Op/ed: The end of a policy at the gates of the monastery?

Tirana Times
By Tirana Times October 5, 2023 20:24

Op/ed: The end of a policy at the gates of the monastery?

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  • In the last twelve months or maybe in the last twelve years, Serbia has almost legitimized the obligation that the EU (and to no small extent the USA) adapt to its own policy and not that it adapt to the EU of the USA. Maybe Banjska can be a turning point.

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By Veton Surroi

When this text is published, there will be a day of mourning in Serbia because of the "tragedy in Banjska". Thus, an explanation of the acceptability of the action of the paramilitary unit in Banjska, described as a terrorist act by the USA, EU and Great Britain, will be defined. This action in which a Kosovar policeman was killed and in which four attackers lost their lives will be called a tragedy, just as a landslide that takes several houses, a bus accident on the highway or an earthquake of medium intensity can be called a tragedy. which causes destruction of houses and loss of lives.

The selection of the word "tragedy" is about a measured and determined action in a precise political discourse. The attack of the paramilitary group was "tragic" because of its consequences, the loss of people's lives, but perhaps also because of the failure to reach the objective. In the statement of the president of Serbia and his foreign minister, the action of the paramilitary group was legitimate because it opposes the "terror of Kurt" and instead of being extinguished through the action of the Kosovo Police, a cease-fire should have been established and negotiations with to.

In such an interpretation, it will appear that M. Radoicic and the thirty other members of this unit were a kind of messengers who, with the legitimate use of weapons, would create a new negotiation process.

And, with such an interpretation, the power in Belgrade hopes, not without right, based on past experience, that its discourse will win, that the West will hold 24-hour dissatisfaction with this action and move to " business as usual".

The legitimization of the use of force in Kosovo by the government of Serbia constitutes a new escalation in the long path of a ten-year process called "normalization" (which with this name has carried internal contradictions). However, this action of Serbia is completely logical and understandable from its rationality. During the past twelve months, Serbia has scored three important victories for its logic.

The first was when Germany and France, through the authority of their leaders, offered Kosovo and Serbia the Basic Agreement with the "take it or leave it" principle. Serbia managed not to do either, neither leave it nor take it, but consider it as a further working document.

The second is that when what was called the Agreement was offered to be signed by Kosovo, it was rejected by Serbia and declared as a victory achieved by the EU; to this day, the EU considers that there is an agreement, although it is accepted by Kosovo, but not by Serbia.

The third was when it successfully refused to align its foreign policy with that of the EU by sanctioning Russia for its aggression against Ukraine.

In the last twelve months, Serbia has almost legitimized the obligation that the EU (and to no small extent the USA) adapt to its own policy and not that it adapt to the EU and the USA.

And, maybe it's not just happening in the last twelve months.

Since 2011, the EU has undertaken to facilitate the process of "normalization" of relations between Kosovo and Serbia. During the twelve years, it has dealt with everything, from the footnotes of the roundabout in Mitrovica, from license plates to the determination of the ethnicity of the panel of Appeal judges, but it has not managed to determine the basic act, that of the equality of the parties, of the treatment of Kosovo and Serbia as two equal parties who want to regulate mutual relations.

During this period, Serbia has managed (with the great help of the government of Kosovo) to justify in a European process an idea fundamentally contrary to European values, that of the exchange of population and territories. Over the course of several months, the authorities in Serbia and Kosovo, with the help of Mrs. Mogherini and the Trump administration, have sat down to draw new maps of Serbia and Kosovo* (of that territory whose status had to be resolved even after the new maps).

And Serbia achieved all this with an initial victory after the announcement of the opinion of the International Court of Justice, which it had requested and which determined that the declaration of Kosovo's independence is not contrary to international law.

It appears then that in the last twelve years, Serbia has almost justified the obligation for the EU (and to a large extent the USA) to adapt to its own policy and not for it to adapt to the EU and the USA .

President Vučić explained the logic of this political concept last week at the UN General Assembly, when he explained that his country was unjustly attacked by NATO countries in 1999 and its territorial sovereignty was curtailed in 2008.

Serbia lives in a parallel life in which there was no genocide in Srebrenica, the deportation of a million citizens of Kosovo, the war against the right to freedom of Croatia, the rule of Milosevic, the kingdom of organized crime... In this parallel world there are legalized everything, from the right for the EU to adapt to Serbia's policy to the use of paramilitary units as future negotiating groups.

Serbia should probably be blamed the least for this, it has developed politics up to the limits of the resistance of the Western countries. That resistance was so ineffective during the last twelve years that it has already produced Banjska.

This may be the moment when the dilemmas of the West should be clarified. The so far policy of adaptation to the politics of Serbia and its parallel world ended on Sunday at the gates of the Banjska Monastery with minimal casualties compared to the potential. But, the future Banjska is prepared in the heads of the people of this parallel world, and not only in Kosovo, but also in BiH and Montenegro.

The alternative is conceptually simple and yet unproven: for the six countries of the Western Balkans to adapt to security and cooperation policies within the NATO-EU context. Who doesn't love you, don't love you.

 

Tirana Times
By Tirana Times October 5, 2023 20:24