to Nikola Pasic – the greatest Serbian politician of the 20th century. The famous writer became president of the Republic in 1992 due to the backing of Milosevic’s party, and so the Cosic-Panic government was formed but soon it confronted Milosevic’s hawks since Milosevic was the embodiment of anti-democratic nationalism while Cosic considered himself a supporter of democratic nationalism.
Consequently the Parliament had a vote of “no confidence” in Cosic and from then on the famous writer went on frequent opposition meetings. Since he was ahead of his time in 1986 in regards to the Kosovo issue, and brought into public consciousness a nationalistic perception of Kosovo, so again in 1993 in conflict with Milosevic and in opposition to the ruling political elite, he realized that with Milosevic Serbian nationalism was headed for disaster.
After the conflict with Milosevic he became an ever more vocal proponent of the division of Kosovo, but Serbian politicians and the Serbian public rigidly rejected this idea. On the 21st of January 1992 Cosic told the US ambassador, Zimmermann, in detail that his stance is that Kosovo should be divided and that Serbs would be satisfied with a third of its territory. In this way he wanted to end the cold war between the two nations. According to his diary entry, he suggested the same thing a year before (in 1991) to Borislav Jovic, the President of the Presidency of Yugoslavia, who in turn sent him to Milosevic and he rejected his idea outright.
After the NATO bombing of 1999 and the Kumanovo Accord, Kosovo had been put under protectorate of the United Nations and Serbia had, supposedly for only a while, lost sovereignty over that territory. At the end of 2000 Milosevic fell from power – according to some opinions he was betrayed by his own people, the secret police and army, while according to others he was toppled by the angered populace. Politicians then had hoped that with Milosevic gone and with a democratically elected government Serbia would regain the sympathies of the world and – sovereignty over Kosovo. But, considering how the Kosovo conflict predates Milosevic’s politics, this hope quickly faded. In 2002 Zoran Djindjic concluded that it is time to make an energetic move. From Cosic’s diary we know that Prime Minister Djindjic asked him to meet on December 14th 2002 and discuss Kosovo. The first meeting took place in the Prime Minister’s apartment since, as he claimed, Cosic’s apartment was bugged. According to the diary entries, Cosic was pleased that Djindjic showed greater interest for the Serbian national question. That this was not just the writer’s subjective impressions we can see from the letters Djindjic sent him in which he says that both of them have similar views. Furthermore, he promises to be even more radical in his approach to the Kosovo question and that he will thwart Vojvodina’s aspirations for greater autonomy. Later, Djindjic sent to Cosic copies of the letters he sent to members of the United Nations Security Council and leading European and US politicians. In letters addressed to Blair and Putin, among others, Djindjic implies the possibility of Kosovo’s division. Djindjic was, however, murdered on March 12th 2003. Keeping in mind the previous facts, in his diary Cosic comments, deeply shaken, that Djindjic could have been the politician who would have “saved Serbia from Kosovo”.
All of this had taken place a little over seven years ago. At that time this compromise might have been realistic. In the meantime Kosovo has already declared its independence, which has been accepted by many important and influential states. This declaration, according to the opinion of the International Court of Justice in the Hague, is not in opposition to international law. In the Security Council itself, Russia’s and China’s veto had stopped recognition of Kosovo’s independence, which could represent a certain symbolic satisfaction for Serbia but this too has its price: distancing from the European Union, which means greater economic crises. At this time then both Serbia and Kosovo are, as in a game of chess, struggling in a “mate” position. The chances that Kosovo could be divided today are smaller than they were seven years ago. In Djindjic’s time division seemed like a realistic option, but today it is highly questionable. Time is not working for Serbia. As of recently, some independent international institutions have cautiously been proposing the idea that Kosovo territories with a Serbian majority be given greater autonomy and guaranteed special relations with Serbia. However, neither Serbian nor Kosovo politicians have mentioned this. Maybe this could be the opening for the two sides to meet and find a solution through compromise.
Translation: Nina Djurdjevic Filipovic
