Kosovo

The history of Kosovo that is relevant to the creation of the de facto state dates back to the 1980s, with the collapse of the communist regimes in Europe in general and Yugoslavia in particular. This does not mean that were no earlier tensions between Kosovars and Serbs, the titular nation of the parent state.

During World War II, Kosovo was made part of Albania, a status they wanted to maintain after the war. Yugoslavia’s communist government crushed these aspirations and suppressed Albanian nationalism. From the mid-1960s relations improved and the 1974 constitution gave Kosovo the status of an autonomous province within Serbia with extensive autonomy.

The economic situation in the 1970s made the situation tenser because of the differences between federal republics. These tensions took the form of protests in the early 1980s and escalated later in the decade. When Slobodan Milosevic became president of Serbia in 1989, he revoked Kosovo’s autonomy and placed control of matters pertaining to the province in Belgrade. Subsequent protests led to military intervention and the dissolution of the province’s parliament in 1990.

During the 1990s, most Kosovars reverted to nonviolent resistance to Serbia.

Before, in 1991 Kosovo’s self-declared parliament had declared the country independent. They managed to build quasi-governmental institutions under the pacifist leader Ibrahim Rugova. The non-pacifist side of the Albanian resistance formed Kosovo’s Liberation Army (KLA) in 1996 and started attacking Serbs the following year. By 1998 fighting had become intense and international mediation was needed for a cease-fire in November. This agreement did not last long, however, and fighting continued at the end of the year. Negotiations in 1999 bore no results and NATO entered the war by starting to bomb Serbian targets. The campaign ended in NATO and the UN taking control over the security and civil administration of the province, which remained part of Serbia.

Peacekeeping troops were also sent to the area.

During the international administration Kosovo held two parliamentary elections (2001 and 2004) and generally engaged in the creation of state institutions, which were considered provisional and for self-government rather than independence. In 2008, the parliament or Assembly of Kosovo declared the entity independent. This declaration received different responses from other states. Some of them, around 50 by the end of the year, recognised the newly independent country. Some, including the parent-state Serbia and the UN Security Council members Russia and China, did not.

Kosovo’s legal status was reviewed by the international court of justice when Serbia requested such a review. In 2010 the Court gave an opinion that the declaration of independence did not violate international law. However, the question that has attracted more interest among (legal) scholars is the NATO bombardment of 1999. The Report by the Independent International Commis-sion on Kosovo (2000) claimed the NATO intervention to be illegal but legitimate, as it was not performed in accordance with positive international law but helped the people of Kosovo and reduced their (potential) sufferings. The same issue is covered by O’Connell (2000), who claims that NATO still needs UN authorisation to execute similar operations. Koskenniemi (2002) concludes that most international lawyers agreed on the ‘goodness’ of the Kosovo intervention as a result of a turn to ethics in the profession. The problem of morality in international law is also analysed by Buchanan (2001), who tries to initiate a debate about morally improving the system of international law to justify illegal but morally acceptable acts like the Kosovo intervention.

Kosovo’s independence was therefore a product of international action rather than indigenous effort. This is not to underestimate the local achievement, but the foreign contribution was relatively larger than in other cases of secession.

Kosovo’s territory is around 11,000 km². The main issue apart from Serbia claiming it to be its territory is the border area with a mainly Serbian popu-lation. Ethnic Serbian municipalities along the northern border challenge the boundary between the entity and Serbia. Non-Albanians make up around eight per cent of the whole population, with Serbians typically living in compact areas near the northern border. Ethnic tensions are still a reality and NATO-led

peacekeepers have to separate ethnic Serbs from ethnic Albanians within Kosovo.

The main issue with Kosovo’s de facto status according to our definition is control over territory. But unlike other cases with a similar problem, such as South Ossetia, the question regarding Kosovo is one of international control. It was international intervention that created the entity within its current borders and international support helped to build the institutions necessary for running a state.

In the economic sphere, Kosovo has established a market economy but still relies on international aid. According to the CIA World Factbook, international aid comprises around 10 per cent of the entity’s GDP. Another 18 percent comes from diaspora remittances. That said, Kosovo has several trading partners and does not rely on a patron. However, it does not have its own currency and uses the Euro, a practice that started in 2002 and continued after the declaration of independence.

In the military sphere, Kosovo’s dependence on NATO is generally huge.

The NATO bombing campaign created the possibility of independence. As mentioned above, there is still a NATO-led peacekeeping force in the country.

On the political side, international involvement until recently has been an obstacle to considering Kosovo fully independent. By Freedom House standards, Kosovo is ‘partly free’ and not an electoral democracy, mainly because of the International Civilian Representative (ICR), which has powers to overrule some of the government’s decisions. There are three aspects to this issue. First, the mandate of the ICR expired in September 2012 and the office of the ICR, the International Civilian Office, closed by the end of that year.

Therefore, there are now no powers to overrule Kosovo’s government. But our thesis deals with data from a time when the Representative was still working.

The second and third aspects are related to the status and work of the ICR.

Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence was a reaction to the failure to reach compromise regarding the Ahtisaari plan, which was supposed to set the path for the future status of Kosovo in 2008. Still, the declaration of independence reaffirmed that Kosovo will stand by the requirements of the plan. As the creation of ICR is part of the Ahtisaari plan, the acceptance of the ICR’s authority can be considered a voluntary act from the Kosovo side, not as something forced onto Kosovo by outside powers. As for the actual mandate of the ICR, its powers were limited to the Ahtisaari plan with an emphasis on minority rights. The Representative was not to interfere, for example, in the budgetary matters of Kosovo. Therefore, we can consider Kosovo sufficiently independent to fit into our working definition.