The bomb burst at the last second, shock waves have shaken the Balkans ever since: the special tribunal in The Hague klagt Hashim Thaci, the President of Kosovo. The preliminary indictment accuses the former political spokesman of the KLA guerrilla organization and several comrades-in-law for crimes against humanity and war crimes, in numbers: “nearly a hundred murders” of Kosovo Albanians, Serbs, Roma and members of other ethnic groups.
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Thaci has to change his travel plans. This Saturday he already wanted to go to the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington with the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, negotiate a way out of the diplomatic impasse: the former Serbian province of Kosovo, which unilaterally declared independence in 2008, is not only outlawed by Serbia; five EU countries and permanent UN Security Council members Russia and China also refuse to give diplomatic blessings to the ex-Yugoslav dwarf republic, which is predominantly Albanian.
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The fact that the arrest warrant against Thaci is now being published has the effect of an international court pulling the emergency brake at the last second. The Serbian-Kosovar summit in Washington, planned for Saturday, was past EU diplomacy by Richard Grenell, Donald Trump’s Special Envoy to the Balkans.
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It was supposed to be a PR coup during election campaign times for the US president, who was under pressure – although until the end it remained unclear what the parties should have agreed on. Serbia’s diplomatic recognition of Kosovo in exchange for a territorial exchange? So a solution that the EU, especially the German Chancellor, rejects as a fatal first step towards an intra-European border shift? Not likely.
The EU, as a potential political heavyweight, has failed on the Kosovo issue
The truth is that the EU, as a potential political heavyweight, has failed on the Kosovo issue, in its own back yard, and has ducked in the slipstream of Washington from the start. Both the NATO mission in the Kosovo war in 1999 and the push for diplomatic recognition in 2008 came about under massive pressure from the United States. The moment when Hashim Thaci, then prime minister, announced in front of journalists gathered at the Grand Hotel Pristina in February 2008, is considered to be iconographic that he unfortunately has nothing to announce at the moment. His plan to declare Kosovo’s independence had been screwed up minutes earlier by the US envoy Tina Kaidanov with the words “No way”. Washington’s schedule was different.
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Thaci has received steady funding from former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and has been ennobled as “George Washington of Kosovo” by current presidential candidate Joe Biden. The war veteran flawlessly fulfilled his role as the lap dog of American geopolitics. “We are very grateful that Washington takes the time to look for solutions with Kosovo and Serbia in these geopolitically dramatic times,” Thaci told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung shortly before his planned US trip. It is “a blessing for Kosovo” to have Washington behind it.
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What Thaci did before becoming the most powerful man in Kosovan domestic politics was always well documented. A report by the Federal Intelligence Service in 2005 said that he controlled “a criminal network active throughout Kosovo” about the man whom they called “snake” in the KLA. In a report from the Council of Europe from 2011, leading KLA members, especially Thaci, are accused of serious war crimes. There is talk of murder, torture and organ trafficking.
Why didn’t that prevent anyone from sitting down at the table with Thaci as soon as the future of this key European crisis region was at stake? Those responsible in Washington and Brussels will have to ask themselves this question. The mainly EU-funded special tribunal in The Hague has the task of clarifying criminal aspects in the past life of the Kosovar head of state. A final decision by the judge is pending.
At least one thing seems certain: for discreet deals on the Kosovo question, the EU, but above all the Americans, has lost one of two interlocutors.
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