What is the significance of kosovo

The most important goals for all parties concerned should be regional stability, democratisation and economic development. However, this will not happen. The key states of the EU are keen to draw a line under the Kosovo issue once and for all. The recent agreement is an improvement on the previous situation.

It is not enough, though. Here the EU has leverage of its own. It seems very likely that Serbia will be expected to come up with firm proposals for how to address the outstanding issues as soon as forthcoming parliamentary elections, which are likely to be held in May, are out of the way.

Four years after Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia, a comprehensive settlement that ties up all the loose ends between Belgrade and Pristina is still needed.

His next book, to be published by Oxford University Press, explores the ways in which states try to prevent the recognition of secessionist territories. Before you download your free e-book, please consider donating to support open access publishing. E-IR is an independent non-profit publisher run by an all volunteer team. Your donations allow us to invest in new open access titles and pay our bandwidth bills to ensure we keep our existing titles free to view. Any amount, in any currency, is appreciated.

Here was an authoritarian society exposed to pressures for liberalization and democratization. Unemployment was very high, especially among young, educated people and criminality was growing. Nationalist propaganda, especially on the Serbian side, was being pumped out by the media and by intellectuals. An active Diaspora on the Albanian side was becoming increasingly radical.

Quite apart from intelligence and media reports, a number of well-known NGOs as well as the UN Special Rapporteurs for Human Rights were regularly monitoring the situation. Yet the international community responded with a series of mixed signals.

The non-violent movement received international endorsements and praise, but no solid commitments. US officials courted Rugova, but then Dayton ignored Kosovo. The West continued to acknowledge Rugova post-Dayton, but there was no visible effort to encourage the LDK to develop a more accommodating political stance on the status of Kosovo, and there were no moves to put the issue back on the diplomatic table.

Milosevic, meanwhile, who had been warned early about Kosovo, was later repeatedly assured that its status within the FRY was beyond challenge and that its administration was an internal matter.

Three general lessons can be drawn from the experience of this period. First of all, the failure to respond adequately at an early stage of the evolution of the conflict created difficulties in later stages. The decision not to deal seriously with the Kosovo issue in created obstacles to action in The decision not to confront the intransigence of Milosevic in , and above all the neglect of Kosovo during the Dayton negotiations, contributed to the developments that were to escalate the conflict in The inadequacy of diplomatic efforts in the period was to culminate eventually with Rambouillet where the space for maneuver was extremely limited.

Second, during this period it was more important to establish an international presence on the ground and to support efforts to normalize the situation than to find a solution to status questions. Any compromise on status was bound to be very difficult since the Kosovars insisted on independence and the Belgrade authorities insisted on the integrity of Yugoslavia.

Conflict prevention should have focused instead on establishing a presence on the ground to provide some protection against human rights violations, to support and facilitate the parallel institutions, and to encourage dialogue. Unless or until a situation escalates to the point where the international presence is itself in great peril, an unarmed presence can not only impact the daily life of the oppressed population, but often can also be reconciled with state concerns over infringement of sovereignty.

The presence of the Mission of Long Duration does seem to have ameliorated the situation in Much more effort should have been directed towards ensuring a strong international presence within Kosovo, improving conditions of everyday life, and fostering communication among Serbs and Albanians inside Kosovo as well as with people in the rest of Serbia.

Third, much more could have been done by the international community to support the initiatives of the parallel society. Year after year, the LDK appealed to the international community for support in dealing with the tensions and ongoing repression in Kosovo. The LDK offered itself as a legitimate and willing ally for diplomatic, political, or other levels of non-forceful pressure or intervention that might have been undertaken. The unarmed nature at least on one side of the conflict provided potential avenues of civilian international involvement that were less intrusive, and not as threatening to the sovereignty and security concerns of the FRY as an armed presence.

Furthermore, the failure to take more seriously the demands of the non-violent movement at an early stage led to the conclusion that violence produces results and is a more effective political strategy.

This had profound implications for the post-conflict political culture. However, this loyalty is undermined daily by the actions of those who have learned that violence is an effective way to achieve political objectives.

Student demonstrations in August had made it clear that the LDK was no longer in control of Kosovar Albanian political activity. More confrontational tactics were taking the initiative.

In October and November the KLA began, for the first time, to make public appearances at funerals of its soldiers and sympathizers. These events drew tens of thousands of people. In response to these actions, the number of armed skirmishes in Kosovo increased dramatically, with 66 in January and February , up from 55 in all of , and 31 in At the same time, Serb civilians were armed and paramilitary groups entered Kosovo from Serbia. Four Yugoslav policemen and an unknown number of Albanians were killed.

Yugoslav forces violently broke up the protest with water canons, tear gas, and batons, injuring at least people. Using artillery against the houses and sharpshooters against those who fled, the massacre left 58 dead, including Adem Jashari, and created a martyr for the KLA cause.

There is also no doubt that the police used arbitrary and excessive force against the villagers long after resistance had ceased. In addition to killings, the report chronicles a range of other human rights violations committed by Serb forces and authorities, including attacks and restrictions on humanitarian workers, arbitrary arrests and detentions, restrictions on the media, and forced disappearances.

The American press reported cia warnings that the Yugoslav army was mobilizing on the Kosovo border. On March 9, the Contact Group called for an arms embargo.

Hence, there is no danger of a spillover, there is no threat to peace and security. The KLA at this point had no political program, no accepted representation, no international recognition, and no control over military forces of any significance. But reports of massacres and myths of national martyrs suddenly made the KLA the driving force of national liberation in the eyes of a growing number of Kosovar Albanians. For the first time, the KLA could claim significant political power.

Self-defense militias formed independently and seemingly overnight in many rural Kosovo villages. This formation process was not affiliated with a national KLA organization, but rather was the product of Kosovar Albanians taking up arms to defend themselves. These militias, although pervasive, lacked coordination and logistical structure. Meanwhile, Rugova called for elections to be held on March 22, and received an overwhelming majority of votes.

Several hundred expatriates Kosovar Albanians began arriving in the northern Albanian town of Kukes to train and organize. The KLA was reportedly unprepared to accommodate the swelling numbers of volunteers crossing the border to northern Albania or trying to join the local groups inside Kosovo. Supply routes were organized from northern Albania to bring arms and ammunition into the province.

Spring brought a widespread wave of small or non-coordinated attacks on Serbian police installations, as well as fighting between armed Serbian and Albanian villages in some areas. The KLA claimed to have spread its control over the countryside with Serbian forces controlling the towns and the main roads.

During this time several independent regional KLA groups competed for influence and often refused to share information or resources. Disunity among KLA factions remained a factor until the international armed intervention began.

Yugoslav army officials announced the killing of Kosovar Albanians trying to cross into Kosovo from Albania. The spreading of violence in Kosovo in the spring of and the growing international pressure on his regime may well have served to legitimize Milosevic among his domestic audience. Only one year before, three months of opposition street protests had placed him on the brink of being overthrown.

Now he could use the Kosovo crisis to drum up domestic support. On April 24, , Milosevic called for a national referendum on whether or not to accept international mediation in the Kosovo crisis. The turnout was however low. Facing a rapidly expanding KLA presence, the Yugoslav army entered Kosovo with massive reinforcements and started a large-scale operation coordinated with police and paramilitary units.

This campaign was aimed not only at stopping the spread of KLA activities, but intended to achieve this by directly targeting the Albanian majority civilian population in rural areas. Starting in April and continuing into the summer of , increases in attacks on civilians were reported against all parties involved in the widening conflict.

The Humanitarian Law Center HLC began registering an increased variety of abuses committed against Serbs, and in some cases Roma, including disappearances, abduction, and arbitrary detentions. In a number of cases, KLA activities were directly linked to abuses, causing Serb residents to flee their homes and villages. In both cases, the majority of local Serbs fled amid reports of associated unexplained disappearances. Extra-judicial executions, excessive use of force, and disappearances were frequent, and were described by Amnesty International as an established pattern.

By the end of May, people were estimated to have been killed since the start of the Yugoslav operation in February. In addition, approximately 12, refugees had spilled over into Albania. Immediately upon their establishment, OSCE border monitors began reporting a substantial level of military activity and fighting along the border.

These reports caught the attention of high-level Western diplomats. KLA incursions into Kosovo were also frequent, and Serb forces responded with a variety of tactics, including the use of landmines and ambushes.

KLA casualties were sometimes substantial. Reports in July from the interior also detailed intense points of conflict inside Kosovo. As with the border region, the civilian population suffered substantially in the conflicts. Serbs destroyed numerous houses, and some reports indicated that they might have killed fleeing civilians.

Property damage resulting from these attacks was also extensive. During this period, European diplomats referred to the destruction as an excessive use of military force. Responding to this summer long escalation,the president of the UN Security Council issued a statement at the end of August calling for an immediate ceasefire. Whether all of the refugees and internally displaced people left their homes to avoid combat, or as a result of a campaign of expulsion remains a debated topic.

However, in mid-September criticism of the scope of ICTY efforts emerged, along with a public critique of the fact that Chief Prosecutor Arbour had not taken a more visible role, including a trip to Kosovo. Burning houses were commonplace occurrences. The refugee flows into the northern Albania area remained relatively constant -- sometimes exceeding a day -- and during the last week of the month refugees were expelled from Montenegro. The KLA had been effectively uprooted as a military force and proven unable to protect civilians in all contested areas.

Yugoslav army units and officer corps conducted what at the beginning some believed to be an unconstitutional military campaign against its civilian population. The international response, in military terms, had been limited to air maneuvers over Albania and Macedonia. On October 13, , however, NATO authorities voted to authorize air strikes if security forces were not withdrawn from Kosovo within 96 hours.

While the agreement was never published, its major points addressed the reduction in forces and deployment of monitors. This monitoring effort would be complemented by NATO overflights. Also, a series of steps toward autonomy were to be initiated, including elections within nine months and the development of Kosovar Albanian police forces.

The violence against the civilian population in Kosovo throughout was accompanied by a series of other systematic and institutional violations of civil rights by Serbian and FRY authorities, further establishing a hostile environment for the civilian population.

The two most notable violations were political trials that lacked due process, and efforts to suppress any free and independent media. By the end of the year, an estimated people were in custody by the end of the year. Reports of abuses, ranging from violence to shortcomings in due process, were numerous, and additional judges were transferred from Kosovo to Serbia to handle the heavy caseload.

Measures ranged from censorship to police violence against journalists. The Serb government took a particularly active role at certain points. In fact, KLA forces moved in to take up positions vacated by the redeployed Serbian forces.

According to the UN Secretary-General: "Recent attacks by Kosovo Albanian paramilitary units have indicated their readiness, capability and intention to actively pursue the advantage gained by the partial withdrawal of the police and military formations Reports of new weapons, ammunition and equipment indicate that the capacity of those units to crisply defend themselves is still fairly good.

We call upon the armed Kosovar elements to cease and desist from provocative actions and we call upon the FRY and Serbian authorities to reduce the number and visibility of MUP special police in Kosovo and abstain from intimidating behavior. The organization kidnapped, and in some cases executed, both Serbs and Albanian civilians.

The situation got worse in December. On December 14, around KLA soldiers transporting weapons were caught in a regular Serbian army ambush at the border of Albania: 36 were killed.

This event was never investigated by KVM. A Serbian military response came a few days later. FRY attacks on villages and border incursions were again commonplace. These actions … have only served to provoke the Serbian authorities, leading to statements that if the Kosovo Verification mission cannot control these units the Government would. From aerial monitoring over the region, NATO was aware of violations of the cease-fire agreement during this period.

In the first 11 days of January , 21 people died as a result of clashes between KLA and Serb forces. The Serb army moved into Kosovo in large numbers. With the help of special police units, the army created at least three sealed areas along the main north-south road, using artillery and tank shelling to push the civilian residents to leave the villages.

However, unlike the summer of , displaced people, including women, children, and the elderly, were prevented from leaving the sealed areas. By late January , Serb forces with tanks and heavy armor established permanent positions along the Macedonian border with Kosovo. Their main strategic goal was to block the borders with Macedonia, and shortly thereafter with Albania, so as to deter a possible NATO ground attack. There were also reports of additional light arms flowing into Serb villages in those regions to bolster their defense capacity under Yugoslav Territorial Defense law.

Directly thereafter, he publicly condemned the massacre, called upon the ICTY to investigate the atrocity, and requested that Serb authorities supply the names of the officers commanding the action.

Serb authorities denied that any civilians had been killed, stating that it was simply an action against the KLA. In a process that will be more fully discussed in the subsequent chapter, the Contact Group was, in the end, unable to formulate a plan to which both FRY and Kosovar negotiators could agree.

A second round of talks took place in Paris March The negotiations failed. UNHCR estimated that from , to over , new refugees were driven from their homes in Kosovo between January and mid-March This action resulted in 25, to 40, new refugees.

It is important to note that for the entire period of internal war, between February and March , preceding the bombing campaign, the Commission has had considerable difficulty pinpointing statistics on the levels of lethal violence committed against civilians in Kosovo. A precise quantification of abuses, particularly killings, was difficult if not impossible to determine because detailed, verified data was not readily available. Major human rights groups have consistently expressed the need for greater rigor in the collection and presentation of Kosovo data.

But neither set of numbers indicates how many of the victims were KLA members and how many were civilians.

The Commission has been unable to identify any dependable figure on killings between September and March , despite the substantial OSCE monitoring presence during most of these months. Therefore the Commission cannot make a reliable estimate of the number of deaths in this period. The crisis had been building for a long time. Western diplomacy failed to defuse the conflict, which by early had become an outright civil war.

This civil war would continue on the ground, and even intensify, but superimposed upon it was now a fully fledged international war between the NATO Alliance and Yugoslavia. Javier Solana, in a letter to the UN Secretary-General, outlined a series of incidents demonstrating a rapid decay of the situation in Kosovo.

On the same day, the Yugoslav government declared a state of emergency. Clinton also clarified that the US government had no intention of deploying ground troops to fight a war. The other NATO governments took the same position. The underlying NATO assumption was that a relatively short bombing campaign would persuade Milosevic to come back to sign the Rambouillet agreement.

In spite of all the western intelligence, there was no contingency planning for refugees. The Commission has not had access to the considerations of the Belgrade government regarding its war goals, but can guess that they included: keeping NATO out of the FRY; keeping control of Kosovo; crushing the KLA and, finally, using the war as a pretext to expel the Kosovar Albanian population, hopefully for good but at least as a card in future negotiations. Milosevic clearly seemed also to be counting on the NATO alliance splitting, and may also have expected more support from Russia.

The Yugoslav military, however, was well organized and trained to deter a military superpower. Air defense was crucial, and the FRY military had carefully studied the Iraqi experience from the war. In contrast, before mid-March , the KLA was not yet a centrally organized military force. The Albanian resistance consisted of , lightly armed, poorly trained men in Kosovo, with an additional men training in northern Albania.

These men belonged to different armed resistance groups. Most of the groups had some connection to the KLA, but they also maintained their individual identity. Only at this time, in the face of a large-scale FRY offensive, did the KLA begin to build a unified command structure under the leadership of Agim Ceku, a former Croatian army officer. The sfor troops were not authorized to serve outside Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The composition and placement of the Yugoslav army task force in Kosovo clearly suggests that it used the early months of to build up a territorial defense capacity in Kosovo sufficient to deter the threat of a NATO ground invasion. Time gained during the Rambouillet and Paris negotiations assisted the Yugoslav army in this effort. The FRY military and paramilitary forces launched a vicious campaign against the Kosovar Albanian population.

However, virtually every other international, governmental and non-governmental organization that has studied the facts has reached the opposite conclusion. There is widespread agreement that FRY forces were engaged in a well-planned campaign of terror and expulsion of the Kosovar Albanians. There has been an intensive debate on whether such a plan did exist, and if so, what relevance it had. The issue is still open, but it is very clear that there was a deliberate organized effort to expel a huge part of the Kosovar Albanian population and such a massive operation cannot be implemented without planning and preparation.

The latter allegation is difficult to assess. We cannot know what would have happened if NATO had not started the bombing. It is however certainly not true that NATO provoked the attacks on the civilian Kosovar population -- the responsibility for that campaign rests entirely on the Belgrade government. It is nonetheless likely that the bombing campaign and the removal of the unarmed monitors created an internal environment that made such an operation feasible.

It was thus both revenge on the Albanians and a deliberate strategy at the same time. FRY leaders may have thought that the resulting huge flow of refugees would create a political crisis for neighboring countries, or that the European governments would be nervous in the face of hundreds of thousands of new refugees on their doorsteps. They may also have thought that they could create a kind of fait accompli -- that a later negotiated agreement would allow that at least some part of the Kosovar Albanian population would stay outside Kosovo.

Whatever they thought, it was an enormous miscalculation. The internationally isolated Yugoslav government misjudged the international reaction to this huge forced dislocation of people, evoking memories of the darkest days in European history. They provided the NATO side with the best argument for the war and made all the governments in the Alliance more committed to forcing the FRY government to yield.

This was the kind of concrete promise that NATO could never abandon. The drama of the refugees made a huge impact on public opinion, not the least in Europe. Without these actions it cannot be taken for granted that the NATO campaign could have continued even for the 78 days. At the same time, it was also a serious mistake by the NATO countries not to foresee that the bombing would lead to severe attacks on the Albanian population. In Annex 1 to this report, there is an attempt to integrate all available data into a single analysis.

Annex 1 also includes a number of methodological observations which we hope will facilitate the accurate compilation of such data in future crises. During the course of the NATO air campaign, approximately , civilians sought or were forced into refuge outside of Kosovo.

An estimated additional , were internally displaced. Many displaced Kosovar Albanians who were forced from their homes, were then loaded on busses and driven to the Macedonian border; in other cases, people were allowed to take cars and tractors and were ordered to follow a prescribed route to the border.

Many residents of municipalities east of the main north-south railroad were forced to walk to railway stations and were taken by trains to the Macedonian border. During deportations, three to four extra trains were added each day, each with between 13 and 20 carriages.

There is an ongoing debate as to the exact number of killings during this period. For instance, to date, exhumations by the ICTY have located bodies from mass gravesites in Kosovo. The findings, which are set out in the Annex 1, place the number of killings in the neighborhood of 10,, with the vast majority of the victims being Kosovar Albanians killed by FRY forces.

There are around missing people. Others missing are presumed dead. The Humanitarian Law Center estimates the missing at to most of whom are dead. The OSCE documented some instances of torture as well.

These attacks against people were accompanied by massive physical destruction. An important achievement for victims of armed conflict has been the wider recognition of the different destructive impacts of conflict on women and men. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court provides that rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization and other forms of sexual violence are war crimes when committed in the context of armed conflict.

During these devastating three months in Kosovo, rape was a prevalent tool of political terror. Rape, however, is notoriously difficult to quantify statistically, due to societal inhibitions against reporting. Nevertheless, in addition to data cited in Annex 1, the Commission has received numerous reports of substantial levels of rapes of Kosovar Albanian women by FRY forces during the crisis.

These rapes resulted in dramatic demand for abortion services after the war ended, and a severe problem of unwanted children in the ensuing year. NATO aircraft from 13 countries flew 38, sorties in the campaign, including 10, strike sorties in which 26, air munitions were released. Decision-making throughout the campaign was influenced by micro-management and political judgment calls from several key NATO member governments.

The need for consensus among all 19 members of the Alliance, including three new member states -- Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary -- and those, like Greece, with close historical ties to Serbia, put additional constraints on the military decision-making process.

The political cohesion of the Alliance held throughout the campaign, despite serious debates and disagreements between members. It played an even more dominant role in carrying out high-tech aspects of the campaign. NATO began the bombing campaign, as has been pointed out, with the expectation that the Yugoslav government would propose a cease-fire and wish to renew negotiations after only a few days.

Two other mistaken assumptions followed unavoidably from this erroneous starting point. Since the bombing campaign was originally planned to last only several days and to include a limited number of military targets, NATO governments did not prepare their constituencies for the consequences of what was to become 78 days of intense conflict.

NATO erroneously assumed that a short bombing campaign would not lead to dramatic escalation in the displacement and expulsion of the Kosovar Albanian population. In its first days, the bombing campaign struck military targets including air defense and communications installations. Though the bombing succeeded in completely grounding the Yugoslav air force it did not succeed in destroying its air defense, even though this was seriously damaged by the end of the war.

NATO pilots were ordered to fly at altitudes above 15, feet to avoid the continuing threat of Yugoslav air defense systems. The large number of decoy targets hit suggests that pilots were not able to make positive visual identification before attacking. After four weeks of bombing, the Yugoslav leadership still would not respond to negotiation proposals. At a NATO summit in Washington on April 23, , Alliance leaders decided to further intensify the air campaign by expanding the target set to include military-industrial infrastructure, media, and other targets in Serbia itself.

Most of the main telecommunications transmitters were damaged, two thirds of the main industrial plants were nearly destroyed. An extended campaign with increasing destruction of Serbia would certainly have been heavily criticized in many NATO countries. There were very few military casualties in this war. There were no casualties at all on the NATO side, unique in any war. How many KLA soldiers who were killed is unknown.

In spite of these efforts there were some serious mistakes. The bombing of the Chinese embassy on May 7, had a significant political impact and most likely encouraged Milosevic to wait and see if he could profit from the error.

These included two incidents on one day when many IDP convoys of internally displaced Kosovars were struck by NATO bombs, and another in which a passenger train was bombed. Between 62 and 66 percent of the total registered civilian deaths occurred in just twelve incidents.

This publication provides an estimated total of approximately civilians killed and civilians wounded in specific documented instances. This plan insisted that the UN should be brought into the process and should have some role in the administration of Kosovo.

Russia was a key factor. The Russians were adamantly opposed to the war, but were also very interested in finding a diplomatic solution to end it.

At the G8 18 meeting in Cologne there was an agreement between Russia and the G7 countries on a seven-point peace plan that closely followed the original German initiative. This became the framework for subsequent diplomatic efforts and discussion between Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin and Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade on May Military planners, led by General Wesley Clark, warned politicians that for an invasion to begin in the first week of September, before the onset of winter, the orders to begin preparing would have to have been given in the first week of June.

The discussion about ground troops was also aimed at increasing the pressure on Milosevic; it was understood from the start that ground troops were only a distant possibility, and that the necessary political consensus would be difficult to achieve. A final round of negotiations completed in early June averted the need for a ground invasion.

These principles called for an immediate and verifiable end to the repression and violence in Kosovo; the withdrawal of FRY military, police, and paramilitary forces; the deployment of effective international civil and security presences; and the return of all refugees.

On June 3, the Serb Parliament formally approved a peace plan based on the G8 principles. After delays caused by difficulties working out a technical agreement, NATO suspended its air attacks on June That same day, after confirming that FRY forces were withdrawing pursuant to the peace plan, the UN Security Council passed Resolution , which established the framework for UN civil administration of the province and the establishment of an international security presence.

It is likely that the increasingly intensive bombing of Serbian infrastructure had a profound impact on Belgrade decision-makers. They faced the possibility of the total destruction of the Serbian economy together with resulting internal criticism. They may have had fears about their own power, as well as their private economy. The political prospects were bleak. The NATO alliance had maintained unity. The Russian government had made it clear that its support for the FRY had reached a limit.

At the same time, the final agreement did contain some gains from the FRY point of view: the UN rather than NATO would take over Kosovo, and unlike in the Rambouillet proposal, international troops would not have access to Yugoslavian territory outside of Kosovo. Kosovo would still formally be a part of the FRY; and Russian troops would participate in the international force in Kosovo.

That question cannot be answered easily, since it was, in fact, both. It forced the FRY government to withdraw its army and police from Kosovo and to sign an agreement closely modeled on the aborted Rambouillet accord. NATO had demonstrated its military clout as well as the ability to maintain its political cohesion in the face of a challenge that could have torn the Alliance apart. But, the intervention failed to achieve its avowed aim of preventing massive ethnic cleansing.

More than a million Kosovar Albanians became refugees, around 10, lost their lives; many were wounded, raped or assaulted in other ways. There was widespread destruction. The Kosovar Albanian population had to endure tremendous suffering before finally achieving their freedom. Milosevic remained in power, however, as an indicted war criminal. NATO had prevailed in its day campaign. It is a moot question whether the Alliance could have maintained its cohesion if Milosevic had held out for very much longer.

A ground war, which some Western politicians and many military analysts advocated in the event that the FRY refused to surrender, enjoyed little public support except perhaps in Britain and France, as the high-intensity and low-casualty air war might well have been replaced by one with significant military casualties.

Gasic allegedly returned to Gjakova — which was among the Kosovo cities that wartime Serbian forces hit the hardest — before the government program was meant to begin. Unfortunately, bilateral relations between Kosovo and the Republic of Serbia itself are moving in a decidedly poor direction. Such measures include the refusal to allow Kosovo-registered license plates within Serbian borders. Initiatives like this, which Kurti included among his campaign promises, are an obvious step away from the Serbia-Kosovo dialogue that the international community wants so desperately.

Among the many consequences of a failed relationship between the two states is the forfeiture of any possible EU membership for either; Germany has said they will not admit Serbia without a mutual recognition agreement, while the five non-recognizing members block Kosovo. Although recognition would certainly unlock the capacity for wider-reaching reform, legitimate improvements can be made to the quality of life in Kosovo as the world waits for time to soften Serbian bitterness.

The education system here must be improved as soon as possible. This country is full of young and bright people, and with that kind of development, Kosovo could have a great future. Even as EU membership floats in the far-off distance, everyday reform efforts bear immediate returns.

The work of the International Committee of the Red Cross reflects one such example. Its focus, according to Mission Head Agim Gashi, is primarily solving wartime missing person cases, of which 1, remained unsolved on July 8. These investigations — which typically consist of literal gravedigging — are ugly, but an indispensable means of healing the generational trauma that continues to hold Kosovo in a chokehold. A few hours later, the man sees a group of boys and asks them to fetch the coin for him.

After some time searching, the boys find it and give it to the man, who rewards them with a gold coin from his pocket of equal value. Kosovo faces a quandary, one in which the international community has happily involved itself. With the resulting instability comes diplomatic complications, questions of national identity, and the uncovering of boundless grief.

But the fledgling nation also bears real promise for a future free of international dependence and political deadlock. All that remains to be seen is whether its leaders will take it there. Sign in. Forgot your password? Password recovery. Recover your password.