Balkanalysis.com
November 18, 2007
Kosovo auf Deutsch
By David Binder*
Forget about status negotiations for a moment. The
near-term outlook for Kosovo is unalterably grim: an
economy stuck in misery; a bursting population of
young people with “criminality as the sole career
choice;” an insupportably high birthrate; a society
imbued with corruption and a state dominated by
organized crime figures.
These are the conclusions of “Operationalizing of the
Security Sector Reform in the Western Balkans,” a
124-page investigation by the Institute for European
Policy commissioned by the German Bundeswehr and
issued last January.
This month the text turned up on a weblog. It is
labeled “solely for internal use.”
Provided one can plow through the appallingly dense
Amtsdeutsch - “German officialese” - that is already
evident in the ponderous title, a reader is rewarded
with sharp insights about Kosovo.
Occasionally a flicker of human frustration with the
intractability of Kosovo’s people appears in the
stolid German text. That reminded me of an encounter
44 years ago in the fly-specked cafeteria of
Pristina’s Kosovski Bozur Hotel, occupied by a lone
guest drinking a beer. He introduced himself as an
engineer from Germany.
What was he doing here?” I inquired. “Ich verbloede,”
he replied - “I am stupefying myself.” - (or, I am
making myself stupid).
In this text, the authors make clear that Germany’s
interest in Kosovo rests on its “geographic proximity”
and its roles as the most important supplier of troops
and provider of money for the province.
Failure would mean “incalculable risks for future
foreign and security policy” of the Federal Republic.
The authors point out a “grotesque denial of reality
by the international community” about Kosovo, coupling
that with the warning of “a new wave of unrest that
could greatly exceed the level of escalation seen up
to now.”
The institute authors, Mathias Jopp and Sammi Sandawi,
spent six months interviewing 70 experts and mining
current literature on Kosovo in preparing the study.
In their analysis the political unrest and guerrilla
fighting of the 1990s led to basic changes which they
call a “turnabout in Kosovo-Albanian social
structures.” The result is a “civil war society in
which those inclined to violence, ill-educated and
easily influenced people could make huge social leaps
in a rapidly constructed soldateska.”
“It is a Mafia society” based on “capture of the
state” by criminal elements. (”State capture” is a
term coined in 2000 by a group of World Bank analysts
to describe countries where government structures have
been seized by corrupt financial oligarchies. This
study applied the term to Montenegro’s Milo
Djukanovic, by way of his cigarette smuggling and to
Slovenia, with the arms smuggling conducted by Janez
Jansa). In Kosovo, it says, “There is a need for
thorough change of the elite.”
In the authors’ definition, Kosovan organized crime
“consists of multimillion-Euro organizations with
guerrilla experience and espionage expertise.” They
quote a German intelligence service report of “closest
ties between leading political decision makers and the
dominant criminal class” and name Ramush Haradinaj,
Hashim Thaci and Xhavit Haliti as compromised leaders
who are “internally protected by parliamentary
immunity and abroad by international law.”
They scornfully quote the UNMIK chief from 2004-2006,
Soeren Jessen Petersen, calling Haradinaj “a close and
personal friend.” UNMIK, they add “is in many respects
an element of the local problem scene.”
They cite its failure to improve Kosovo’s energy
supply, and “notable cases of corruption that have led
to alienation from Kosovo public and to a hostile
picture of a colonialist administration.” They
describe both UNMIK and KFOR as infiltrated by agents
of organized crime who forewarn their ringleaders of
any impending raids. “The majority of criminal
incidents do not become public because of fear of
reprisals.
Among the negative findings listed are:
The justice system’s 40,000 uncompleted criminal
cases;
The paucity of corruption-crime investigations (10-15
annually);
The province’s 400 gas stations (where 150 would
suffice), many of which serve as fronts for brothels
and money-changing depots;
A Kosovo Police Service “dominated by fear, corruption
and incompetence”;
The study sharply criticizes the United States for
“abetting the escape of criminals” in Kosovo as well
as “preventing European investigators from working.”
This has made Americans “vulnerable to blackmail.”
It notes “secret CIA detention centers” at Camp
Bondsteel and assails American military training for
Kosovo (Albanian) police by Dyncorp, authorized by the
Pentagon.
In an aside, it quotes one unidentified official as
saying of the American who is deputy chief of UNMIK,
“The main task of Steve Schook is to get drunk once a
week with Ramush Haradinaj.”
Concerning the crime scene the authors conclude that
“with resolution of the status issue and the
successive withdrawal of international forces the
criminal figures will come closer than ever to their
goal of total control of Kosovo.”
Among the dismal findings of the German study are
those on the economy:
Sinking remission of money from Kosovans working
abroad, a primary source of income for many Kosovo
families, pegged now at 560 million euros per annum;
Some 88 percent of the land now in private ownership,
meaning ever more sub dividing of plots, usually among
brothers, leading to less and less efficient
agriculture;
Proliferation of NGOs - now numbering 2,400 – the
great bulk of which exist for shady purposes;
A hostile climate for foreign investors, frightened by
political instability and the power of mafia
structures.
A central issue in Kosovo is an “inexhaustible supply
of young people without a future and therefore ready
for violence,” the study says. The only remedy for
dealing with this “youth bulge” is to open northern
Europe’s gates to young Kosovans seeking jobs, the
authors say.
In anticipation of a transfer of oversight from the UN
to the European Union, the authors warn: “the EU is in
danger of following too strongly in the wake of a
failed UN and to disintegrate under the inherited
burden unless they make an open break with practices
and methods of UNMIK.” One of the experts they
interviewed put it more bluntly: “the EU is inheriting
from UNMIK a fireworks store filled with pyromaniacs.”
In the estimate of the authors neither NATO nor the EU
or UN appear capable of self examination, much less
self-criticism. The authors draw a picture of
self-satisfied incompetents in all international
organizations dealing with Kosovo.
However, in their depiction, Kosovans appear equally
beholden to legend - in their case of historic
exploitation - such that if they finally achieve
independence, all will suddenly be well. In the past
Kosovans could and did always blame somebody else for
their troubles: Ottomans, Yugoslavs, Serbs.
Now they have begun to blame UNMIK. But what will
happen if they have only themselves to blame?
*David Binder (born 1931) was a correspondent for The
New York Times from 1961 until 2004. He specialized in
coverage of central and eastern Europe, based in
Berlin, Belgrade and Bonn. The current piece was
published in Belgrade’s Politika on July 16, 2007.
http://www.balkanalysis.com/2007/11/18/kosovo-auf-deutsch/
November 18, 2007
Kosovo auf Deutsch
By David Binder*
Forget about status negotiations for a moment. The
near-term outlook for Kosovo is unalterably grim: an
economy stuck in misery; a bursting population of
young people with “criminality as the sole career
choice;” an insupportably high birthrate; a society
imbued with corruption and a state dominated by
organized crime figures.
These are the conclusions of “Operationalizing of the
Security Sector Reform in the Western Balkans,” a
124-page investigation by the Institute for European
Policy commissioned by the German Bundeswehr and
issued last January.
This month the text turned up on a weblog. It is
labeled “solely for internal use.”
Provided one can plow through the appallingly dense
Amtsdeutsch - “German officialese” - that is already
evident in the ponderous title, a reader is rewarded
with sharp insights about Kosovo.
Occasionally a flicker of human frustration with the
intractability of Kosovo’s people appears in the
stolid German text. That reminded me of an encounter
44 years ago in the fly-specked cafeteria of
Pristina’s Kosovski Bozur Hotel, occupied by a lone
guest drinking a beer. He introduced himself as an
engineer from Germany.
What was he doing here?” I inquired. “Ich verbloede,”
he replied - “I am stupefying myself.” - (or, I am
making myself stupid).
In this text, the authors make clear that Germany’s
interest in Kosovo rests on its “geographic proximity”
and its roles as the most important supplier of troops
and provider of money for the province.
Failure would mean “incalculable risks for future
foreign and security policy” of the Federal Republic.
The authors point out a “grotesque denial of reality
by the international community” about Kosovo, coupling
that with the warning of “a new wave of unrest that
could greatly exceed the level of escalation seen up
to now.”
The institute authors, Mathias Jopp and Sammi Sandawi,
spent six months interviewing 70 experts and mining
current literature on Kosovo in preparing the study.
In their analysis the political unrest and guerrilla
fighting of the 1990s led to basic changes which they
call a “turnabout in Kosovo-Albanian social
structures.” The result is a “civil war society in
which those inclined to violence, ill-educated and
easily influenced people could make huge social leaps
in a rapidly constructed soldateska.”
“It is a Mafia society” based on “capture of the
state” by criminal elements. (”State capture” is a
term coined in 2000 by a group of World Bank analysts
to describe countries where government structures have
been seized by corrupt financial oligarchies. This
study applied the term to Montenegro’s Milo
Djukanovic, by way of his cigarette smuggling and to
Slovenia, with the arms smuggling conducted by Janez
Jansa). In Kosovo, it says, “There is a need for
thorough change of the elite.”
In the authors’ definition, Kosovan organized crime
“consists of multimillion-Euro organizations with
guerrilla experience and espionage expertise.” They
quote a German intelligence service report of “closest
ties between leading political decision makers and the
dominant criminal class” and name Ramush Haradinaj,
Hashim Thaci and Xhavit Haliti as compromised leaders
who are “internally protected by parliamentary
immunity and abroad by international law.”
They scornfully quote the UNMIK chief from 2004-2006,
Soeren Jessen Petersen, calling Haradinaj “a close and
personal friend.” UNMIK, they add “is in many respects
an element of the local problem scene.”
They cite its failure to improve Kosovo’s energy
supply, and “notable cases of corruption that have led
to alienation from Kosovo public and to a hostile
picture of a colonialist administration.” They
describe both UNMIK and KFOR as infiltrated by agents
of organized crime who forewarn their ringleaders of
any impending raids. “The majority of criminal
incidents do not become public because of fear of
reprisals.
Among the negative findings listed are:
The justice system’s 40,000 uncompleted criminal
cases;
The paucity of corruption-crime investigations (10-15
annually);
The province’s 400 gas stations (where 150 would
suffice), many of which serve as fronts for brothels
and money-changing depots;
A Kosovo Police Service “dominated by fear, corruption
and incompetence”;
The study sharply criticizes the United States for
“abetting the escape of criminals” in Kosovo as well
as “preventing European investigators from working.”
This has made Americans “vulnerable to blackmail.”
It notes “secret CIA detention centers” at Camp
Bondsteel and assails American military training for
Kosovo (Albanian) police by Dyncorp, authorized by the
Pentagon.
In an aside, it quotes one unidentified official as
saying of the American who is deputy chief of UNMIK,
“The main task of Steve Schook is to get drunk once a
week with Ramush Haradinaj.”
Concerning the crime scene the authors conclude that
“with resolution of the status issue and the
successive withdrawal of international forces the
criminal figures will come closer than ever to their
goal of total control of Kosovo.”
Among the dismal findings of the German study are
those on the economy:
Sinking remission of money from Kosovans working
abroad, a primary source of income for many Kosovo
families, pegged now at 560 million euros per annum;
Some 88 percent of the land now in private ownership,
meaning ever more sub dividing of plots, usually among
brothers, leading to less and less efficient
agriculture;
Proliferation of NGOs - now numbering 2,400 – the
great bulk of which exist for shady purposes;
A hostile climate for foreign investors, frightened by
political instability and the power of mafia
structures.
A central issue in Kosovo is an “inexhaustible supply
of young people without a future and therefore ready
for violence,” the study says. The only remedy for
dealing with this “youth bulge” is to open northern
Europe’s gates to young Kosovans seeking jobs, the
authors say.
In anticipation of a transfer of oversight from the UN
to the European Union, the authors warn: “the EU is in
danger of following too strongly in the wake of a
failed UN and to disintegrate under the inherited
burden unless they make an open break with practices
and methods of UNMIK.” One of the experts they
interviewed put it more bluntly: “the EU is inheriting
from UNMIK a fireworks store filled with pyromaniacs.”
In the estimate of the authors neither NATO nor the EU
or UN appear capable of self examination, much less
self-criticism. The authors draw a picture of
self-satisfied incompetents in all international
organizations dealing with Kosovo.
However, in their depiction, Kosovans appear equally
beholden to legend - in their case of historic
exploitation - such that if they finally achieve
independence, all will suddenly be well. In the past
Kosovans could and did always blame somebody else for
their troubles: Ottomans, Yugoslavs, Serbs.
Now they have begun to blame UNMIK. But what will
happen if they have only themselves to blame?
*David Binder (born 1931) was a correspondent for The
New York Times from 1961 until 2004. He specialized in
coverage of central and eastern Europe, based in
Berlin, Belgrade and Bonn. The current piece was
published in Belgrade’s Politika on July 16, 2007.
http://www.balkanalysis.com/2007/11/18/kosovo-auf-deutsch/