Beneath the Surface of the Kosovo War: The Legal and Diplomatic History

Fourth Quarter 1999

Until last year, few people knew that the war in Yugoslavia actually started in the late 1980s as a legal dispute in Kosovo that made its rounds to the other Yugoslav republics, erupting in violence in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and finally coming back with a vengeance to Kosovo in March, 1998. To understand this, one must remember that the armed phase of a conflict typically erupts after a lengthy escalation that cannot be stopped by diplomatic and political means.

Initial attempts to give Kosovo a satisfactory place in the Balkans date back to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The most recent diplomatic efforts to achieve this end took place between 1979 and 1998. In the 1970s, the fragile Yugoslav federal equilibrium began crumbling in the wake of the Western European economic recession. Unable to balance its foreign debt, Yugoslavia called for a re-structuring of its IMF loans and undertook a domestic austerity program. However, the economy continued to deteriorate and in the early eighties the Yugoslav republics began to position themselves to deal directly, rather than through the federal government, with other countries.

It soon became evident that there could be no economic reforms without political change, and calls went out for a constitutional reform of the Republics' taxation and budgeting powers and of the federal structure itself. By 1985, federal economic integration had all but collapsed. The more developed republics of Slovenia and Croatia wanted control of their foreign trade while Serbia, trailing behind economically, wanted increased federal development credits within a greater federal economic system. Kosovo, also less developed and most dependent on federal funds, paradoxically decided to oppose centralization. Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Macedonia did the same. By 1988, the stalemate between the republics and the federal government was complete.

The Yugoslav republics were by now jockeying for recognition and a favorable position in the greater European Community. Kosovo, building on provisions of the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution, which had granted it the powers and institutions of a full republic asked in 1988 for independence from Serbia. But nationalist agitation after Tito's death set the stage for numerous confrontations between Kosovar Albanians and the Serbian and Macedonian minorities. Slobodan Milosevic fueled the flames with his infamous 1987 speech in which he promised the Serbian minority in Kosovo his unconditional support. Amidst growing Serbian police repression of Kosovars, a new constitution was approved in 1989 that drastically reduced Kosovar autonomy. Fearing a similar treatment at the hands of Milosevic, other Yugoslav republics soon began to secede.

The international community re-acted quickly. In 1989, when Warren Zimmerman, U.S. Ambassador to the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe, refused to attend the 600th anniversary celebration of the Battle of Kosovo, he injured Milosevic's pride and hardened his resolve. Senator Bob Dole's expressed outrage at the treatment of Kosovar Albanians did little to alleviate the Yugoslav leader's fears.

With heightened expectations, the Kosovar Albanians declared political sovereignty in July, 1990. While the European Community was beginning to look favorably on some of the other republics' demands for independence (particularly those of Slovenia and Croatia), it looked less favorably on possible Kosovo independence, in part to assuage Milosevic, who was seen as a Western-style reformer and ally. In 1991, the European Community proposed a "special status of autonomy" for Kosovar Albanians and autonomy for both the Albanians and the Serbs within the framework of a treaty with Yugoslavia. In December, the European Community ignored an application from the Kosovar Albanians asking for recognition of their sovereignty. A territorial autonomy proposal by Lord Carrington was rejected and in 1992 a proposed partition of Kosovo also failed because of overlapping territorial claims.

U.S. campaigns in 1992 for the sovereignty of Bosnia and Macedonia heightened the Serbian government's resolve not to give in on Kosovo's partition or independence, and by 1993 the hopes of Kosovar Albanians for action in their favor had been dashed. Hesitation by the West radicalized the Kosovars. Mutual suspicions and ethnic hatreds mounted and the first massacres took place in the summer of 1997.

The unresolved issue of the legal status of Kosovo sparked a spiral of ethnic violence, with Serbs and Kosovar Albanians taking turns persecuting each other. Kosovar Albanians felt and still feel betrayed and confused. By allowing the Kosovo question to fester, the participants in this crisis created a much greater and more painful problem. It looks less likely than before that a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-religious resolution will be possible.

[Dr. Carls is Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee at Martin.]