Committee for Conflict Transformation Support |
CCTS
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Coexistence in KosovoThis review of Howard Clark's report, Kosovo Work in Progress: Closing the Cycle of Violence, has been written by Michael Randle Howard Clark has followed up his book, Civil Resistance in Kosovo (Pluto Press, London, 2000) with this report on the efforts to close the cycle of violence in the aftermath of repression and war. The report is based on three visits he made to Kosovo since the end of the NATO military intervention and bombing campaign, and on his knowledge of the country itself and many of its most radical and creative individuals and groups. There are six principal ways, he suggests, in which a community can close the cycle of violence. First, through the pursuit of 'restorative' justice which implies not just punishing the guilty, but providing them with the opportunity for rehabilitation, distinguishing between degrees of culpability, and giving the innocent a chance to publicly clear their names. Second, through emotional healing to prevent the wounds of the past from poisoning future relations. Third, through forgiveness which can be the means of establishing the basis of a new relationship. Fourth, through drawing a line under the past. Fifth, though compensation and reparations, facilitating social and economic development And finally through the pursuit of Truth which implies both listening and talking and ultimately a dialogue in which there is a mutual search for truth from various angles. The report examines progress in each of these respects. How far then has society in Kosovo progressed towards coexistence? At best, it seems, only patchily. A crucial obstacle at the start was the tardiness of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), and the wider international community, in establishing an effective police force and system of justice. It was a year before the first Serb was convicted of a war crime in Kosovo, and by Spring of 2001, only around 40 Serbs had been arrested for serious crimes committed during the war - most of whom escaped before coming to trial. There were, of course, genuine difficulties in the way of delivering justice, not least the fact that many of those responsible for war crimes fled to Serbia and were beyond reach, at least until the fall of Milosevic. Nevertheless the effect has been that the Albanian population have been inclined to view all Kosovo Serbs as guilty until they can prove their innocence, and sometimes to mete out the rough justice of the streets. In the first month or so after the end of the NATO war, violence against Serbs was rampant, with expulsions, arson, beatings, abductions and torture. The international administration recorded the death of 150 Serbs in the first six months after taking charge, but, as Howard points out, the numbers would have undoubtedly been much higher if most Serbs had not fled the country as the Albanians returned. The Serbs who decided to remain could be divided, Howard suggests, into those with a clear conscience who were willing to give coexistence a try, and those preparing to group together to fight a rearguard action. But the lawlessness and violence soon forced the first group to flee the country or to seek international protection in what have become Serb enclaves. Howard's analysis here of the deleterious effects of the absence of an adequate system of law enforcement raises a question mark against some traditional pacifist thinking. For the rule of law requires a means of enforcement, a well-trained and equipped police force and, at least in situations like Bosnia and Kosovo, probably a military presence to back it up. Nonviolent initiatives from below may eventually succeed in building a society in which force plays a minimal role, but intellectual honesty requires us to acknowledge that at this moment in history, in situations such as this, a totally nonviolent solution to the social and political problems faced by the society as a whole does not exist. UNMIK's failures in the area of establishing the rule of law have been compounded by the ad-hoc nature of many of its procedures. Howard takes it to task in particular for its lack of transparency in dealing with locally recruited staff accused of war crimes. He cites the case of a Serb, Petar Topoljski, working as an interpreter for UNMIK who was accused in the Albanian Kosovan newspaper Dita in April 2000 of being a war criminal. UNMIK, instead of suspending him and arranging for some kind of judicial process to establish his guilt or innocence - or the degree of his guilt if he was guilty - simply ignored the allegation. Topoljski was then murdered. Some model of appropriate processes, Howard argues, needs to be established in this and other UN operations if they are to be effective in promoting co-existence. UNMIK aside, there has been a huge investment of effort and money in Kosovo by International NGOs and agencies, not all of it well directed. Howard is particularly critical - as are many of the grassroots organisations in the country - of the explosion of trauma counselling projects, many of them fundingÑled.The assumption underlying most of them is that the experience of war and bereavement has produced a psychological disorder, 'trauma' - to be treated by Western-style talk therapies - rather than a rational response of anger and grief which requires above all the re-establishment of social networks and support-systems. He cites Sevdie Ahmeti of the Centre for the Protection of Women and Children who argued at an OSCE conference that what most women need to overcome trauma is not psychological counselling but 'jobs and homes to go to'. Another woman, Natalie Losi, manager of the International Organisation for Migration's (IOM) project Psychosocial Trauma Response in Kosovo, criticises the arrogance of most of the international experts who descended in large numbers on the territory, usually 'with toolboxes of pre-packaged instruments of which PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder] was the most popular'. IOM does believe that psychological support work is necessary, but it argues it is no alternative to war-crimes investigations, and it must be based on treating the local people as protagonists, acknowledging their role in supporting each other, respecting the methods used within the culture, and restoring the social ties broken by the war. It's not all bad news. Howard detects what he describes as 'undertones' of movement toward tolerance and coexistence. Full reconciliation in the sense of establishing friendly relationships between the two communities is not on the agenda and nor is there any indication of a consensus about what the future political status of Kosovo should be. Moreover in the absence of such a consensus, Howard considers it would be premature to set up a Truth Commission along the lines of those in Chile or South Africa since it would become one more propaganda battleground for the two communities rather than providing a means for a mutual search for the truth. Still, within the interim framework established by UNMIK, some accommodations at least have been made and positive programmes initiated. IOM's Counselling and Referral Service, for example, is a programme which mainly addresses the socio-economic needs of former Kosovo Liberation Front (UCK) fighters, though it also includes a psychosocial element. Some 3000 former members of UCK now work with the Kosovo Protection Corps (TMK), set up by UNMIK to do public works and respond to civil emergencies.The TMK has been criticised by some commentators as constituting 'the UCK in mothballs' but UNMIK sees it as an opportunity for former combatants to serve the community in a different way. As an example of the contribution it can make to peacebuilding, Howard mentions a project in the town of Gjilan where TMK members built a Roma Resource Centre and formed a work crew with Serbs to reconstruct the City Park. However, these positive initiatives to change cross community relations are, in Howard's words, 'a patchwork'. A 'culture of peace' does not exist on any scale, and it is even hard to locate 'points of gestation'. While noting that the international operation bears much of the blame for this situation, Howard argues that the majority Albanian population also has some responsibility for it and suggests steps it could take to promote coexistence. These include the reframing of identity along lines of gender, generation and occupation as a basis of cooperation, creating a collective memory that acknowledges the wrongdoing on each side and honours those who stood out against the violence of their own side, and insisting on human rights standards. Above all, Albanians can take steps to ensure the safe return of the Roma and Serb population which fled the country in the wake of NATO's military victory. The report (40pp., ISBN no. 1903818079) was published in January 2002 by the Centre for the Study of Forgiveness and Reconciliation and can be downloaded at: www.coventry-isl.org.uk/forgive/about/howard-doc.pdf or purchased from CSFR at Coventry University, Priory Street, Coventry CV1 5FB for £10 (institutions), or £5 (individuals). Michael Randle
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