The Patience Is Running Out

Kosovo is, without any doubt, the crucial factor affecting the rating of Serbia on the international scene, not only because it is a part of Europe where the extent of the violations of national and human rights of an ethnic group is the greatest, but also because it is the only European region in which the majority population decidedly and voluntarily refuses to participate in the elections for the governing structures of the federal unit, which regards Kosovo as its constitutive part.

Mere enumerating of the oppressive undertakings of the authorities is enough to provide a faithful picture of the current situation in Kosovo. Some of these are: the placing of a great number of firms into receivership; the discharging of over six thousand Albanian high school teachers in a single day; the expulsion of over 800 Albanian professors, docents and teaching fellows from the University of Pristina, aimed at putting an end to the lecturing in Albanian language; the consequent lack of schooling for more than 400 thousand Albanian elementary school, high school and university students (who will be their teachers?); the outdated and repulsive detaining of several editors in chief, journalists and the arrest of the legitimate rector of the University. An unbiased assessment of the situation leads us to the conclusion that the troublesome unravelling of the Kosovo problem is only being postponed, and that it will eventually call into question the international status of Serbia itself.

The fact that the request for the international recognition of Kosovo was not taken into consideration by the EC Arbitration Commission, known as the "Badinter Commission", does not provide sufficient basis for a rather hasty conclusion that the problem of the political and international status of Kosovo is pushed aside, because the above mentioned request is facing some obstacles of procedural nature, and there are some more urgent problems that ought to be resolved first; on the other hand, from sociological and political point of view, the same inter-ethnic problem, the same inter-ethnic and political realities remain intact.

A broader assessment of the problem should take into consideration the following facts:

Kosovo was not a part of the territory of the independent and sovereign state of Serbia, internationally recognized by the Berlin Congress in 1878 (the mentioning of this fact does not mean supporting the thesis on the legal continuity from the Kingdom of Serbia to the present day Serbia, as a constitutive part of the presently disintegrating Yugoslav federation);

Kosovo was not a part of the Serbian territory, as it was defined by the Second Session of the National Antifascist Liberation Council of Yugoslavia, in November of 1943;

Kosovo was not a part of Serbia, on the occasion when the latter was constituted as a federal unit of Yugoslavia, in November of 1944 in Belgrade;

Based on the presumptive self-determination, in the form of presumptive constitutive wish of its population, Kosovo was not incorporated into Serbia as an independent and sovereign state, but into Serbia as a "constitutive part of the Yugoslav federation". Bearing in mind that the right of self-determination is permanent, the legal principle of "rebus sic stantibus" (the things are different now, because the conditions have substantially changed) logically implies that great structural changes are to occur in the area of the political relations;

Kosovo was not treated as a part of Serbia within the framework of the Constituent Assembly, on the occasion when the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed;

Even when it became a part of the Serbian territory, Kosovo was treated as a separate entity (corpus separatum). And during the two decades (from 1968 to 1988) following the adoption of the amendments to the Constitution of Yugoslavia in 1968, and especially after the constitutional amendments in 1971 and the adoption of the (then) new constitution in 1974, when it was proclaimed a "Socialist Autonomous Province" with its own constitution and status of a constitutive part of the federation, the position of Kosovo was pretty much the same as the position of other federal units, and its institutional structure was similar to the institutional structure of the republics.

The main point is that, the Albanian people in Kosovo, a population of almost 2 million (90% of the total population of Kosovo), obviously do not want to abide "alieni iuris" (the law of the other), even if that law respects the principle of "aequum et bonum" (the principle of justice and goodness), both in the manner in which it is being adopted and in the application of the law itself. Therefore, the quintessence of the striving of the Albanian population for an independent and sovereign Kosovo is not in contesting the repressive policies of the Serbian establishment, but in its free will to live by its own laws.

Today, at the final stage of the disintegration of Yugoslav federation, Albanians from Kosovo (representing one half of the whole Albanian nation) have no need to persuade anyone in the "federation" or from abroad that they should not have the status of a national minority, but of a nation, which is, by the way, larger than many other nations living on the Yugoslav territories. The fact that they constitute the majority population on a politically defined territory, with a defined political determination concerning their political and territorial interests, but respecting the rights of other ethnic groups, is enough to prove their point..

If Serbia were to officially recognize the Republic of Kosovo, it would only open new democratic possibilities within Serbia itself and would radically improve its rating on the international scene.

The most audacious, farsighted and beneficial answer to the interesting and inspiring question - "What should Serbia Do" (posed by Dragoljub Micunovic from the Democratic Party) - would be that Serbia should get rid of Kosovo and the Kosovo problem, by accepting it as an independent state, which would guarantee equal rights for all of its citizens and peoples. In that way, the Serbo-Albanian relations could enter into a new phase of mutual respect and friendship, where they should have always been. The sovereignty and the independence of Kosovo could stimulate the creation of some kind of a Balkan tariffs and passport union.

One thing is crystal-clear though, and there is not a shadow of overstatement in this affirmation: in the future, the reputation of Serbia on the international scene will depend more on the state of Serbo-Albanian relations, than on the state of Serbo-Croatian or other relations. The independence of Kosovo, and Serbo-Albanian relations in general provide the basic framework for the long term regulation of the international status of Serbia. As far as the things are going, Serbia can use Yugoslavia only as a temporary mask on its way towards its independent appearance on the international scene. Serbia, as a territorial and political entity, is already there, because when the majority of the constitutive units of a federation declare their independence and sovereignty, they are not the only ones which are seceding - those remaining are practically doing the same thing.