Kosovo’s march to freedom

WHENEVER one turns to the continuing saga of the disintegration of Yugoslavia in these columns, one is struck by the starkly differentiated responses from readers from home and abroad. Champions of Serbian nationalism still argue that the protracted crisis in the Balkans was primarily engineered by western capitalists in pursuance of their neo-liberal agenda, the fulfilment of an imperial project.

Most readers, however, believe that it was Milosevic who tipped the precarious balance between Serb, Croatian and Slovenian nationalisms with a bloody campaign for Greater Serbia unleashing a chain of unintended consequences. Here and there, one comes across a concern for the fate and fortunes of Muslims who have repeatedly been at the receiving end as the post-Ottoman Balkan kaleidoscope kept turning.

For this last category, the main focus now is the outcome of the process underway in Vienna for the determination of Kosovo’s final status. Negotiations so far have not reduced the gap between the Serbian opposition to the independence of the province and the determination of the Kosovar people — at least 90 per cent of the population — to gain it. A protectorate of the United Nations for seven years, the territory, free Kosova to the Albanians, continues to be the chessboard for competitive moves by major powers reminiscent of the diplomatic manoeuvres of the 19th century.

The general consensus in the international community is that there was never any option after the upheavals of early 1990s but to reconfigure the region — the successor states of Yugoslavia — under the joint protective umbrella of the European Union (EU) and Nato. As overweening nationalism floundered leaving death and destruction behind, the emerging states and entities could trade a part of their sovereignty for economic development that EU would bring and for security that Nato would provide.

On an earlier occasion, I recalled in this space the maxim that the wars of Yugoslavia began in Kosovo and would end in Kosovo. Pakistan can legitimately take credit for highlighting the predicament of its people when threatened with yet genocide in the region. Together with other concerned nations, it endeavoured hard that Kosovo should not be lost sight of while seeking an end to the great tragedy in Bosnia Herzegovina. Kosovo produced its own army of liberation, the KLA, but even so, at least 10,000 Kosovars of Albanian origin perished before Nato intervened forcefully. The conflict created new realities, new facts on the ground. Serbia lost its military and administrative control over Kosovo. The province underwent demographic shifts with Serbs either going to Serbia or concentrating in a small strip of border lands, no more than 15 per cent of the province. This was particularly true of the capital Pristina and some other major towns. The territory which was denied the status of a federating republic even by Tito and which had its status of an autonomous province abolished by Milosevic had all but seceded from Serbia.

Recognition of this de facto independence has been delayed not only by staunch opposition from Belgrade but also by the differences over the most desirable outcome of the Kosovo crisis on the two sides of the Atlantic. Serbia’s diplomacy aiming at status quo ante lacked moral sanction as well as material substance; Kosovo’s quasi-independence could be reversed only at the expense of another upheaval that Europe could ill afford.

In its latest official pronouncement on the subject, the Serbian government has said that it would accept autonomy for the province “broader than anything seen in Europe” but outright independence would amount to opening “a Pandora’s box”. This is clearly designed to qualify and constrain what is otherwise considered inevitable by now. But this show of reasonableness will certainly be used by the negotiators who still favour a “conditional independence” for Kosovo.

Serbia’s diplomatic position received a major setback when it failed to prevent first the end of a two-nation federation with Montenegro and then the dissolution of a loose union that had replaced that federation. By a popular vote, Montenegro declared itself independent. The birth of this tiny state occupying no more than 13812 square kms and with a population of little more than 650,000 has dealt a severe blow to Serbia’s residual claims on Kosovo. The contradictions — historical, ethnic, linguistic and even religious — between Serbia and Kosovo are much sharper than between Serbia and Montenegro.

Kosovo’s case for total independence has also gradually got strengthened as its people met the criteria for it. In December 2003, the United Nations defined a roadmap to final status negotiations in terms of what came to be known as “Kosovo Standards Implementation Plan”. Stringent objectives were set for the creation of representative public institutions, return of displaced people, market economy, security services, protection of life and property, free media, and independent judiciary. One cannot say that Kosovo has attained an equal measure of success in each of these designated fields but there has been enough progress to justify the claim that Kosovars can today make sovereign decisions to “create a free, fair and open democratic society based on the rule of law, with open markets and a robust civil society.”

Kosovo escaped descent into anarchy partly because Nato’s intervention prevented what was foredoomed to be a dirty war of ethnic cleansing between the Serbian regular and irregular forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army. Its ability to fulfil the international criteria mentioned above came in no small a measure from the tireless pacifism of late Ibrahim Rugova whose faith in non-violence survived the worst carnage that continental Europe had seen since the Second World War. In a brief obituary I wrote on his passing away in January this year I expressed the hope that his legacy, enshrined in the 10 books that he wrote and in the party he kept alive in the maelstrom of 1990s was a beacon in a peaceful quest for independence.

Kosovo’s final status needs a decision by the UN Security Council (UNSC). European powers are as sensitive to the past as to the future and, therefore, still remain a trifle uncertain about the final terms of Kosovo’s separation. But at the UN there is an enhanced realisation that the present arrangement is flawed and unsustainable, that two million Kosovars are no less qualified than 650,000 Montenegrins to be free, and that the inevitable independence of the territory is by far the most viable solution. For post-independence problems, Kosovo would need the same Nato-EU partnership that exists today and brings stability to the other successor states of Yugoslavia.

The philosophical debate about Kosovo’s independence becoming a precedent for breakaway movements elsewhere in Europe can be as serious as you want it to become. It evokes complex responses. Russia may have one set of arguments for Kosovo and quite another for Georgia. France, Germany, Italy and the UK tend to focus on it as much for reasons of pan-European politics as the good of the people. In the end game, the Security Council will doubtless want to make effective arrangements for minority rights.

This will be particularly important for the already shrunken Serb minority. Serbs may well be down to being five per cent from the earlier eight per cent. One solution which will probably create more problems than solve would be to tamper with the territorial integrity of Kosovo. Given the history of conflict, partition would be tantamount to the defeat of all European norms of multiethnic and multicultural states.

A much better solution is a quantum leap in human rights and rights of minorities in Europe for which Kosovo could be a good testing ground.

Consider what the alliance for Kosovo’s independence has to say and which the Security Council and EU can easily enforce: “At a time when a prospective clash of civilisations between the West and Islam is widely feared, the creation of a Muslim-majority secular state, tolerant of all ethnic peoples regardless of personal creed would be viewed as a victory for national values espoused by the US and the nations of the European Union.” If the UNSC endorses Kosovo’s independence by the end of 2006, the centuries’ old Muslim problem of the Balkans would probably find a sustainable solution within an overarching EU. The Balkan wars of 1912-13 and the First World War extracted a heavy price from the ethnic Albanians. Half of them were left outside the new Albania in neighbouring countries. Kosovars suffered discrimination when incorporated into the kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and subsequently even in the successor state of Yugoslavia. Characteristically, Milosevic tried the “final solution” and invited disaster upon Serbia itself.

Nothing would concentrate the Serbian mind on what they need to do in 21st century than the independence of Kosovo. The argument that it would push Serbia into the hands of extremists is almost irrelevant as the Serbs would not want to swim against the mighty European tide for ever. Similar fears about breakaway Slovakia turned out to be misplaced. Instead of indulging the remnants of Milosevic’s pernicious racist ideology, European powers should throw their door wide open for Serbian participation in a new Balkan order. Support for an independent Kosovo would help the United States no end to dispel the fear that it also has become a victim of contemporary Islamophobia.

At the same time, from Morocco to Brunei, Muslims will watch with much empathy the progress of three Euro-Muslim states and their expected contribution to global inter-faith understanding. That these three states would have a distinct cultural identity of their own will, doubtless, be the cornerstone of the general Islamic policy towards them. The world of Islam is ready for such diversity.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

Email: tanvir.a.khan@gmail.com

Dead or alive

(This column was written by Art Buchwald from his hospice in Washington, D.C., where he is undergoing care. Buchwald has resumed writing his regular column.)

WE wanted him dead or alive. There is no doubt that the Army wanted him dead, and had no intention of taking Abu Musab al-Zarqawi alive.

I felt the same way. Americans are not a bloodthirsty people by nature, but we saw what happened when Saddam Hussein was captured.

We took him alive and we’re still stuck with him. The way things look, we’ll be stuck with him for a very long time. It will be quite costly by the time he’s found guilty of killing thousands and thousands of his people.

You get the feeling that even President Bush wanted al-Zarqawi dead. Bush now looks much better in the eyes of the country. All it cost us was two 500-pound bombs — and poof! One mission was accomplished.

On the other hand, whenever you tune in to the trial of Saddam Hussein, he’s sitting in his box, denying everything. Saddam screams and yells at the judge, claiming he can’t be tried because he’s still president of Iraq.

It was our mistake to let him out of his spider hole, give him a nice clean cell, a dentist, a good haircut and a dictionary so he could write a book.

It makes you sick.

When the news came out that al-Zarqawi was killed (either standing up or sitting down), there was joy in Bud Evered’s family room.

He said, “I’m a couch potato, except when it comes to killing an insurgent.”

I agreed with Evered. “He blew up people’s homes, sank our ships, beheaded hostages and destroyed mosques. But if we had sent him to Guantanamo Bay, we would have looked

bad.”

Evered said, “Zarqawi gave Al Qaeda hope when they shouldn’t have had any.”

I asked, “I wonder who gave the order not to kill Saddam?”

Evered replied, “Some silly person following the Geneva Convention.”

I said, “We’re never going to win if we observe the Geneva Convention. We observed it with Saddam and didn’t with Zarqawi. Which one got the best deal?”

Evered said, “My fear is that, since the Iraqis are trying Saddam, he could be found not guilty, or get 10 years of community service.”

“President Bush said trying Saddam is an Iraqi problem. As a matter of fact, everything that goes wrong in Iraq is an Iraqi problem.”

Evered pointed out, “The name al-Zarqawi will fade from the front pages of the newspapers in a week.”

I said, “His followers will find another leader to carry out Osama bin Laden’s videotaped instructions.”

Evered replied, “The answer is to offer a $50 million reward to anyone who finds their new leader dead — and nothing if he’s found alive.”

I asked, “Do you think the insurgents are fighting for oil like everyone else?”

Evered answered, “I can’t believe they’re that greedy.”

I said, “Everyone knows the whole thing’s about oil. I just got an idea. Why don’t we announce that we will turn on the electricity in Baghdad long enough to electrocute Saddam?”

Evered said, “You always come up with the best idea.”

I said, “I do if it’s for my column.” —Dawn/Tribune Media Services

Japan v. Whales: 1-0

“THE moratorium (on whaling), which was clearly intended as a temporary measure, is no longer necessary,” says the St. Kitt’s Declaration, which passed by just one vote at the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission a fortnight ago.

It doesn’t mean that the world will go back to full-scale commercial whaling this year after a 20-year moratorium, but the door is certainly now open. As New Zealand’s Conservation Minister Chris Carter admitted afterwards, “It has been a significant diplomatic victory for Japan.”

For years, Tokyo has been bribing small, poor countries with generous offers of foreign aid if they will join the IWC and vote to resume whaling. The strategy came within a hair’s breadth of success last year, and with three new pro-Japanese members this year (Guatemala, Cambodia and the Marshall Islands) this year versus only one new anti-whaling member (Israel), it looked like Japan would have its majority at last.

Then, a reprieve. Guatemala didn’t show up in St. Kitts and Nevis, the site of this year’s meeting, and several other small countries were late paying their dues and renewing their credentials. Earlier, Japan and its pro-whaling allies lost two key votes, though the anti-whaling coalition’s margin of victory was only two or three countries. But the dues eventually got paid (by somebody), the arms of a couple of waverers got twisted, and on Sunday Japan got the resolution it has been seeking for years. The IWC has declared that the moratorium on whaling is not permanent — indeed, is no longer necessary.

It doesn’t mean that commercial whaling will resume tomorrow. It would take the votes of three-quarters of the IWC’s members to end the moratorium, and Japan is nowhere near that number of supporters. Moreover, the anti-whalers are promising to go out and recruit new members to the IWC who will back their position and perhaps restore their majority. But the Japanese have worked at this issue with amazing determination over many years — and the question is: why?

Japan is at least as “green” in its attitudes as other developed countries. Its determination to resume commercial whaling is not typical of the positions it takes on other conservation issues, nor has whaling occupied the same prominent place in traditional Japanese society as it has (both economically and symbolically) in Norway and Iceland, its only two allies by conviction. There is something else going on here.

“Many of the Japanese citizens think that westerners, (the) outside world, is imposing their own value code on Japan on an emotional basis, and naturally they think they’re bullies or... arrogant,” Joji Morishita, the head of the Japanese delegation to the IWC, told the BBC on June 15. Japan’s policy is really driven not by a national hunger for whale-meat (most Japanese under 50 have never even eaten whale), but by perceived racism and historic resentment against the West. The whales just got caught in the middle.

When the International Whaling Commission was created in 1946, it was about conserving the whaling industry, not the whales. It did a rotten job even of protecting the industry, however, because the numbers of large whales of most species continued to plunge, so in 1975 it set catch limits for individual whale stocks.

The goal was simply to bring whale stocks back up to the numbers that would permit large harvests over the long term.—Copyright

Scams for all seasons

ONE never knows where to begin when writing about the financial high jinks of members of the government and their supporters. Just when one has recovered from the headlines surrounding one scandal, along comes a meatier and juicier one which makes the previous fiscal misdemeanour pale into insignificance.

It is almost as if there is some sort of competition among the more creative members of the establishment to see who can run the extra mile into the twilight zone which, according to Ahsan Iqbal of the Nawaz Sharif’s faction of the Muslim League, is apparently out of bounds to the chaps who sit in the National Accountability Bureau.

According to Iqbal, NAB has been directed not to carry out investigations against people who engineered the sugar, land and stock exchange scandals, because the government needs their financial support for next year’s election campaign. There’s a delightful Latin quotation which says it all: Quam multa injusta ac prava fiunt moribus? How many unjust and base acts are sanctioned by custom?

Now that the cement scandal is old hat perhaps a good starting point would be the sugar scam, brought to the surface by the Public Accounts Committee which, according to conservative estimates, yielded a windfall of forty billion rupees. As usually happens when things begin to go wrong an enquiry was ordered, though in this particular case it was not at all clear just what the parameters of the enquiry would be.

Zafarullah Khan Jamali, who doesn’t let anybody steal his thunder, demanded a thorough investigation into the matter and added that officials and ministers responsible for the crisis must be sacked. He too had heard that no satisfactory explanation had been proffered for the fact that when the import flood gates were opened certain government ministers who own sugar mills imported huge quantities of sugar and hoarded the stuff. But regrettably, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz decided to defend the sugar lobby, which includes some of his ministers, and then the minions went into action.

The nation was told that the hike in domestic sugar prices was due to a surge in the international market — a point of view which was corroborated by the sugar cartel which published huge advertisements outlining what it referred to as “the bitter facts.” And since Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz is obviously less than enthusiastic about the investigation, the inquiry which, as has so often happened in the past, will point to the fact that nobody is really at fault, except the capitalist system. And so another scandal will be swept under the national carpet and political expediency will once again outweigh the requirements of financial probity.

With the embers of the sugar scandal still burning in the grate there came the sensational news about the Security Printing Corporation of Pakistan importing a press costing five billion rupees — a staggering amount by any standards! There is nothing wrong with importing machinery. The textile and cement industries are doing it all the time. But the news that came down the pike was that this order was placed without calling for tenders. Now here’s the punch line: this sophisticated machine apparently doesn’t work, or, put another way, has malfunctioned. The acquisition has been declared as a ‘mispurchase’ by the regulatory control board and the matter has been handed over to the National Accountability Bureau.

Five billion rupees has a familiar ring to it and does remind one of the saga of the locomotives and 144 railway coaches purchased from China at a cost of 69 million dollars, where each coach carried a price tag of 30 million rupees. It was pointed out at the time that this was about four times more than what the railways ministry would have had to pay if the coaches had been manufactured in Pakistan. The question that the cynic is asking is: whatever happened to the previous agreement between the Pakistan army and the Pakistan Railways Carriage Factory?

After the deal was struck in 2002, things began to go horribly wrong. There were reports of cracks appearing in a few of these locomotives. It was also pointed out that some of the recent rail accidents that took place in which some passengers died involved the imported Chinese locomotives and bogies. Somebody apparently had not done his homework.

It was discovered, a little too late, that the coaches could not adjust to the old tracks which dated back to the steam engine, grit-in-your eye era, of the British Raj. Subsequent reports issued by senior officials of the railways ministry indicated that because of defective locomotives, the railways were suffering a daily loss of Rs 2.4 million.

NAB and the Public Accounts Committee apparently took a charitable view of the business. For a couple of years the ball landed on both sides of the court and after each rally the authorities absolved the former railways minister General Javed Ashraf Qazi, the former chairman of the railway board, Lt Gen (Retd) Saeedul Zafar, and a former general manager of the railways Maj Gen (Retd) Hamid Butt, of any wrongdoing, stating that “they acted in good faith and meant well.”

What a lot of people had forgotten was that General Qazi had received the approval of the entire scheme in the December 29, 1999, meeting of the National Security Council presided over by President General Pervez Musharraf. This time nobody could put the blame on the capitalist system.

Later in May 2003, after another couple of sets had been played, and the authorities started taking suo motu notice of newspaper reports, the NAB spokesperson once again absolved General Qazi of the allegations made against him. He said that investigations against him had been almost complete and that no evidence of impropriety or corruption had been found against him or his colleagues yet.

He added that most of the irregularities in the sale had been committed by senior officials of the Pakistan railways and not by General Qazi, and that the latter could not be declared responsible for the deeds of his subordinates.

However, the matter wasn’t swept under the carpet. A petition was filed on June 2 by Siddique Farooq, central joint secretary of the Nawaz Sharif faction of the Pakistan Muslim League. He stated that the decision taken by the Public Accounts Committee was illegal, void and arbitrary as it caused a loss of over five billion rupees to the national exchequer. The appeal has cited the former railways and incumbent education minister, the former chairman of the railway board, a former general manager of the railways, the chairman of the PAC the chairman of NAB and the secretary general of the PREM Union as respondents. The petition has been filed under Article 184(3) of the Constitution of Pakistan, and the locomotives case is now before the apex court.

The joke doing the rounds in Lahore these days is that the Q League has done so well for itself that it should consider changing its name to Al-Faida. This was probably after the National Assembly had validated 217 billion rupees government overspending and the nation learned that the irascible speaker of the National Assembly, Chaudhry Amir Hussain, had expressed the wish that the house that is being constructed for him should be as grand as the presidency.

The speaker is apparently not prepared to accept anything less than a four-storey mansion on 19,000 square feet which is going to cost the poor taxpayer a staggering Rs 84,706 million. This is over and above the eleven-million-rupee Mercedes Benz that he appropriated for himself at the cost of the poor taxpayer.

Is there no end to the greed displayed by members of the government? Doesn’t the man feel embarrassed wanting to live like a mediaeval Mughal at the public’s expense, when there is such shocking poverty and so much unemployment in the land? And what are financial watchdogs in the National Assembly doing about this extravagance?

The speaker should find out how the speakers of the world’s oldest and the world’s largest democracies live, as well as the speakers of other countries that, like Pakistan, subsist on handouts and remittances. It is at times like these that one remembers and wishes the late lamented Mohammed Khan Junejo had been around. He would have known how to deal with these profligate spenders, and fix the people behind the scams.