The perils of a Kosovo-Serbia land swap
The western Balkans is a place of constant geopolitical tension. Over the centuries, various empires have shed a lot of blood in the region. The Balkans was the opening scene of World War I. This led to tens of millions of deaths and sparked a chain of events that gave us World War II, the Cold War, a genocide, and countless smaller but deadly conflicts.
After the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of Yugoslavia into seven new countries, the region suffered a series of deadly conflicts that were only brought under control after outside military intervention. Even today, the security situation remains fragile.
The most recent country to declare independence in the Balkans was Kosovo. And it is between Kosovo and its former mother country Serbia where the next potential for bloodshed in the region can be found.
Since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, there has been constant tension between the two countries. Although bilateral ties have gradually improved in recent years, Serbia is still reluctant to normalize relations with Kosovo, whose independence it does not recognize.
Due to the disposition of minority groups between the two countries, Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaci and his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic have suggested that a land swap could speed up the normalization process. However, this idea does not enjoy wide support in either country. Just last week, thousands came out in protest against the proposal in Kosovo. Even Kosovo’s Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj is against the idea of a land swap.
No official proposal has been made public, but in general terms, Serbia would be given control of the majority ethnic-Serb area of Kosovo to the north of the Ibar River, which runs through the heart of the Kosovan city of Mitrovica. In return, a region known as the Presevo Valley in southern Serbia, where the population is mostly ethnic Albanian, would be transferred to Kosovo.
Predictably, ethnic Serbs living in the Presevo Valley and ethnic Albanians living in the region around Mitrovica are concerned. Even Serbs living in Kosovo outside the region north of the Ibar River are worried about the possibility of a land swap.
Now is not the time to choose a short-term solution that could create even longer-term problems in the Balkans.
Luke Coffey
Swapping land and redrawing borders based on ethnic and sectarian lines would mark a dangerous precedent and open up a Pandora’s box in the region. While this proposal might be tempting for policymakers as a simple, quick fix to Kosovan–Serbian relations, nothing in the Balkans is easy or straightforward.
So far, Germany and the UK, the two European countries that have devoted a lot of resources and attention to the Balkans, have come out against a land swap. Worryingly, the Trump administration seems open to such a deal.
The international community must be aware of the risks of allowing the Balkans to be further divided along ethnic and religious lines. The region went through a tidal wave of border changes in the 1990s. During this period, more than 100,000 people died and millions were displaced in sectarian conflicts.
The impact of redrawing the borders of Kosovo and Serbia would be felt elsewhere too. This is particularly true in other regions of the Balkans such as Bosnia and Herzegovina (with the ethnically Serbian entity of Republica Srpska), Macedonia (with its ethnically Albanian regions), and even Serbia with the Muslim-majority Sandzak region and the Vojvodina region, which has historically enjoyed a high level of autonomy inside Serbia and has a separatist movement.
Establishing the precedent of redrawing borders in Europe based on ethnic lines could easily spill outside the Balkans. Russia already uses this as justification for its actions in Moldova (Transnistria), Georgia (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) and Ukraine (Crimea, Lugansk and Donetsk), and could do so in other places such as Estonia and Latvia, where sizable Russian minorities live.
Although security in the Balkans has improved dramatically since the 1990s, sectarian divisions remain and have been exacerbated by sluggish economies, high unemployment rates and endemic political corruption.
Supporting an initiative allowing Serbia and Kosovo to swap thousands of acres of land is not worth the instability it could cause throughout the rest of Europe. The international community must stay engaged and pursue common-sense policies in the Balkans.
Instead of swapping land and redrawing borders, the international community should push Kosovo and Serbia to normalize relations and to protect the interests of ethnic minorities inside their borders.
Since the 1990s, the international community has invested a lot of blood and treasure to ensure that the Balkans remains peaceful and stable, and therefore should have a say in any major changes in borders. Now is not the time to choose a short-term solution that could create even longer-term problems in the Balkans. A land swap is a bad idea. The sooner the international community sees this, the better for Kosovo, Serbia and the region.
• Luke Coffey is director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation.
Twitter: @LukeDCoffey
