What did America learn from the 1999 Kosovo war?

By T.J.

HAS Barack Obama’s team been studying the Kosovo war and the 78-day NATO bombardment in 1999? According to The New York Times, an American daily, it has. But it is questionable whether there are any relevant lessons for Syria from the Balkans. The geopolitical context is very different.

Given that Serbia was the main target of the 1999 bombardment one might have expected that Serbian officials would have something to say on the matter. In public they have not made any comment. The only prominent Serb who has come out with anything was Novak Djokovic, Serbia’s champion tennis player, who without doubt speaks for most of rest of the nation in his opposition to any bombing.

According to a source in the foreign ministry, Serbia was waiting to align itself with a common European Union position and hoping for the “best case scenario” of a United Nations Security Council resolution agreed by all. This is tantamount to evading the question of whether Serbia’s government thinks there should be a military intervention. Serbia, to use a phrase used about the Balkan wars and now about Syria, has not got a dog in the fight.

If Serbia’s leaders felt free to say what they thought they would certainly come out ferociously against an intervention. A religious aspect comes into play too. Serbs, who are Orthodox, draw parallels between Syria’s beleaguered Christians and see comparisons with Bosnian and Kosovo Serbs, who fled from or were ethnically cleansed by Muslim Bosniaks and Albanians during the Balkan wars.

On the official level ties to Damascus go back to the days of Tito and the non-alignment movement. These were used to persuade Syria not to recognise mostly Muslim Kosovo after it declared independence in 2008. In the diplomatic fight about Kosovo Russia has been Serbia’s staunchest ally. Yet backing Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, in the current discussion on Syria would irritate America and European Union countries whose support Serbia needs to make sure it begins EU accession talks by next January.

Serbia’s government has no interest either in irritating the Gulf Arabs, who support the opposition. Serbia has been courting investment from the Gulf and has just chalked up a major success. Etihad, an airline from the United Arab Emirates, has bought a 49% share of JAT, Serbia’s loss-making airline.

Albanian leaders on the other hand have come out in support of military intervention. Edi Rama, Albania’s incoming prime minister, has said there was no doubt that that Albania would be “on the side of the United States in any military battle front” which aimed at freeing people “from barbaric regimes that go as far as chemical weapons for their survival.” Albania and Kosovo have close links to pro-intervention Turkey. Enver Hoxhaj, Kosovo’s foreign minister, has written a piece for Foreign Policy drawing explicit parallels with Kosovo in 1999.

Croatia’s position on intervention is more opaque. Vesna’s Pusic, the foreign minister, says that “an action preventing further bloodshed makes sense, otherwise no.” Croatia is the only western Balkan country to have a major financial interest in Syria. Croatia’s largest company, INA, has significant oil and gas concessions in Syria which ceased producing income when EU sanctions were applied in February 2012. Croatian arms, procured by Saudi Arabia and delivered via Jordan, have reportedly been supplied to the Syrian rebels.

Bosniak leaders have not said much about Syria. Zlatko Lagumdzija, Bosnia’s foreign minister, has argued in favour of intervention in an article published with Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister. Bombing by NATO in 1995 helped bring the Bosnian war to a close and all the parties to a peace agreement, but unlike in Syria, they had already been talking about a deal throughout the war years.

As Bosnian, and Bosniak Muslim lives in particular, were saved by the NATO bombing one might have expected more support for America. One journalist, who did not want to be named, says “I am shocked and disgusted by the fact that a majority are against doing anything. They are self-obsessed and think that different rules apply to other people and that what happened to us was unique.”

Milos Solaja, an analyst, says the he believes that Bosniak leaders have held back on Syria because they want to stay on good terms with everyone in the Muslim world. In private Bakir Izetbegovic, the Bosniak member of the country’s presidency, has urged America to take action against the Syrian regime.

Milorad Dodik, the leader of the Republika Srpska, the Serb half of Bosnia, has been silent on the issue. Mr Solaja ascribes this to his desire to build good relations with Israel and not wanting to irritate the Americans on what is, for him, a peripheral issue.

Every few weeks reports of deaths of Balkan Jihadis circulate. Yet the numbers who have gone to fight in Syria are estimated to be in the hundreds, not more. They are Albanians and Bosniaks from the Sandzak region and Bosnia. On September 2nd a senior Bosniak politician urged the parliament of the Federation, the Bosniak-Croat half of Bosnia, to pass a resolution reminding citizens that it was illegal for them to fight abroad.