It won’t be easy

Now that independence has been proclaimed, all that remains to do is build a State.The task that awaits the government of Kosovar leader Hashim Thaci certainly won’t be easy. Its secession from Serbia ratified by the Parliament of Pristina on Sunday, 17 February, Kosovo now seems an empty container, held together by nothing more than the ethnic factor. It is the logical conclusion of a process begun by the implosion of the former Yugoslavia, which proved unable to survive its founder, Marshal Tito, and which over the last twenty years has generated a series of tragic conflicts whose consequences are still plain for everyone to see. In the case of Kosovo, the immediate risk is that of finding ourselves faced by a State that, to be able to survive at all, must rely heavily, if not exclusively on international aid. The war of 1999 destroyed practically all the industrial plant present in the country, leading to the abandonment of the mining zones in the south and to a profound crisis in the agricultural sector. Average income does not exceed 250 euros per month, GDP is the lowest in Europe according to the World Bank, unemployment has risen to 60%, while the promised privatisations have remained a dead letter: exports only reach 5% of imports.For an area that has become in recent years an international magnet for the counterfeiting of designer clothing and for the drugs market, the danger is that of witnessing – especially in view of Kosovo’s geographical position – a proliferation of illegal trafficking of all sorts that risks turning the Balkan state into a land effectively controlled by international criminal organizations. And some already see Kosovo (first Moslem republic in Europe) as a springboard for Islamic terrorism, and have voiced their concerns about the numerous mosques and various madrassas that continue to be built throughout the country thanks to huge investments coming from the Arab world. There’s also the problem of the protection of a majority that has now become a minority: the Serbs who continue to live in the northern zone of the country, beyond the river Ibar, jealous custodians of the Orthodox monasteries that testify to the first evangelization of these lands. Hitherto their protection has been entrusted to the international peacekeeping force, but from now on the government of Pristina must assume its responsibility toward them to demonstrate in practice the maturity of what it claims to be: a “democratic, secular and multi-ethnic” Republic (as stated in its Declaration of Independence). In this corner of Europe, the European Union has once again demonstrated all its internal splits and dissensions as far as foreign policy is concerned. If France, Italy, Germany and Great Britain have aligned themselves with the position of Washington and announced in advance their recognition of the new State, Spain, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Cyprus have reiterated their firm “no” to a unilateral act that establishes an innovative principle at the international level. With Kosovo, in fact, the great powers have accepted that ethnic identity represents grounds for independence. And this cannot fail to have long and medium term consequences and effects in those countries where secessionist pressures are strong, beginning with the States of the former Soviet Union. Once the euphoria over independence has passed, Europe and the USA, incapable in recent months of “forcing” Serbs and Kosovars to sit round the same table until they should reach a common shared solution for the region, must feel it’s their priority to exert themselves so that, in a not too distant future, concrete economic development may be possible in Kosovo (avoiding, therefore, a counter-productive flood of aid) in a context of genuine reconciliation and constitutional protection of all groups in the country. The “Eulex” civilian mission is a first, important step, but that alone is not enough.