Humanitarian Intervention and Ontological Security

For this post, I will link to another paper that I wrote on humanitarian intervention and ontological security. Unfortunately there is no catchy title. The paper was published on a student-run website called E-International Relations, which was created by graduate students of the IR field in Britain. The site encourages students as well as professors and professionals to contribute to the dialog in the international arena on a variety of subjects. The website is www.e-ir.info and you can find my paper on the main page (scroll down) or you can find the paper here.

Photo Installment

I will randomly have photo installments on my blog, where I will just post some pictures that I've taken for your viewing pleasure. These are all pictures taken in New York City.

The Kosovo Government Calls out the UAM

Behind the trees lies one of the offices of the UAM, branded with the blue sign.

The big news the past two days has been a report** put out by the Office for the Integration of the North in the Kosovo government, citing the inefficiencies of the UN Administration in Mitrovica (UAM) and how the UAM is actually blocking integration of the city between the Albanians and Serbians. The information in the report is not fabricated by the authors, rather it was taken through interviews with members of the international presence, government, and civil society. The report also tries to tell a story of the UAM, how it was created to fill the void of local governance in Mitrovica North (which is inhabited primarily by Serbs) as well as to administer to all communities in Mitrovica North equally. The report concludes that this is not the case, and that the UAM does not follow its mandate by only aiding the Serbian community and being seen as illegitimate by all communities (even the Serbs) in Mitrovica North. It must be mentioned that Kosovo has been calling for the ousting of the entire UN administration in Kosovo (UNMIK) since their independence in February 2008.

The report also focuses on the Serbian parallel structures in Mitrovica North, which operate illegally, according to Kosovo law, and were to be replaced by the UAM with its creation in 2002. Yet the parallel structures still exist and some members of the parallel structures also work for the UAM and receive double salaries. The salaries from the UAM come from the Kosovo budget, whereas the salaries from the parallel structures come from the Serbian government (most likely the Ministry of Interior, but this is unconfirmed). So although the UAM was supposed to take the place of the parallel structures in Mitrovica North, the UAM is helping the parallel structures survive.

UNMIK rejects this paper of course and the Special Representative to the Secretary General of the UN, and head of UNMIK, Lamberto Zannier had this to say about the report: "[It] contains many factual inaccuracies and makes a number of unsubstantiated claims. I regret that the authors did not consult me or the appropriate UN officials during the preparation of this paper, as in doing so they would have had the opportunity to issue an accurate report." Interesting comments, but quite political, and he needed to say this to save face with his boss (Ban Ki Moon) and the international community.

The debate about whether the UAM, and UNMIK as a whole, should stay or go will go on for quite some time in Kosovo. The release of the report comes at an interesting time where Kosovo is arranging talks with Serbia about how to patch up their relationship as two independent states. Serbia still does not recognize Kosovo as a sovereign state, yet they are on board with talking with the Kosovo government. Regardless of these talks, Kosovo would love to get UNMIK out of the country to solidify their independence recognitions, as UNMIK's mandate was to administer to Kosovo and ready them for independence. Even if UNMIK were to dismantle its mission, the other international organizations, such as EULEX, OSCE, and the ICO, would most likely remain in Kosovo to help progress the rule of law and politics.

**For the first two hyperlinks, the first article translated in the pdf by UNMIK are loose summaries of the report and the front page of Koha Ditore on both September 22 and 23. To read an article from a Serbian news outlet, written in English, please go here.

The Iber River. The bridge in the background is the famed bridge that separates the Mitrovica South from Mitrovica North. In this picture, Albanian youth sit on the southern side (lower half of the picture) while Serbian youth sit on the northern side. The Iber is known to be contaminated with lead.

In the presence of the General

General Brent Scowcroft that is. The Japan Society hosted the General, where he spoke about the challenges facing the Obama administration's foreign policy objectives. Due to the time constraint, Scowcroft outlined three major challenges:

1. The current mood in the US toward Obama's foreign policy decisions and the mood of the international community toward the US;
2. The general atmosphere of the international political economy, and;
3. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The first challenge is a bit self explanatory; the second and third will need some explaining. By the general atmosphere of the international community, what Scowcroft is trying to say is that it depends on how the international community is interacting with each other. Currently it is very interconnected due to globalization (a term he used quite frequently) and that all citizens of our globe are more aware of the world in which we live. This is a fact due to technology- communication is fluid, the internet abounds, the whole world has a cellphone and knows how to take pictures and tweet from them. It is quite a phenomenon, and it appears the world will only become more interconnected as technology progresses.

The third challenge - Iraq and Afghanistan - are obvious foreign policy challenges. According to him, Afghanistan is the worse of the two, and Iraq is going well with Iraqi forces increasingly able to back themselves fundamentally. The main problems in Iraq is the political spectrum and trying to get the new government to solves its problems, form a coalition if need be, and seat itself to lead the country. The US needs to stay in Iraq because the US has the power to aid the political parties in compromising and making concessions so that the government can be seen as legitimate and begin legislating. If the US leaves prior to this (the draw-down has begun), then the Iraqi government will be hurting.

Scowcroft then moved to Afghanistan, saying Obama made Afghanistan his war and that it was a good strategic move to move from counter-terrorism tactics to counter-insurgency tactics. The difference between the two is that the former consists of finding bad guys and killing them no matter what (see here, apparently still counter-terrorism in Iraq) whereas the latter will not kill bad guys if civilians are around. Further, the US military needs to clean out Taliban-populated areas and hold them as a way to promote security among the local Afghanis.

Before taking questions, Scowcroft spoke briefly about the Iran situation. (He also mentioned the US-Japan relationship out of courtesy to the Japan Society, which is peachy-keen for the most part.) He noted that Iran is a problem because it is located in a place where the US has troops stationed fighting wars (Iraq/Afghanistan), meaning that it knows the US troops are over-extended and also can exert its influence in both these countries - which it has. Thus the US should man up, and try to talk with the Iranian government over a way to reconcile the Iraqi issue so that the US can then fully focus on Afghanistan. The issue with the nukes is that if they remain on the same path and pursue the bomb, it will most likely lead to an arms race in the region with Turkey and Egypt definitely following. Destroying Iran's nuclear capability is only a short-term solution and won't do much later.

The only critique I have is the challenge with globalization. Perhaps I understood him incorrectly, but globalization is inevitable and the world will continue to become smaller as technology, communication, and travel expands. Globalization should not be a challenge, but a constant that we need to utilize to our advantage to reach out to those that are skeptical and even marginalized by US foreign policy. I am sure General Scowcroft would agree with this, he is a very reasonable and intelligent man.

Back on the Road to Recognition of Kosovo

Many new developments have occurred on the Kosovo front since last time I wrote, but none more important than the UN General Assembly meeting, which was held yesterday and the subsequent Serbian proposed UN Resolution on Kosovo.

What happened with this fiasco is this:

During the past month, the EU and US have been pressuring Serbia to withdraw the resolution on new status talks for Kosovo or to revise the resolution so that talking about Kosovo's status is omitted. (As a side note, Serbia does not recognize Kosovo's independence, nor will they in the near future). Serbia held firm for a while, saying that this UN debate is necessary as the Serbs in Kosovo need to be protected and that the Kosovo government does not provide adequate security for them, nor is the security of these Serbs a priority. In conjunction with the issue of Serb security, Serbia was (and still is) adamant on resolving who the proper authority should be in the North of Kosovo. The North of Kosovo consists of the Mitrovica North, Leposavic, Zvecan, and Zubin Potok municipalities; the North begins when crossing the Iber River in Mitrovica. Serbia wants a special status for the North, something where these municipalities will technically be a part of Kosovo but will have enough autonomy to govern themselves. I will get to this issue later.

Prior to September 9th, Serbia had a change of heart, and backed off on their stance to renegotiate Kosovo's status. This was seen as a concession to the EU, in hopes that this will ease Serbia's accession into the EU. Although this change supported the US's position on the matter, Serbia did not do it to appease the US. So what this means is that now Kosovo and Serbia will discuss issues dealing with how to create a peace between Kosovar Albanians and Kosovar Serbs. The important thing is that the two will be discussing the issues on the same state level, meaning Kosovo will directly communicate with Serbia as a state and Serbia will recognize this communication. Prior to this, UNMIK (the UN mission in Kosovo that was supposed to administer Kosovo until its independence, which occurred in 2008) and/or EULEX (the European Union Rule of Law mission) would act as a liaison between Serbia and Kosovo.

The UN General Assembly vote still went on on September 9th, and a joint Serbian-EU resolution was approved by the Assembly to open negotiations between the two states with the EU, led by Karen Ashcroft, as the mediator. These talks are supposed to "promote cooperation, achieve progress on the path to the European Union and improve the lives of the people." It must be noted that Kosovo has already stated that their status will not be brought up during these talks and of course, Serbia still says that it will not recognize the independence of Kosovo, yet Foreign Minister Skënder Hyseni said that “Serbia has recognized [Kosovo's independence], at least indirectly, through its positive vote on the Resolution at the General Assembly." And Prime Minister Hashim Thaci has stated that due to the positive resolution on Kosovo at the UN General Assembly, all the countries in the UN have also indirectly recognized Kosovo's independence.

On another note, I was able to see PM Thaci speak to a group at Columbia University on September 8 (before the UN debate). It was about an hour long and Thaci was diplomatic in his answers, basically saying that he was confident the UN would side with Kosovo, the economics of Kosovo are picking up with investment opportunities and contracts to Western companies (not surprising), and that they are already in the process of talks with Serbia that will EU integration and acceptance for both Serbia and Kosovo. The next steps in Kosovo for the government are to further the investigation of corruption, dismantle UNMIK and the UN administration in Mitrovica North, implement the Ahtisarri plan in the north of Kosovo, and boost the economy where possible. Most of this won't happen soon, but at least the talks are step in a positive direction for both Serbia and Kosovo as well as all Kosovars.